Rude Fans – SLCD004
Thursday, December 17, 2020
VA - (2020) Cha-Cha Au Harem Orientica - France 1960-1964 CD
Born Bad Records – BB136
In 1963, David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia won seven Oscars. Launching its
actors to stardom, including Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif who played
Prince Ali Ibn Kharish at the age of thirty. The latter incarnated the
West’s vision of the Middle East which was simultaneously elusive,
refined and elegant. His fiery stare, impeccable mustache and immaculate
haircut had something to do with it: the Egyptian actor was a sex
symbol of an era passionate for James Bond and OSS117 spy adventures. In
the Jordinian desert, he fascinated an audience that was in search of
an escape and the thousand and one nights. This appetite for a colorful
and fantasized exoticism, was also prominent in France’s music of the
sixties. The country that welcomed Omar Sharif's first feature films
outside of Egypt (Goha, La Châtelaine du Liban) produced a delirious
amount of music of Latin or Middle Eastern inspiration, grouped behind
the genre named “typical” .
This “typical” production is enough to scare away the most motivated and
adventurous of listeners: overabundant and often blurry versions,
anonymous performers (often accompanied by the same arrangers) and only a
few noteworthy songs. Venturing into the moving waters of orchestral
music undoubtedly causes disappointment, but here and there, springing
up in the middle of a vast ocean, one can find a few cha-cha-cha pearls
played in a Cuban or Middle Eastern style. The French equivalent of
Exotica records (Les Baxter, Yma Sumac, Martin Denny etc.) for North
Americans who were fantasizing about Hawaiian Tikis and the Pacific
Islands, the oriental cha-cha-cha fueled dreams of the Middle East and
Northern Africa. To rum-based cocktails sipped in a Polynesian setting,
the French were to prefer couscous and mint tea. Carrying them across
the Mediterranean to nearby Maghreb and even further on to the more
mysterious Anatolia. Orientica in short.
The context is somewhat paradoxical: decolonization, especially of the
Maghreb was not an exactly smooth process. After Morocco and Tunisia in
1956, Algeria acquired its independence in 1962, leaving a gaping wound,
still partly open, on both sides of the Mediterranean. Pied-noirs
returning to the regions of Paris and Provence with a mixed culture
(dishes, humor, etc.). The Cuban missile crisis took place that same
year, a paroxysmal moment in the Cold War. Europe was split between two
camps. “When will the Russians throw nuclear warheads at us”? But there
was also reason to rejoice and be optimistic: the economic growth and
baby boom. Reconstruction was in full swing. French families were
dreaming of tourism and airplanes. A method of transportation that was
still reserved for the elite was developing rapidly. The French sky had
been opened to competition. Caravels, the first mass produced civilian
twin-jet planes had entered the airspace. The French were discovering
Italy, Spain by car and starting to dream of far more distant regions.
Records thus offered the average person an easy escape with an extra few
puns in there and a little ole-ole, making the product all the more
attractive. On Saturdays, young adults took part in ballroom dance
parties (dancing the cha-cha-cha, bolero, foxtrot, tango), although
physical distances were chaste the spirits were more mischievous than
they appeared. Sundays were then spent at the airport, listening to the
Boeings chanter là-haut (Boeings singing in sky). The Loukoum - Cha Cha
au Harem compilation offers a tender vision of pre-sexual revolution
Gaullian France. Including all the stereotypes on exotic countries;
culinary specialties (couscous, Turkish coffee, baklava, etc.), sensual
oriental dances, exaggerated accents, bewitching chants performed on
minor Hungarian scales by European instruments accompanied by percussion
of an unknown origin.
Aside from being a simple postcard, this music embodied a form of
innocence and naiveté, both touching elements to access in these cynical
and judgmental times. Catchy and tastefully arranged, the genre’s best
tunes contain a delightfully old-fashioned charm. Bob Azzam, an Egyptian
singer of Lebanese origin, made it popular in 1960 with Mustapha and
Fais-moi du Couscous, Chérie (Make me Couscous, Darling). The musician
who started his career in Italy in the late fifties really came to fame
in France thanks to these two songs. About twenty LPs were to follow,
not all as successful, maybe due to his sometime lack of mastery in
terms of quality and productivity. Léo Clarens the French-born Caliph of
Francophone oriental Cha-Cha-Cha is omnipresent in this compilation,
under his various stage names. Born Louis Tiramani Coulpier in Marseille
in 1923, the clarinetist formed his first orchestra at the start of the
Second World War. Stranded during part of the war in Algiers, he ended
up being promoted to conductor of the 2nd Armored Division! When Paris
was liberated, he went to the capital looking for work. There, he
recorded his first records (covers of American standards) for the
Philips label in the 1950s thanks to the famous Jacques Canetti, one of
the greatest French artistic directors of the 20th century. Apart from
his recordings under various pseudonyms (Kemal Rachid, the Kili-Cats),
the Marseille musician became a popular arranger, in particular for
Michel Sardou. He also assisted Paul Mauriat for many years. Later on
working with Laurent Voulzy and Jean Jacques Goldman in the seventies
and eighties.
