ARCHIVES 2001-2008, L-P

DIANE LABROSSE – Musique pour objets en voie de disparition (Ambiances Magnétiques)

In the late 80s/early 90s Ambiances Magnétiques was among my darling labels but, inexplicably, with the passage of time I kind of lost contact and became less aware of their production. My loss, as this CD from 2007 is indeed a clever-sounding artifact needing to be rescued from a dimension of implicit oblivion. Diane Labrosse has always been a bright-minded artist, collaborations with the likes of Jean Derome, Michel F. Côté, Geneviève Letarte and Joanne Hétu just a small fraction of a career expanding through the whole gamut of avant-garde. As the record title explains, the tracks were constructed around the utilization of “objects on the verge of extinction”, such as alarm clocks, black and white TV sets, old printers and electric percolators. Labrosse, who’s gifted with a wholehearted compositional wisdom allowing her to understand what’s the ideal balance of the ingredients in a piece, utilized the “voices” of the machines in relatively comprehensible contexts, typically featuring a maximum of one or two instruments. She was helped by Marie-Soleil Bélanger, Jean Derome, Bernard Falaise, Lori Freedman, Jean René and Pierre Tanguay, stalwarts of the Quebecoise scene who contributed with efficient proposals and untarnished inventiveness to Labrosse’s conceptions. This is a delightful assortment of physical antiquity and instrumental individuality that leaves plentiful spaces for the intellect to take action, moments of charged standstill to be found amidst systematic reiteration and mechanical interplay. Above all, the sense of joyful mischievousness characterizing the album causes us to realize why there’s no need of disproportionate solemnity to conceive stimulating music.

ERIC LA CASA – Secousses panoramiques (Hibari)

Dedicated to Japanese sound artist Akio Suzuki, this 3-inch CD collages about 20 minutes of recordings of different elevator noises that Eric la Casa made in France, Belgium and Australia. It’s one of those simple yet effective ideas that transforms what we hear every day into an art work, and Eric was great in his choice of sound successions that are truly akin to a proper composition, with whirring hums, snapping ropes, computerized voices and slamming doors encapsulating our persona in a sub-human womb where solitude, muzak and the subway train’s roar become the glacial companions of a few instants of inexplicable fear. Reading the technical data on the plate within the cabinet won’t help.

ERIC LA CASA – Air.ratio (Sirr)

As his installations have repeatedly demonstrated, Eric La Casa has a keen ear for those phenomena of regular (or less) occurrences whose musical character can be conveniently exploited from an artistic point of view. Such is the case of “the flow of air in modern architecture”, of which this album presents thirty examples, each one two minutes long, that range from soft to quite hard and were recorded by La Casa – “with or without authorization” – in restaurants, hospitals, libraries or even illustrious toilets (Radio France, the Georges Pompidou Art Center). Some of these currents sound like a gentle wind resonating in a tube, bringing out the disguised harmony in an invisible breathing organism; but as the record goes on, there is a distinct intensity growth of the air volume, in every sense. This translates into some of the tracks becoming a sort of industrial chorale, with extraneous clicking and creaky sounds adding spice to the pressure on the auricular membranes: imaginary moans take place in our mind during a progressive alienation from the surrounding world, made easier by the consecutiveness of the thirty samples which bring the duration of the disc to over 63 minutes of non-idiomatic droning. A pulmonary system that works wonders from the speakers (maybe you can add your own ventilation; the inventor also suggests a random playback or even more copies of the CD listened at the same moment to increase the variety). Given that “La Casa” means “The House” in Latin language, this feels like a necessary exploration for the inquisitive French artist.

DAVID LACEY / PAUL VOGEL – The British Isles (Homefront)

Still resisting to the assaults of the “reductionism is dead” factions, Lacey and Vogel defend themselves with ease: firstly, because “The British Isles” might appear as a reductionist work on a first listen, and it’s not; and secondly, their music is so marvellously encrusted in the griminess of threadbare timbres that one looks for the densities of an orchestrated effort even in its extensive moments of stillness (which, in this situation, mainly correspond to the stretched out frequencies characterizing the initial part of “Soft houses”, an authentic flash of revelation: certain sounds really go and strike the exact nerves that disclose the secreted memories of an earlier period that we didn’t know of having lived). Another thing that I truly love is when sound artists decide to introduce substance for the mind’s eye by not spelling out the instrumentation. Of course, you realize that a saxophone is in there, somewhere. Right, that screeching to and fro is indubitably a (insert object here). And these guys’ drones – there are some, yes – sound like they’ve undergone an immersion in corrosive liquids; they don’t caress, they bite. These four tracks enclose the crucial principles of what has made this kind of expression the preferred option for many improvisers in the last decade. Lacey and Vogel demonstrate themselves to be familiar with history, but also that they’re more “composers in the soul” in regard to different field comrades, this record appearing as a somehow predetermined construction as opposed to a truly freedom-fuelled encounter. Either way, a required addition to your assortment of poverty-stricken beauties that do not necessarily like silence.