Léo Clarens was not the only one to give in to oriental cha-cha-cha. A
number of musicians threw themselves to the task, most often with
mediocre results, but with a few nice surprises such as Benny Bennet or
Los Cangaceiros. Benny Bennett is an American musician of Venezuelan
origin who lives in France. He recorded many albums and 45 rpms mainly
for Vogue in the late fifties and early sixties. A jazz drummer, he
discovered Cuban music through his first wife Cathalina. From then on,
he recorded mambos, calypsos, boleros and cha-cha-cha including their
oriental variations with the excellent Couscous and Ismaëlia. Los
Cangaceiros were a Paris based band led by Yvan Morice. They released
four albums in the early sixties some of which were also published in
the United States, as well as a dozen 45 rpms. Under his real name, Yvan
Heldman became a prolific lyricist for films such as Le Vicomte Règle
Ses Comptes (1967). We can thank him for the classic Dick Rivers Le
Vicomte song. The omnipresence of percussion and drums on Oriental
Express gives us some indication of Roger Morris' favorite instrument:
the drums. However, literature and the internet are stingy with details
on his career. At most, one can find out that the musician published
half a dozen EPs, mainly for the Homère label, as well as two albums,
one typical of the early sixties (Surprise Party 2) and a second,
Library at L'Illustration Musicale. Raymond Lefèvre's career was much
better documented! Present on this compilation thanks to his
reinterpretation of the Lawrence of Arabia theme written by the great
Maurice Jarre (father of Jean Michel) in a Bolero style,he was a
soundtrack regular. Composing over 700 arrangements, he was especially
well known for his participation in Dalida’s Bambino and for the
Gendarme of St Tropez soundtrack.
On that note, it's time to sit back and relax in your lawn chair, smoke a
hookah (to keep the clichés going) and discover Loukoum - Cha Cha au
Harem!
Skin Graft / John Wiese - (2020) Accessible World
Troniks – TRO-302
Oh, holy heck! This is one ferocious beast of an album, a non-stop
convulsion of nine concise blammo noise attacks that’s exactly as fierce
as one might want/imagine a Marvel Team-Up of John Wiese and Wyatt
Howland/Skin Graft to be. Straight out of the gate from its opening
volley, this pummels… there’s so much constant motion and so many
simultaneous competing lines of noise that it demands deep attention to
keep up with the barrage of simultaneous explosions. A glass-shattering
cascade will fire in several directions with different shades of crunch,
stutter for half a second, then reconfigure and blast again with
machine-gun scatter, glassine feedback and synthesizer spraying new
colours/shapes. “Accessible World” attacks at top velocity for its short
duration… which is just long enough to cram in enough energy to fuel a
dozen lesser noise albums. On “Melpomene”, for example, the track’s five
minutes contain a whirl of competing elements that twist, implode, then
erupt over and over. A lesser album might have been expanded from this
piece alone, but Wiese favours brevity… his discography (both solo and
with his group Sissy Spacek) features a surprising number of one-sided
seven inches and half-hour-or-less CDs. I suppose he likes to get to the
point and leave ‘em breathlessly wanting more… which he does! So while
it shouldn’t be a surprise that these nine tracks last just over half an
hour, he packs plenty of information to warrant return visits, allowing
listeners to change focus and hear the ultra-dense and ultra-active
music differently. The quick inhalations between tracks are the only
pause that a listener gets, and they aren’t much respite… “Accessible
World” is restless noise, ceaseless high-density sound in perpetual
furiously-breathless motion, recorded at a level of clarity to
encourage/reward concentrated listening if that’s what you want to do
with it. Or, you can play “Accessible World” loud and not overthink it…
Thee Oh Sees - (2020) Metamorphosed
Rock Is Hell Records – RIP93
Set for an October 16 release via Rock Is Hell, the five-track
‘Metamorphosed’ is comprised of songs recorded during the sessions for
the Oh Sees’ 2019 album ‘Face Stabber’.