STEVE LACY / ROSWELL RUDD QUARTET – Early and late (Cuneiform)

It’s difficult to imagine musicians who started playing the Dixieland circuit in the 50s, tackled the repertoires of Thelonious Monk, Cecil Taylor, Duke Ellington, Kurt Weill among many others, collaborated with the radical fringes of modern improvisation, being featured on a Cuneiform release in 2007. On the other hand, this double CD demonstrates that anything is possible when two masters of their respective instruments function as a single body, all the while redefining technical boundaries and amplitude of significance through their artistic soul’s extensions, not without repeated pinches of irony (listen to the frequent references to popular melodies, also during the most gawky particles of the solos). That’s exactly what transpires from listening to “Early and late”, a splendid collection whose temporal range spans from 1962 to 2002. The first CD contains six tracks from 1999 (captured in Amsterdam and Tucson), where Lacy’s soprano sax and Rudd’s trombone are counterbalanced by the truly brilliant bassist Jean-Jacques Avenel and sustained by John Betsch’s knowledgeable drumming. The music is bright, effervescent, thematically digestible despite its knife-edge suspension between consonance and absence of reference points, exalting both leaders’ familiarity with a complex world of unusual templates and unlikely patterns, an elaborate geometry where forms and figures coincide from different observation angles. Lacy and Rudd extract the quintessence of unadulterated jazz in every move they make, this distillation process yielding an intense scent of forward-looking dialectical advancement in which the players find comfortable shelter. The second disc comprises live takes of Rudd’s “Bamako” and Herbie Nichols’ “Twelve bars” (New York, 2002) plus Lacy’s “Bone” (the latter a gorgeous, energizing version, again off the Amsterdam reels), but the real treasures here are the four archival demos of the 1962 quartet, with Bob Cunningham on bass and Dennis Charles on drums. This is genuinely astounding material, the only evidence of this ensemble except the “School Days” album from 1975 (originally on Emanem, reissued by Hatology in 2002). Monk and Taylor’s covers are executed with such a fervid concentration and care for the slightest hue that these tapes sound like they were made last week rather than being 45 years old. If one thinks about the nonentities who sign Blue Note contracts nowadays, then listens to these beauties, the desperation for the irrecoverable quality loss we’ve been experiencing lately in these lands becomes even more pungent. Translation: five stars and an affectionate heavy pat on Jason Weiss (research and release coordinator) and Steven Feigenbaum’s shoulders for giving us the chance to strengthen our musical culture by making unheard recordings at this level of historical relevance available.

MÁRIO LAGINHA TRIO – Espaço (Clean Feed)

Always a pleasure having the opportunity of quietly enjoying a piano trio such as this, which includes Laginha on the main instrument, Bernardo Moreira on double bass and Alexander Frazão on drums. Portuguese jazz is steadily increasing both on technical and creative level, but what’s all the more surprising is the growing number of “inner mechanisms” that these musicians are able to set in motion with their playing, so that listening to an album like “Espaço” becomes almost a reward after digesting hours upon hours of ungrateful dissonance. The title alone suggests that the concept behind the record is the juxtaposition of sound and architecture, justified both because Laginha was inspired by “the idea of regular and irregular structures, continuous and discontinuous lines, plane or distorted surfaces, space and absence of space transferred to the sound world” and by the commissioner (the Lisbon Architecture Triennale 2007). Despite a few soft contrasts, Laginha’s vision is extremely accessible, his only “difficulty” – so to speak – the classically influenced harmonic progressions that illuminate a track such as the beautiful “Tanto espaço”, which might even remind of Bach, or Rainer Brüninghaus for that matter. Still, when Moreira’s corpulent lines and Frazão’s elegant drumming join the leader in the most animated pieces, what we get is a brand of clear-minded interplay that brings us back to the best of the early productions of (ahem) Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays. And when I refer to THAT period’s output by those sold-outs, it’s meant as a big compliment.

LA GRIETA – Hermana hostia (w.m.o/r)

So you wanna be a rock’n'roll star? First of all you should learn some sincerity, use your best irony and deliver yourself from any useless post-production gimmick. After this, you’re only halfway through the brutal in-your-face honesty of “Hermana hostia”, a project by Mattin and Inigo Eguillor that sounds punkier than punk itself, a raw collection of totally lo-fi songs, most of which sound like intelligent variations on Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray”; the only instrumental (the 15-minute title track) is a no-nonsense calvary of aesthetical conventions moved by disjointed drumming and feedback-driven hypnosis which will have your nerves reeling at the end. Apropos of irony, lyrics like “Tu cerebro se desnuda en busca de viagra” and titles such as “Vivo en un frigorifico” are enough to love this release; but my overall favourite remains “Porvenir desierto”, a post-atomic radiation slow swing with demented modified vocals going from a drunkard’s rant to alien chipmunks which makes me laugh heartily every time I play it. Mattin confirms once and for all his unpredictable attitude, an example of absolute “I-do-what-I-want” purity that should be followed.

RICHARD LAINHART – White night (Ex Ovo)

A calm, meditative mantra of about 29 minutes for Moog synthesizer that was composed in 1974 and rediscovered only in recent years, “White night” takes its title from the snow storm characterizing the moment in which the composer was completing the final mix of the piece, an edited and remixed version of the same already heard and appreciated on the Ex Ovo compilation “I, mute hummings” a while back. The root tones of the single chord informing the track were processed by separate sine wave oscillators, in turn regulated by different sequencers; the static harmony is indeed moved “inside” by wavering morphing caresses. Despite the fact that this music is somehow lauded as a predecessor of Brian Eno’s “Discreet music” on the press release, the most evident term of comparison is probably Charlemagne Palestine’s work with electronics in “Four manifestations on six elements”, although Lainhart’s composition lacks a tad of neural intensity compared to that milestone. This doesn’t imply a lesser consideration of the record, which remains as pleasing and mind-depurating as any in the genre, confirming what good the man had shown in albums like “Ten thousand shades of blue” on XI. A typical case of “infinite repeat” at moderate volume, to let that lone chord resonate in all its richness of beautiful chromatic hues. More than ambient, less than experimental, very charming throughout.

ROSS LAMBERT / SEYMOUR WRIGHT – Lucky rabbit (TwoThousandAnd)

If “Lucky rabbit” is an indicator of the current state of improvisation, we’re in for pretty interesting developments. When sources get almost indiscernible the listener’s imagination does the rest, being forced to draw some lines between process and result; such an attitude can substantially change a judgement in a recording like this one, depending on personal taste or incidental happenings. Lambert seldom emits “regular guitar notes”, instead privileging undetected noises and small sounds that reverse the logic of his instrument; Wright explores the subtle leakages of air and purrs, leaning towards chirping/kissing, toungue-splitting outbursts with a little exacerbation for good measure, never assaulting a basic tranquillity. On three segments Utah Kawasaki, Tetsuro Yasunaga and Ami Yoshida add computer and vocals to the already semi-ebullient setting. This is an interesting excavation of hidden sound fossils just waiting to be rescued from silence and also a satisfying listening for the almost whole duration.

LAMBS GAMBLE – Memory collapse (Evolving Ear)

Fritz Welch is part of Psi (or “Peeesseye”), one of the most idiosyncratic improvising groups on the American scene; George Cremaschi has played with a lot of big names such as Evan Parker, Fred Frith and Nels Cline. Nothing of the above will prepare you to “Memory collapse”, which is a collection of miniature oddities for percussion, objects and double bass that rips several pages from the comic book of free music while also massaging the skull with some eerie drone-based acousti/cution, fascinating like menacing your neighbour’s children with a Swiss knife only to give it to them as a present after you scared them to death. Repetitive-but-not-too-much clangorous procedures and the fairly splintered interplay between Welch and Cremaschi contribute to establish a fractured, involving narrative that stands behind an intransigent ideology made of extravagant adornments and endless convulsion. A plausible choice for two musicians who accept no boundaries as far as ramshackle aesthetics is concerned.

ADAM LANE’S FULL THROTTLE ORCHESTRA – New magical kingdom (Clean Feed)

An objective review needs persistence like a small plant needs water. During my first tries I was listening to this album in the wrong way, trying to isolate concepts and determine non-existing links, following single instrumental voices without a clue. Then, in an idle grey summer afternoon, I found the key: “New magical kingdom” must be enjoyed as a collective sardonic smile against the fake coolness typical of most modern jazz ensembles. Take, for instance, “Without being”: it’s a poignant tune whose theme could very well become a classic, but it’s also characterized by sulphuric guitar distortion unbalancing the whole, until this loss of lyricism becomes the piece’s best asset. Right after, “Avenue X” swings like one could never expect from such forward-thinking musicians. All over the record, minimal insinuations are used as a source for inquisitive contrapuntal improvisations that never leave the listener without a return ticket. “Objects” is an exercise in dissonant discipline amidst utter silence. Reductive blues, free-form sax grunts and peek-a-boo comping are contained in the few minutes of “The genius of El Segundo”, while “Serenity” sounds like Terje Rypdal becoming the newest member of Chris Mc Gregor’s Brotherhood of Breath. I’ll let yourself discover the final track. The Full Throttles are: Vijay Anderson (drums), Aaron Bennett, Jeff Chan and Lynn Johnston (saxophones) John Finkbeiner (guitar), Darren Johnston (trumpet), Adam Lane (bass). Exquisite.

ADAM LANE QUARTET – Buffalo (Cadence Jazz)

The music contained here was captured live at Buffalo’s Soundlab, the final act in a series of recording sessions that occurred on February 24 and 25, 2005 and which produced a total of three releases. The trio of Adam Lane (bass), Vinny Golia (tenor and soprano sax) and Vijay Anderson (drums) was augmented for this concert by trumpeter Paul Smoker, whose whole-hearted phrasing constitutes one of the album’s best assets, mixing with Golia’s tension-and-release style in impeccable fashion, the couple leaving no room for doubts during several toe-to-toe exchanges that enlighten players and listeners alike. Lane and Anderson are certainly not lacking in energy, the bassist with his perennial chip-on-the-shoulder riffage always ready to follow a Coltrane-ish inspiration or an absorbingly meditative solo. Anderson is a complete drummer, swinging for the fences when necessary but also able to really penetrate the essence of a deep listening ability that not all percussionists possess. “Free” begins with Golia on wooden flute, beautifully evoking spirits of native Indian ancestry before the group takes off for another rewarding improvisation. Indeed the constant alternance between conscious thematic flights and burning exhalations of liberated expression is the most notable character of this CD, which shows a quality of jazz that’s definitely near the top of the class as far as positive vibes and respect of good intentions are concerned, a fine balance of primitive influence and invigorating polyvalence.

ADAM LANE / KEN VANDERMARK / MAGNUS BROO / PAAL NILSSEN-LOVE – 4 Corners (Clean Feed)