In a press release written by none other than Henry Rollins, Dwyer
discussed how ‘Metamorphosed’ came about, saying he found himself with a
record’s worth of material earlier this year.
“Things were starting to grind to a halt, so it was the perfect time to
sew it all up. People need some tunes right now and I think the artists
community is making a good run of it. So much great shit is seeing light
right now,” Dwyer commented.
“‘Metamorphosed’ would’ve been out sooner but with the virus
restrictions, shipping of LPs has obviously slowed down and so has
manufacturing, so here we are.”
The band changed their name from Oh Sees to Osees back in July with the announcement of ‘Protean Threat’.
Gnawed - (2020) Subterranean Rites
Malignant Records – TUMORCD125
Over the past decade, Grant Richardson has nurtured his solo undertaking
Gnawed into one of the leading forces of Midwest noise. Following
numerous cassettes and CD’s for labels like Phage Tapes, New Forces, and
his own Maniacal Hatred imprint, Richardson is welcomed into the
Cloister family via Subterranean Rites, his first full-length vinyl
release (with a CD version on the Malignant label) carefully constructed
over the past three years. His meticulously patient and disconcerting
approach to death industrial and power electronics evades blunt bombast
for a distinct dynamism that crawls ahead obscurely, a slow suffocation
by the stench of decay lining the sewers, tunnels, and concrete vaults
Richardson recorded on location as source material. While it may seem
trite to laud Subterranean Rites as the most thoroughly realized Gnawed
work thus far, Richardson’s breathing drones, sub-audible pulsations,
subconsciously esoteric vocals, and almost orchestral grim electronic
manipulations have been articulated with masterful confidence, a
chilling shot of disquiet for bleak times.
Hive Mind - (2020) Elysian Alarms
Difficult Interactions – DI-CD-1
"Surfacing from deep eddies of despair, brined in nearly a decade of
retrograde emotions, Hive Mind extends and surpasses 2011’s Elemental
Disgrace with a new vision of blurry, bleary atmospheres conjured
through post-dissolution electronics, giving the devoted what they
desire while still envisioning a new path forward.
In the album’s first half, the distress signals scrambled emergency
broadcast signals of “Wish Contact” thread seamlessly into the massive,
irreversible immolation of “Mars, Cloaked in Leather,” presenting a
condensed view of the earth in its final dissolution. Seen from
thousands of miles in the air, the last days resemble a field of
smoldering embers: metallic structures break apart and fall into the
sea, reverberating their last stunned gasps like submerged gongs. Wars
have been zero-sum; only loss, only obliteration, last soldiers laying
siege to ashes, fire burning fire, draped inelegantly with inky smoke
and toxic air. Explosives continue to detonate. Ceaseless obliteration
even after all loss of human life. Sound evoking the smell of
kerosene-soaked rags set ablaze, mortars repeating in the distance,
until suddenly a low, elegant roar, one that is unattributable to crude
human war machinery, emerges overhead. A vessel that could have been an
escape, a rebirth, but now only hovers, watching, bearing witness to
earth’s final dishonorable days. Poor and always compromised, never
proud. In disgust, the decision is made from above to evaporate all
traces. Sterilize the entire planet so that nothing (and especially NO
ONE) will ever rebuild again. Perhaps they could save a few as
specimens, but what could they possibly learn without being
contaminated? Enough. End it.
The second half of the program presents four short, stately, precise
environments evoked in sound, perhaps a view of four locations within
the witnessing vessel, locations in which other worlds, less lethal
worlds, can be heard and imagined. “The Roses in Bagatelle Garden” is a
chamber cooled with oscillating fans feathered in gold, lending a soft,
cooling drone under a new chant for new elders whose sacred icon is a
lock and its sacrament a bouquet of picks. “House Without a Key” scores a
stately processional to the court, every note and nuance trailing a
plume of fragrant lavender smoke. From a lower deck, a request is made
to “Come Alone.” A still pool stands in the middle of a massive
gymnasium; occasional drips reverberate off the walls, agitating swarms
of insects. From here, machinery from adjoining rooms can be heard
faintly, as if in translucent memory. “Pawns Put Back Together”
regresses us in a pool of psychedelic amniotic fluid, a ritual of
amnesia completed while far below, the world once known becomes another
cold, icy void in the universe.