I don’t remember ever hearing a double bassist playing a heavy metal-ish riff while plugged into a distortion pedal, but that’s the exact kind of welcome that I received with “Alfama (for Georges Braque)”, the furious opening track of this album. In “Tomorrow now (for Lester Bowie)”, he overdrives the arco, too. The Four Corners are occupied by Adam Lane (yes, THAT double bassist), Ken Vandermark (baritone sax, clarinet, bass clarinet), Magnus Broo (trumpet) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums). This must be one of the punkest jazz records of the decade, if memory serves; intoxicating grooves are abundant, the solos are indeed incendiary, alimented by equal doses of technical expertise and rage. What Vandermark plays in “Spin with the EARth” or at the beginning of “Lucia” is definable as uncolonized virtuosism, his lines creating instant angles and rapacious shrieks that animate incredibly energetical vortexes. A great surprise comes from Broo, until yesterday an unknown musician for this eternally ignorant writer, whose playing is at one and the same time propelled by the general excitement and supportive of an incoercible fantasy, which allows him to jump from the wagons of tonalities to find himself covered with the cactus spikes of multiple dissonant convergences. Nilssen-Love (“a drummer who seems to have four arms and four legs”) is captured in all his octopusness despite the quality of the live recording, his convulsive metres and muscular rumbles exalting the torrential shouting of his companions. Apart from Frankenstein-like “harmolodic-cum-funky” bass designs, Lane confirms himself a fine crafter of heavy-duty low register melodies, furnishing the quartet with a steady drive that projects them towards the high spheres of contemporary jazz. Still, the monster octave walk that moves “Ashcan Rantings” is not exactly what I call blasé, but it rocks like a dinosaur plucking a Fender Precision, or a five-meter-tall Jack Bruce. If you crawl to that piece’s conclusion, look for your hair to turn orange and blue.

ADAM LANE / LOU GRASSI / MARK WHITECAGE – Drunk butterfly (Clean Feed)

These musicians are unmuzzled dogs who refuse biting despite the repeated chances they’re given to. That means that there’s mental discipline at work here, in spite of the fact that absolute freedom is at the basis of many sections. It all translates into gratifying jazz, a record that you’ll be able to play three or four consecutive times without feeling the urge of spinning Ted Nugent after ten minutes. Listening to Lane’s arco in “Chichi rides the tiger” could have someone believing that the bassist is painting and playing at one and the same time, wailing harmonics and fleshy plucking defining the innumerable influences – life events included, probably – that define a distinctive style. The gratification generated by the brilliant excursions for alto sax and clarinet Whitecage gifts us with goes in parallel with a never ending quest for offering accurate finesse even in spots where one would expect rough manners; the guy is a class act, and it shows. Grassi’s drumming is as rambunctious as highbred, sustaining the interplay with tasteful morsels of cocksure swing and scattered rolls in an ideal setting for the diversification of a trio’s intentions. Speaking of which, I was wondering if “Sanctum” is a variation on the theme of Frank Zappa’s “King Kong”: the initial notes are matching – in a different metre – and the tune’s key too.

STEVE LANTNER TRIO – What you can throw (HatOLOGY)

“What you can throw” is the third release by the Steve Lantner Trio, the second consecutive with the same lineup – the leader on piano, Joe Morris on double bass, Luther Gray on drums. It is a top-rank jazz album, built upon five compositions (two by the principal, one by Morris plus renditions of Anthony Braxton and Ornette Coleman’s tunes). What immediately transpires is the clearness of the participants’ playing, their articulated phraseology maintaining openings on the whole lot of contrapuntal perspectives. Lantner’s fluid mobility is expressed through a style which mixes influences as diverse as Albert Ayler and Meade Lux Lewis, although he declares to have deeply analyzed Scarlatti and Schubert’s dances to enhance his ability of simultaneous independence of the hands. Able to flick the (Cecil) Taylor-esque switch whenever necessary, the pianist’s fingers are almost visible during oblique eruptions and more linear expositions. Needless to say, the basic concepts leave room for soloist interventions: in “All around” Morris introduces a forthrightly discursive elaboration of instant bass movement, totally deprived of formulas, elegantly accurate in the choice of intervallic shapes. I am still undecided about which Morris – the bassist or the guitarist – is better (not an easy task indeed) but one thing is for sure: he plays freely yet seems to think deeply while doing it, in a mixture of fractured autonomy and soberness which only refined ears can truly appreciate. Gray epitomizes the “generative drummer” archetype, owner of an impressive ubiquity which allows him to implant swinging certainties in the most anarchic segments and, at the same time, deliver the music from the segregation that rhythmic constrictions often cause. Coleman’s “Broken shadows”, ending the disc with a nocturnal mix of rarefied harmonic irresolution by Lantner corroborated by mumbling pensive interplay from his partners, is the best signature we could ever hope for.

ELODIE LAUTEN – The death of Don Juan (Unseen Worlds)

The welcome reissue of a long unavailable LP dating from 1985, “The death of Don Juan” is an unusual opera in two acts that still captivates, despite the use of a by now prehistoric sampling instrument such as the Fairlight – plentifully featured in recordings by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush in the 80s – and post-minimalist choices that, without Lauten’s genial work of concurrence, would sound rather out of time. The libretto is developed via a “nonlinear storyline” where an archetypical Don Juan looks at a death that resembles a woman, several concealed implications attributing additional significance to an otherwise pretty straightforward succession of scenes. Three levels of instrumental activity are present: the sampled orchestral segments (either fast plucked strings or slow woodwind patterns), the half-improvised instrumental parts and the multiple-language vocal involvement by Lauten herself and soprano Randy Larowitz. The “free” inserts comprise Arthur Russell on cello, Peter Zummo on trombone, Bill Raynor on guitar and the very composer on her custom-made Trine (a self-devised Lyre). Those who love the music of David Borden or Daniel Lentz should become fond of quite a few portions of this opus. There’s a sort of romantic underlining of the inevitability of passing away which lets the listener understand the essence of an unwanted occurrence in the guise of a healing experience (the final “Kyrie”, wholly constructed on abnormally wavering superimposed voices, is exemplary in that sense) and the structural faultlessness of the large part of the album – graced by a good dosage of polite idealism – helps us through reiterated listens, aural strain completely missing from the scene.

BRIAN LAVELLE – Fallen are the domes of green amber (Diophantine)

Let’s throw the only negative aspect out of the review first: I think that the second track “In the desert of gilt” is too long at 58 minutes, half of which filled by two chords repeating over and over that, in the end, overstay their welcome. Luckily, the remaining three quarters of Brian Lavelle’s release are good enough to let us forget the finale and fully justify our interest, being constructed upon a series of resonant washes and consonant drones, which enjoyed at “ambient” level in several occasions are truly, essentially beautiful. Lavelle is active since 1990, recording both under his real name and various aliases; even this work contains some of his earliest tape recordings (from 1991) which he juxtaposed to recent materials to conceive the album. Do not expect anything more, anything less than a fine brand of electronica, composed with the precise intent of furnishing the listener with a space for the attention to roam, without necessarily focusing on objects or particulars. There are episodes in which the sounds conjured up by Lavelle seem to introduce a new light in the house, all the sources (which include also birds and shortwave, from what I could guess) well disguised in a mix that privileges the “whole” rather than the single parts. Music that doesn’t require a science degree to be penetrated, in its best moments surely rewarding and, for the large part, tranquilizing in the “right” way.

JOËLLE LÉANDRE – No comment (Red Toucan)

In case you missed it in 2001, here’s a second chance to enjoy nine notable improvisations – all titled “No comment” – by Madame Léandre, obviously on double bass and voice (…and what a voice! The French artist is a monster bassist – that’s carved in stone – but let’s focus on the quality of her singing: majestic, to say the least). Recorded in 1994 and 1995 in Italy and Canada respectively, these tracks show a good quantity of the untouchable virtuosity through which Léandre is able to conceive an instant composition exclusively by taking a couple of elements, sometimes even only one, and dress them with ironic intelligence and inimitable lyricism (those melodically advanced harmonics can solely be heard when this lady, or people like Stefano Scodanibbio, are involved; I mean, one thing is just “bringing the upper partials out”, another is building cathedrals of sound and silence around those phenomena). Yet, there’s also a clear indication of rational balance at work in this stuff, as if the centrifugal force of the pure act of creation were channeled into moulds and shapes necessary for everyone to comprehend what is being played. This very attribute is what transforms improvisation from a “been-there-done-that” Polaroid to a multidimensional chromatic figure, and we must be thankful for this artist’s truly astonishing consistency, both in terms of extraordinary playing and level of releases. This CD might be considered as a valid introduction to Lèandre’s career, provided that you keep tracing at least another half-dozen of these often scarcely diffused pearls. No possibility of delusion here.

JOËLLE LÉANDRE / MASAHIKO SATOH / YUJI TAKAHASHI – Signature (Red Toucan)

A 2-CD set in which Joelle Léandre profitably uses any kind of instrumental nuance and continuously lends her hands, brain and heart to a rich, deeply skilled kind of improvisation that pays high dividends to the listeners. “Complex and lyrical” is my (abused) favourite definition coming to mind as soon as the record starts; both duets are for acoustic bass and piano. If Léandre, as we all know, is one of the world’s best bass players, I never heard Satoh and Takahashi before (my fault…) and this was a most pleasing discovery. I notice a very distinct character in their approach to harmony and counterpoint: the former privileges abundance of fingers and swarming chords, the latter is a little more spacy in his phrasing and brings an intelligibility that needs no key to be enjoyed. On her side, Joëlle plays logically and coherently without sounding pretentious for a moment. Harmonics, ostinatos, arco hits, anything you can get from the instrument is just like drinking a glass of water for this woman. Music from the highest sphere, a mix of intelligence and emotion: it can’t be overlooked by no one.

JOËLLE LÉANDRE / INDIA COOKE – Firedance (Red Toucan)

Recorded live at the Guelph Jazz Festival in 2004, this bass and violin improvised set engages the listeners in a headlock while procuring cerebral frictions and lots of rattling stimulations. This coupling of arco feelers generates languages which, if apparently coming from extraneous associations with snapping gruffness, are most of the times both pronounceable and carved in the memories of tradition. Léandre deconsecrates any iridescence in favour of timbral choices bordering on the “fabulously inharmonious”, yet her colours assume the role of foundation in the exchanges; Cooke’s violin becomes uproarious at times, lifting the curtains over an endless juxtaposition of styles which are indeed a unique flavour. Just in the very moments when everything risks becoming smothering, India and Joëlle do some mind-boggling elegant gasconade, shifting our focus a couple of frames forward, up to where ideals have already flown.

JOËLLE LÉANDRE / PASCAL CONTET – Freeway (Clean Feed)

After their rare “Grave” from 1994, Léandre and Contet renew their alliance, treating us with twelve duets for double bass and accordion showing that the “genretrotters” definition of the press release is a correct one. Antagonism is not an option here, although the timbral difference – a sharp dichotomy between a fretless string instrument and a tempered keyboard device – contributes to the general cleverness. The pair seem to have played together day in, day out for decades, such is their absorption of the reciprocal styles and sensibilities. This determines a sort of “total mix” in their expressive range, Contet’s low drones often complementing Léandre’s murmuring arco in the most reflective improvisations. What should really be emphasized, though, is the unmitigated fusion of stylistic elements that both artists represent. Between the two of them, they have performed the works of influential composers such as Scelsi, Bussotti, Cage, Globokar; considering also the innumerable partners shared during their careers and the “popular” derivations surfacing in their voices, the record comes out as a literal demonstration of “omnivorousness”. Self-determination, technical command and undifferentiated circulation of impromptu information are among the many constituents that manage to put us in full syntony with the duo’s glorious abilities, features that in “Freeway” are never sidetracked. There is nothing here that could elicit something different from admiration and positive enjoyment of the music; the album possesses so many different facets that, after reiterated listens, still leaves us both puzzled and willing to play it again.