Elysian Alarms contains many hidden surprises. It not only surpasses
recent releases like Beneath Triangle and Crescent and They Made Me the
Keeper of the Vineyards in density and textural variant, but the quartet
of shorter tracks present, over 75 releases in, a host of entirely new
possibilities, their synths and devices enveloping and protecting
smaller concrete sounds. At the same time, the blackened and greasy
opening track still rattles the innards and unsettles the spirit, just
as you want, just as you expect, just as this era of cascading
catastrophes demands. Be of good cheer, for the darkness only seems
eternal until the smoke subsides."
VA - (2004) Archives GRM 5xCD
INA-GRM – ina c 1030
This fabulous collection contains some of the foremost heroes of
electroacoustics from my artistic maturation process through the
decades, as well as some names I didn’t know before – and some I didn’t
expect to see in these circumstances!
GRM's first CD, 1984
I recall my amazement and pure listening joy when I received GRM’s first
CD – Concert Imaginaire – in 1984. That was also a collection of the
crème de la crème of electroacousticians, albeit on a smaller scale.
Here we have five CDs of material; some of it historical issues, some a
mere account of what’s been going on at the Paris studio since its
beginning until today; a magnificent release, with a submitted photo
booklet of highly interesting pictures from the decades of Groupe de
Recherches Musicales.
The official introductory text by INA Chairman Emmanuel Hoog explains this endeavor thus:
To mark and celebrate the thirty years of the INA, the GRM has chosen to
bring together an exceptional set of five compact discs, illustrating
some of its most remarkable musical archives.
These original works, which are often previously unpublished or have
been dispersed throughout a host of other publications, are important
because of the originality and audacity they testify to in the second
half of the 20th century.
Some listeners will be pleased to see that there are a number of
illustrious composers here who, in the 1950s, frequented the studio of
Pierre Schaeffer, and others will discover numerous musicians whose
enthusiasm enabled this innovative musical genre to last throughout the
following decades.
Each of the five CDs has information that makes it easy to study each
piece. On the back of each CD you find the contents neatly listed, and
inside the booklets you can read more details about the works.
Jean-Christophe Thomas has written a preface for this edition, which is
distinguished in its five parts: The Visitors of the Concrete Adventure;
The Art of Study; Sound in Numbers; The Time of Real Time and The GRM
Without Knowing It. Thomas opposes the desire of classification, which,
anyhow, would be tough in an area of sound art so wide and disparate as
the one we’re traveling through these CDs.
After the initial introduction, printed in all five booklets,
Jean-Christophe Thomas goes into each CD individually, giving an
overview of the category specified in the different issues, despite his
warnings about classification.
In addition to Thomas’ texts, each issue is equipped with further texts
on the material, by, for instance François Bayle (CD 1), Régis Renouard
Larivière (CD 2), Yann Geslin (CD 3), Daniel Teruggi (CD 4) and
Christian Zanési (CD 5).
All the CDs have their own colors, and the release is a feast for the
eye as well as for the ear – but perhaps, to the highest degree, for our
imagination.
The photo booklet contains 80 pages with 101 black and white photos of the utmost interest to the connoisseur of sound art.
All in all, this is a much needed and perfectly executed issue, necessary for anyone interested in contemporary art.
CD 1 is called Les visiteurs de la’aventure concrète; The Visitors of the Concrete Adventure.
Naturally, this means that the first CD harbors the truly historical
pieces, the etudes! Here are the artists that spent some time with
Pierre Schaffer in his studio in the 1950s; those truly experimental
times of fundamental research into sound, when Stockhausen and Eimert
cut and spliced tapes of machine generated audio in Cologne; a
Stockhausen that indeed himself had met with Schaeffer!
Pierre Boulez participates with Étude 1 and 2, from as early as 1951!
This was even before Rune Lindblad had his revelation of a new sound,
waking up, hung-over, in the park of Slottsskogen in Gothenburg, Sweden,
and, amazingly, one year before Stockhausen’s first concrete Etude,
which was executed in 1952.
Pierre Boulez’s Étude 1 bears all the features typical of its time, with
fragments of brute sounds cutting like shrapnel through the sound
space, though, of course, monaural. Your ear seems to equip the material
with spatial properties, however; perhaps from the impression of motion
that the frantic fluttering about of flaky sound objects with metallic
surfaces and sharp corners present, or perhaps just because of our later
stereophonic listening, which we have become so accustomed to.