JOËLLE LÉANDRE & KEVIN NORTON – Winter in New York – 2006 (Leo)

The names involved in this live set, recorded at The Stone in New York, leave no doubt as far as artistic coherence, instrumental command and overall seriousness are concerned. Double bass and percussion – with a decided prominence given by Norton to the vibraphone – are barely tameable beasts both in terms of juxtaposition of timbres and contrapuntal approach. It is also my conviction that capturing the full dynamic range of these instruments on record is never an easy task (as a matter of fact, some of the most spiky peaks cause a noticeable saturation in the headphones, something which listened via speakers is not so evident). But enough of this basically useless blather concerning the recording troubles; let’s talk about the music, the only thing that counts. Léandre and Norton possess an ingrained consciousness of everything that happens, their minds giving birth to concepts and instantaneous creations effortlessly and simultaneously – and the good part is that they often sound composed. The main preoccupation lies in listening to what the companion plays, more than affirming personal sentences or, heaven forbid, “tricks”. In this particular occasion, the French bassist shows us the less theatrical aspects of her performance, privileging a generous, fleshy tone that is a joy to receive – punchy, yet at the same time soft as a cotton cloud. When the percussionist underlines with swooping cymbal strokes and rolling chemistries after having found all the sweet and sour spots in his vibes, one can easily renounce to a judgement, simply dedicating the whole experience to the acknowledgement of two fundamental talents producing intriguing sounds under any condition and circumstance. Not an immediate winner, this CD is a sleeper that reveals its values – plenty of them – following the third or fourth try.

BRIAN LEBER – Till (Alluvial)

The sound of stones is of primary importance for Leber, who uses them in all the three pieces comprised by “Till”. Don’t you think about some edulcoration of raw matter, though; this music unfolds with gradual, shivering authenticity in a discolored world of organic and instrumental layers that are totally alluring in their unassuming bareness. In “Isobar”, wind and shortwave radio are channeled in a single current of isolation from the rest of the world; both “Tracing stones” and “Mountains and rivers” use the riveting breath of a double bass, whose frail spurious notes lose splinters of harmonic rust during intimate dialogues with wood, leaves, water sounds and bowl gong. Leber does not look for powerful appearances or tricky imagery; one figures him doubled over the ground, intent in the discovery of a primordial source of inspiration for his intriguing hoards of precious understatements.

MARTIN LECLERC – Horizons du silence (Empreintes DIGITALes)

A qualified classical guitarist, active in a number of groups as a performer, Martin Leclerc (1976) studied with Yves Daoust, getting a Master’s Degree at Montreal’s Conservatory in 2004. The focus on electroacoustic composition finds an outlet in the six pieces comprised by this DVD, which displays both a measure of vision in the grouping of different settings and a flaw that’s becoming moderately standard in this playground, specifically the surplus of academic connections in determinate circumstances (in this occasion coinciding with the long – and frequently boring – title track, in effect a rotation of trumpet solos and rather obvious juxtapositions of concrete sceneries and “inevitably dramatic” vocal outbreaks). This should not discourage the listener from trying out other sonic revelations in the program: Leclerc does possess abilities, and the contrasting methods in parts of his work are definitely first-rate (“L’Odyssée” and “Sauf dans la brume” come to mind). We just can’t draw a parallel to a “current” or a “style” – which is a praise – and the same apparent incoherence of certain successions sounds like a compositional preference on a subsequent listen. Still I’m not entirely sold on this release, my own vu-meters pointing to the red of “inconsistency” more often than welcoming the absorbing qualities of extensive fractions of the material. As in many analogous cases, a cutback down to strictly considerable matters should have been implemented.

LE DEPEUPLEUR – Disambiguation (Auf Abwegen)

Le Dépeupleur is the duo of Zbigniew Karkowski and Kasper T.Toeplitz and this is their third collaborative release. Contrary for definition to any kind of code or system in music, they decided to create a huge, powerful “amass of masses” under the guise of semi-educated, stratified white/grey noise. The result is something that can’t be described through concepts but only with adjectives and sensations: impregnable, hissing, growling, incessant, choking, menacing, nuclear, tempest-like. We could continue ad infinitum. What really is to be admired is Karkowski and Toeplitz’s unadulterated search for sounds that, in their immeasurable complexity, remain astonishingly pure even after being subjected to a first-class compositional treatment. This is noise minimalism of the highest rank, a gradual shift of dangerous expression towards the area of those recurrent phenomena acting as a soothing means for burning repression. In that sense, “Disambiguation” is a small revolt against a still undefined establishment.

STEVE LEHMAN’S CAMOUFLAGE TRIO – Interface (Clean Feed)

It may sound strange but the only musician I didn’t know before listening to “Interface” was Lehman himself; it’s nice adding an excellent saxophonist to my own gallery. Flanked by Pheeroan Aklaff on drums and Mark Dresser on double bass, the leader conducts the dance through a modern jazz full of freedom yet apparently pretty well regulated. Crossing his combative lines with a less-than-memorizable bunch of “quasi-themes”(which is a compliment on my behalf) Lehman sounds hard-faced, integer and mean in a no compromise list of interesting pieces. Aklaff and Dresser add some more magic to the whole, accelerating at the right moment, doubling their own phrasing, manifesting themselves through an interplay that goes from pensive to powerful, while the solos show all three artists in their majestic technique and enormous sensibility. It’s a record needing more tries to be completely understood – but its value is high.

STEVE LEHMAN QUARTET – Manifold (Clean Feed)

An “em vivo” recording of saxophonist and composer Steve Lehman – here on alto and sopranino – is enough to kindle the fire of interest, as what I had heard by him until now elicited a positive response from my neural systems, not easy to satisfy despite this writer’s infinite goodness (just kidding, but hey – one can build an unpaid career upon writing reviews that sound like press releases). In this set, recorded in Coimbra at “Jazz ao Centro” festival, Lehman’s cutting-edge scores are seriously interpreted by Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet, John Hebert on double bass and Nasheet Waits on drums. The group sounds compact, but the music grows instant branches by the minute, alternating furious reed assaults – the leader exercising pulmonary devastation in obstinate whirlwinds (“Interface A”) – and spots featuring Finlayson affirming a striking fantasy spiced with a promiscuous evilness that renders the solos a cross of torturing virtuosity and orgasmic frenzy. Hebert and Waits, besides enjoying consistent solo exposures – it happens in every respectable live album – work splendidly within the pieces, both functioning as a classic rhythm section and mirroring themselves in the lake of timbral knowledgeableness, without throwing Narcissus down from the sofa. In a word, they sound great independently from their companions’ omnivorous approach. Lehman closes the show with four minutes of solitary exploration of his instrument’s squealing properties, the definitive stamp on an excellent disc.

THOMAS LEHN / PAUL LOVENS – Achtung (Grob)

There’s no way you can write about this music. Maybe an old Zappa title, “Absolutely free”, would fit. Thomas Lehn plays an EMS synthesizer and Paul Lovens everything that’s hittable. This is a sorcerer’s cauldron of little and big explosions, apparent silences, cat-like purring, funny expressions, minimal resonance, noise and concrete sound. Radical improvisation has never been better interpreted; everything gathers under a crazy umbrella but, in reality, any sound you hear MUST be right there in that place. Of course, besides being undescribable, “Achtung” is completely unpredictable – and you know this is a major plus from Touching Extremes’ point of view. More words are just useless, just look for this CD and give it a try: you could become addicted to these two guys.

URS LEIMGRUBER / GUNTER MULLER / ARTE QUARTET – e_a.sonata.02 (For 4 Ears)

Written by Leimgruber for the Arte sax quartet – the real protagonists in this CD – “Sonata” is a difficult composition where both electronic and acoustic sources materialize bit by bit, as time goes by. Sounds come creeping around, from the back of your monitors and under your shoes, completely surrounded by an invisible pellicle provided by Müller with his instrumental array. In this boiling liquid saxophones breath lightly at first, putting their head out like a newborn creature, then crawling to find some light, finally liberating most of their power over the course of the record. At the end, Arte’s musicians have coalesced their different timbral masks into a single lamentation, like if all the efforts to affirm an existence had been in vain. Incomparable to other genres, this inquisitive music is deeply affecting without becoming disturbing, confirming the high degree of these artists’ valuable choices.

URS LEIMGRUBER / JACQUES DEMIERRE / BARRE PHILLIPS – LDP – Cologne (Psi)

These improvisers – recorded in Köln in 2003 – play with concentrated organicism, their flux of consciousness perfectly complementary to near silences and sudden outbursts of brilliant collective autonomy. Leimgruber, on soprano and tenor saxophone, paintsprays his canvas through harsh sincerity that manifests itself in an unpronounceable lyricism, alternating fluency and staccato in a sort of pneumatic jargon. Demierre’s plurality of telluric movements and caressing condescension justify every single required gesture in his invigorating sound. Phillips’ overtones and glissandos add the definitive light to this inspired trio, changing shapes, timbral consistencies and relationships until one is almost forced to hold breath to understand what’s really going on under the music’s surface. Difficult – but totally rewarding substance all over the record.

LEO MARS – Lightears (Naivsuper)

Leo Mars are the Berlin-based duo of Marcel Türkowsky and Stephane Leonard, “Lightears” being their inaugural outing. What they do is pretty much in your face: roaring distortion a go-go, harsh layers, dissonant bitterness, absolutely merciless puncturing of the auricular membranes through a choice of frequencies that’s not an actual “choice”, rather a penalty. These guys kick hard, though not always intelligibly. On a first listen I thought about the customary replication (there are hundreds by now) of the wall-of-guitar sound of Birchville Cat Motel and the likes, but a closer look (to the press release, too) reveals that also mangled field recordings and overexcited electronics are a part of the game. Whatever, the sonic spectrum investigated by the couple mostly belongs to the regions of aural pain, especially if you decide to sting yourself at more than medium listening volume. Yet a strictly musical aspect besides the noisy factor does exist, and is precisely what saves the record elevating it to another level in certain occasions. It’s explicated by a powerful purr, an underlying pulse that appears in a few instances – particularly at the opposite extremes of the CD – furnishing the music with entrancing features that turn the fundamental vibration into a rainbow connecting the ears across the back of the skull. Everything becomes tolerable in that moment. I’m willing to believe that, by concentrating on these droning matters and not on ear-killing acridness, Leo Mars could engender something important in the future. Let’s wait and see.