Boulez’s First Étude stands up good to any comparisons to other works of
those days, and to what was to come in the years immediately ahead,
until Stockhausen swept the arena clean of competitors with Gesang der
Jünglinge and… Kontakte!
I have never heard these Boulez works before, and it is, for sure, an
adventure to hear the 28-year old Boulez in this electronic outpour!
Boulez’s very first Étude didn’t sound as much concrete as it sounded
electronic, in fact, though you might have been able to detect some
source sounds, like creaking doors and so forth – but Étude 2 bears
witness to a more obvious concretism. The sounds are clearer, more
rounded off, with distinct contours, and also a bit softer, arranged
like fruits in a bowl in a still life. I hear percussive sounds in
sequence with dripping and ticking sounds, followed by glissandi and
glassy intrusions, as well as speedily rotating objects. Étude 2 seems
to explore a more complicated and diverse sound world than did Étude 1 –
and development of the art of electronic and concrete music was rapid;
each step a step forward into new, pristine sonic worlds. It must have
been amazing for these sound artists during those first years!
To hear Darius Milhaud in this context is fantastic! I would never have
expected! His piece is La rivière endormie from 1954. He uses various
recordings of an instrumental ensemble, which he mixes, varying speed
etcetera, layer after layer, achieving a dreamy atmosphere of
reverberant beauty, in a electroacoustic Hörspiel manner that came into
fashion much later, even though it was practiced quite a bit in Germany
too, at the same time.
The duration also speaks of tape; a hefty eight-minute take!
Later in the piece voices speak in French, a chanson begins, probably
picked-up from a 78 rpm, and mixed in by Darius Milhaud. In a way you
could view Milhaud’s work here as development into the age of sound
manipulations of the old radio play.
Edgar Varèse participates on this CD 1 of the collection with an
astounding work called Déserts; interpolation 1, realized in 1954. It is
a work of immense and almost hilarious complexity, mixing the full and
partial orchestral sound with recorded sounds on tape; sounds of diving
planes, machine guns, unidentified brute and tingling sounds, sudden
spurs of rhythmic percussion in the orchestra drifting over into the
tapes and back; smoky sounds and railroad audio… with a distorted and
dispersed symphonic orchestra: a masterwork of three and a half minutes!
André Boucourechliev’s Texte 2 from 1959 introduces a wildly
stereophonic catharsis, with mimicry of falling rocks at right and the
rattling of steel rods at left, yourself lost in a bewildering middle,
especially if you’re in earphones!
The sound world is incredibly rich, with wheezing and dripping sounds
thrown into the falling of pebbles and rocks in dark atmospheres of
venomous gases of prehistory… Brilliant!
This was achieved solely from utilizing two tape recorders running
simultaneously, with separate, set starting points, which could be
changed to make instant, new works!
Boucourechliev’s Texte 2 is sheer joy and pleasure for the sound
connoisseur; an intellectual game of sounds that will drive you nuts,
and beyond!
Claude Ballif’s Points-Mouvements from 1962 introduces a music that
became viable much later, in the 1980s, with an interplay of startling
bands of overtones from tiny, high-pitch percussive instruments, whose
drifting afterglow lingers in the atmosphere like gold dust. The
tinkling attacks shine like reflections on Impressionist water surfaces,
while the timbres stretch and linger like drifting dust in a quarry.
Half way through the piece the purity of overtone timbres transforms
into gray and black sounds from hoarse and brute layers of
consciousness, from lower chakras of clay and soil and rock-bottom, from
the classrooms of Bleistift and caoutchouc elementary schools of the
1950s.
To hear Olivier Messiaen on a CD dedicated to musique concrète is
nothing short of a wonder. It’s not just any short etude, either, but a
fifteen minutes long piece, called Timbres Durées, recorded in 1952!
This is incredible, and alone justifies the purchase of the whole box!
Admittedly, Messiaen composed for the Ondes Martenot – but this early
concretism is something that cannot even be compared to that. It’s
sheer, downright acousmatic music, wild and raw and rough as anything
anybody else did later, like Gottfried Michael Koenig or Henri Pousseur,
for example. I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if
Messiaen had stayed with this new means of composition as devotedly as
Stockhausen did; what a thought!
Olivier Messiaen had been invited to Pierre Schaeffer’s studio, and
without that invitation this magic work probably would never have
reached us. It took 53 years for it to reach my ears!
Messiaen had a strange request when he agreed to do something in the
studio. He wanted sound samples that contained as little sound as
possible! Yet the finished piece is a kind of frantic rock n’ roll
electronic music! Messiaen chose Pierre Henry for his assistant, and
picked out a dozen or so sounds to work with for his composition.
Messiaen was just 44 years old at this time, in the prime of his
professional deed. To the chosen sounds (water drop, spray, mist,
tom-tom etcetera) he applied simple transformations (inversion,
reverberation and so forth), constructing his one concrète composition.
The booklet text says it well:
Listening to this maze of turns, twists and returns, a quite
unbelievable anamorphosis effect arises, durations are transformed by
tone, strange duration colors shimmer as if refracted through matter, a
veritable stained glass window and meditative mantra effect […]
Pierre Schaeffer talked about Messiaen and the other main figures to work in the studio:
I have always admired when composers arriving from afar feel comfortable
in our studio and immediately leave such a definite personal mark on
it. So, with Timbres-Durées, Messiaen developed his ideology,
Stockhausen quibbled over remakes, Varèse hitched up the Far-West
tractor to the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées, Xenakis gleaned the sound
of sparks from fire; each with his sign of water or fire, his space,
desert or garden, his heaven or hell, for Orpheus himself passed through
both.
The piece by Messiaen is a boiling stew of sonic ingredients; crescendi
suddenly cut right off, rippling, watery formations, rumbling, tumbling
occurrences, sweeping, soaring extensions, recognizable percussive
sounds, resounding underworlds of sewage and dark, rat-ridden tunnels –
as well as flocks of meteorites rushing past alien planets; there’s no
end to the fantasies that may arise out of Messiaen’s concrete music!
1952!
Pierre Schaeffer said, in 1968, twenty years after he broke the news of
musique concrète to the world through the French radio’s Concert de
Bruits in June 1948:
We learned to associate the lute with the Middle Ages, plain-song with
the monastery, the tom-tom with wild and primitive man, the viola da
gamba with courtly dress. How can we really not expect to also find that
music in the 20th century relates to machines and the masses, the
electron and calculators […]. The unbridled release of noises, the surge
of sounds, all utterly opposed to terms customarily used to describe
music – harmony and counterpoint, mellowness and subtlety, expression
and feeling -, was actually the music of the period, brutal and
disturbed in nature, born in the period of the atom and missiles, power
and speed, all unleashed elements.
CD 2 is entitled L’art de l’étude. Of course the étude was a preferred
form for the new experimentalists of electronic/concrete music from the
very beginning – and from that very very beginning this CD starts, with
Pierre Schaeffer’s famous Étude pathétique from… 1948! Schaeffer pried
into new worlds with his five études of concrete music in 1948, changing
our world of sounds forever, as it were. It must have been incredibly
impressive and unfathomable in those days; something outrageous – and
yet Schaeffer could play the stuff on radio. Here’s to the French!
They’re poets and romantics, and then this can happen!
Let’s hear how Schaeffer describes in his Journal how he got Étude pathétique down in 1948:
I was sent on an assignment to Washington […]. The day before departure I
simply had to have a final studio session […]. There are always old
abandoned records lying about in the studio. The one I happened to find
was a recording of the wonderfully enticing voice of Sacha Guitry […]. I
took hold of it, and using another turntable, played over a very
peaceful rhythm evoking the surging movement of an impressive barge, and
then, on two turntables, put on anything I chanced upon; an American
accordion or harmonica recording and some Balinese music. Then came the
exercise in virtuosity using four potentiometers and ignition keys […].
Étude No 5, known as the composition “aux casseroles”, arose in just a
few minutes; in the time needed to record it. The barge from the canals
of France, the American harmonica, the Balinese priests all miraculously
began to respond and heed the gods of the turntable; a remarkable
ensemble.
Thus, this remarkable piece emerged from Schaeffer’s delicate handling
of the sounding moment, as it arose – and not from a conscious and
premeditated constructive planning. Rather he let intuition and
sensitive ears/fingers steer the process.
There is a sense of wonder and magic in hearing this inauguration work
over the earphones I use when writing this, at the Macintosh. A gap in
time is bridged, but I see/hear this Etude also as a well from which the
fluid has not ceased to gush, coloring the whole globe with a film of
audio that had its real beginning in that moment, in that new way of
thinking that made Schaeffer achieve the works that altered our hearing.
A number of early electronic/concrete etudes are displayed on disc 2 in
this brilliant series of five CDs, but time and work load allows me to
just touch lightly upon the content, dipping into a choice few of the
many works.
After the initial Schaeffer work I go to track 6, Luc Ferrari’s Étude
aux sons tendus from 1958. Liner notes from the time of release describe
“rhythmic structures sometimes curling up into sorts of sound knots,
sometimes opening up”. As the booklet text says, this description does
not give justice to the fluidity of the sound, as woven by Ferrari.
What you hear, initially, are beads of gray pebbles, coming across like
colorless, curved pieces of matter, microscope pictures of bacteria –
and sounding somewhat like a thumb playing a plastic comb… Other sounds
are inserted, at times rudely and provocative, in characteristically
cut-up proportions – but you also hear crescendi and loud whistles, and
the apparent whining of circular saws. This piece seems to apply the
methods of the early 1950s in the late 1950s without much development of
sound material, but with a higher degree of artistry. Luc Ferrari was
to emerge as one of the most exciting sound artists of the 1960s and
1970s, so this short piece may perhaps serve as a foretaste of what was
still to come, like the Presque rien pieces, for example.
Ivo Malec’s Reflets from 1961 was issued on INA GRM’s first CD Concert
Imaginaire in 1984, and it deserves its inclusion here too, as it
presents a spatial and spacey sound that wouldn’t become very common
until the 1980s, really, to any higher degree. Malec’s piece has an
inherent poetic beauty and an inward, Southern France garden mysticism,
later amplified by composers like Jean-Claude Risset and François Bayle.
The fluidity of sound is outstanding, especially when you consider the
early time in which it was achieved. I recall my initial amazement at
hearing this for the first time from that CD in 1984, and I can still
feel the thrill of discovery when I re-listen today.
Philippe Carson’s Phonologie from 1962 at first make me think of
Stockhausen’s Stimmung, which, however, was composed in 1968… It was
performed at Stockholm New Music in February 2005, and will be performed
twice at the Stockhausen Courses in the summer of 2005.
Anyone who has heard Stimmung will understand what I’m getting at.
Carson uses an array of voices, all in a spiraling, khoomei kind of way,
sounding like, or almost like, Tuvinian or Mongolian throat singing,
without, however, most of the overtone spectra.
What we hear are solely extended and modulated vocals, at higher or
lower pitches, achieving… yes, that particular Stimmung feeling, or that
bardo state sensation of Tibetan monks humming!
All the voices here are in fact one voice; that of Xavier Depraz,
diffused in a layering that also, in a shadowy way, resembles some kind
of chamber ensemble; an ensemble of vocal cords in some ritual,
para-religious or magic ceremony…
Luc Ferrari - (2017) Hétérozygote / Petite Symphonie
Editions Mego – REGRM 017
Alternately abstract, immersive and poetically lush concrète tapestries
from the archive of master craftsman, Luc Ferrari. Realised at the GRM
between early ‘60s and mid ‘70s.
“Composed between December 1963 and March 1964
In the field of biology Heterozygous (Hétérozygote) means: a plant whose
heredity is mixed. It implies that this composition is an attempt to
engineer a language located both on the musical and on the dramatic
plane. You could call this music “Anecdotal Music” for if the
organisation of events is purely musical, their choice suggests
situations justified at two levels: the music and the anecdote. However,
the anecdote is hardly formulated and is open to plural
interpretations. The listener is then asked to imagine their own story
by rejecting – if necessary – the one suggested by the author.
More specifically, the author suggests an anecdotal complex, potentially
bearing several meanings. The work preceded by an opening is made of
eight scenes, separated (or not) by interludes. And if we wished to push
the paradox further, we could say that the titles of the scenes are
optional and the interludes are also scenes, etc.
Petite symphonie intuitive pour un paysage de printemps (1973–1974), 25’09
“This electroacoustic music is part of a series that could be called
“imaginary soundscape”. Unlike ‘Presque rien ou le lever du jour au bord
de la mer (almost nothing or daybreak by the seaside)’, where the
landscape narrates itself, here a traveller discovers a landscape which
he tries to convey as a musical landscape. Brunhild and I were in the
Gorges du Tarn area. We chose to take a small path that was going up a
rocky mountain for about ten kilometres.
After a last turn, a totally unexpected landscape opened before my eyes.
It was sunset. Before us, a vast plateau spread open with soft curves
up to the horizon, up to the sun. The colours ranged from dry grass
yellow to purple, in the distance, with the darkness of a few small
groves punctuating the space. The almost bare nature was presenting
itself to the eye, free from any obstacle. We could see everything.
Later, when I Photo © Laszlo Ruszka, 1963 recollected this place and the
sensations I had experienced there, I tried to compose a music that
could revive this memory. The "Causse Méjean" is a high plateau, about
1000 m high, in the Massif Central mountain range. It is dotted by
scattered farms. A few people bring their flocks of sheep home. I
thought about evoking this solitary and hazy human presence by including
snippets of conversations I had had with some of the shepherds. Human
language is woven into the musical texture; the sound of the voice says
more than its actually meaning. Once, a shepherd told me “... I am never
bored. I listen to the landscape. Sometimes I play my flute and then I
listen to the echo responding...” Thinking of him, I used the flute and
its echo in my music.” Luc Ferrari. October 18, 2002”
Mein GlasFabrik - (2020) Exotic Percussion / Death TV 2xLP
Vinyl-on-demand – VOD163
In the heart of Sheffield's electronic / industrial music scene of 1979,
Peter Bargh and Mark Holmes created the experimental project Mein Glas
Fabrik.
"This VOD release is a combination of their two cassette albums,
recorded on simple equipment using tape loops, home made synths,
samples, random radio frequencies and a legendary Shergold guitar. Death
TV was favourably reviewed in local fanzine "Tigers on the Moor",
Exotic Percussion followed soon after. While influenced by a wide
spectrum of musical genres, Mein Glas Fabrik created a fusion of sounds,
not adhering to any specific genre...expect the unexpected!"
Seth Bogart - (2020) Men on the Verge of Nothing
Wacky Wacko – none
Los Angeles-based musician, artist and DIY / queer icon Seth Bogart releases Men On The Verge Of Nothing via new label Wacky Wacko Recordings. It is a return to form for the artist with DIY-roots, entirely written and produced by Bogart himself with the exception of the reimagined cover of the X-Ray Spex’s track Oh Bondage Up Yours! which features contributions from Kathleen Hanna and Kate Nash. MotVoN features additional playing from Roxanne Clifford (Patience / Veronica Falls), Tobi Vail (Bikini Kill / Frumpies) and Alana Amram (Hunx and His Punx / Habibi).
Mort Garson - (2019) Mother Earth's Plantasia
Sacred Bones Records – SBR-3030
Mother Earth's Plantasia is an electronic album by Mort Garson first
released in 1976. The music on it was composed specifically for plants
to listen to. The album had a very limited distribution upon release,
only being available to people who bought a houseplant from a store
called Mother Earth in Los Angeles or those who purchased a Simmons
mattress from a Sears outlet, both of which came with the record. As a
result, the album failed to attain widespread popularity around the time
of its release. However, it has since gained a cult following as an
early work of electronic music. Garson used a Moog synthesizer to
compose the album.
June Of 44 - (2020) Engine Takes To Water CD
Quarterstick Records – QS32CD
June of 44 play the same Midwest-based dark indie rock as Slint and Rodan, using complex arrangements and skewed rhythms to complement their great melodies. "June Miller" and "Have a Safe Trip, Dear" are the highlights.
The Spits - (2020) VI LP
Thriftstore Records – 2020
Ripping through a portal from the basements of Kalamazoo, Michigan, the
release of The Spits VI has arrived. This full length, self-recorded
album from Thriftstore Records ranges from the weird to the wild. Buzz
saw guitars and catchy hooks are mixed with low budget horror effects to
create a unique view of a dystopian world. With songs of terror,
despair, hope and heartbreak, this one has something for the whole
nuclear family!
Nothing - (2020) The Great Dismal CD
Relapse Records – RR7461
The Great Dismal, NOTHING’s new full-length album explores existentialist themes of isolation, extinction, and human behavior in the face of 2020’s vast wasteland.
Closing in on the band’s ten-year mark, frontman Domenic Palermo finds himself stringing together songs of misanthropic tales of Philadelphia with a refined and refreshed take on NOTHING's classic sound.
“The Great Dismal refers to a swamp, a brilliant natural trap where survival is custom fit to its inhabitants,” Palermo states. “The nature of its beautiful, but taxing environment and harsh conditions can’t ever really be shaken or forgotten too easily.”
The ever progressive NOTHING keep true to their chaotic outlook on life, keeping a keen eye to avoid repetition. With a radical cast of talented contributors such as harpist Mary Lattimore, classical musician Shelley Weiss, and singer/songwriter/producer Alex G., The Great Dismal showcases yet another essential side of the band’s trademark American Post-Shoegaze.
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.
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
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’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."
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