JASON LESCALLEET – The pilgrim (Glistening Examples)

Much has already been written about the sad circumstances that originated this album, Lescalleet’s homage to his late father Harrison. Those conditions are explained in detail by the composer in the liners, therefore I won’t mention them again here. “The pilgrim” – which spreads over an LP and a CD – revolves around a fulcrum constituted by the parallelism between death and security, two concepts that lie closer than most people think. In the complimentary letter to his son reproduced on the cover, and read by Jason with broken voice at the beginning of the program, Harrison Lescalleet recalls the time when he was driven to the hospital by his dad, his feverish body lying on the floor of a ’32 Chevy. Lescalleet Snr compares that memory to his son’s music, thus attributing a positive quality to something that at a first analysis shouldn’t be: illness, fever, uncomfortable trip conditions. Yet his mind retained the basic information, the “steady deep rumble” he felt in his body, which Jason’s “Figure 2″ brought back to him in all its physical presence. I wondered if the feel of “low-frequency protection” that many sensitive people seem to experience is indeed the most conscious (or less) perception of the constant nearness of death, symbolizing in a way the aspiration to knowing “what comes after” that human beings have felt over thousands of years. This seems to be Jason Lescalleet’s principal motive of attraction, as about half of this opus is based on the recreation of the droning cocoon by which we love to be wrapped more often than not. The first side of the vinyl sees Lescalleet using analog tape saturation “to rumble and vibrate the stage and the air with the fullest of sound waves from the lower end of the spectrum”. Half of the CD puts our heart into slow-beat gears, my room impressively throbbing from the uncontrollable pulses and muffled roars belonging to that inner realm about which I’d never dare to describe my sensations through mere words. Again, the idea is one of safety, probably the same felt by young Harrison in his daddy’s car, and also by Jason over the full course of his relationship with his father: in that sense, the heartwarming 1970 photo that graces the booklet is the most explicative one. Needless to say, the audio-verité segment recorded during the last meeting between them at the hospital – shortly before Harrison’s death – generates some measure of uneasy breathing to the receptive listener; but if we put that moment in the context of the whole piece, including Jason’s “angry” musical reaction to the event in “My petition” (a droning numbness slowly evolving into disquieting oscillating surcharges of barely repressed tension ending in devastating distortion) everything seems to fit just as expected. It is a perfect circle, wherever one starts drawing it: life flowing into death – but death is somehow secure, while life will never be. Furthermore, death generates life in terms of energies – in this case, Harrison’s death process affecting Jason’s brain in such a way that he was pushed hard to create something that transcends the term “memorial”. And, referring to “The pilgrim”‘s final minutes, Harrison represents death and his niece Audrey is the continuing line of life, yet, without awareness, she sings about a dying girl. The point is that our wishes, projects and aspirations account for next to nil in the great scheme of things, and the earlier we realize it, the better. It only remains to ask the final, purely artistic question: is this record a masterpiece? My answer is a shouted “yes” on all accounts: when a release manages to provoke deep reflection, a debate in the new music’s world and the sort of physical reaction that I noticed at various times while listening – and believe me, I’m not one who’s easily moved by love or death matters – then it’s got to be a milestone. It only takes the first of a long series of plays to realize.

LES KLEBS – Les Klebs (Ouie/Dire)

Coming in a gorgeous package containing both the disc and a booklet with a short pictorial story (which I’ll leave you to enjoy), Les Klebs is a group mixing improvisations on acoustic instruments – Xavier Charles on clarinet, David Chiesa on double bass – with the analog synthesis of Marc Pichelin, the “phonographic projection and live analog tape” of Jean-Léon Pallandre and the live mixing and processing of Laurent Sassi. Active together since 2004, these artists present a kind of electroacoustic jurisprudence whose codes appear as vastly unrespected, if not thoroughly destroyed. Exciting vicinities between resonant arco patches and fibrillations of multiphonics are assembled with location recordings and electronic deformations in sonic architectures where only a concentrated, scrupulous attention is the key to access a complexity which, in the end, reveals to be analysable in each and every one of its constituents. This does not imply that we’ll find something “easy”: despite the vague familiarity of certain sources – water drops, exotic languages in hypothetical flea markets, altered frogs – the overall feel is one of conscious displacement, the music constantly remodelling itself in the ebb and flow of noisy mirages, chimeras of a quietness that will never be completely achieved. Cuckoo clocks and carillons are the soundtrack of insufferable nightmares where there’s no place to hide while escaping from ugly masks, and even walking is impossible without tripping in dwarf cats meowing all over the place. Masters of a unique blend of hit-and-run acousmatic piracy, Les Klebs are yet another welcome addition to a world where even improvisation is inexorably getting standardized.

LESSONS AROUND US – Open air (State Sanctioned)

Tim Kirby was not a name that resounded as familiar, until I discovered that he was one of the members of Sonic Catering Band, a peculiar improvising unit working with normal equipment and kitchenware (check their release on Absurd). He’s also performed with Michael Prime and the Bohman Brothers, so you already have an idea of what (not) to expect here. Surely not “regular” music; Lessons Around Us is a tape-based, real life-influenced project (and the cooking element is still very present, yes: frying pans and popcorn are quite abundant) which Kirby describes as a collage of sounds from daily activities that somehow grasped his attention “because of their timbre, rhythm, dynamics or sheer beauty”. Editing these snippets in a context that, at different times, also includes regular instruments, washing machines, dictaphones, prepared CDs, vinyl and much more allows Kirby to generate pretty innocent instant openings on a low-budget materiality where even birds sound like they’re chirping from the drain hole and treated with flanging crumbles. Elsewhere, pre-recorded voices are mixed with Roedelius-like obfuscated piano recollections, while the self explanatory “Forests and bushes” is enriched by filtered traffic sounds that render the track one of the overall best. Strange electronic beats à la Tuxedomoon and a general sense of “letting things happen as they come” complete a strange album that reveals its disparate layers only through a careful listening approach. Oh, and the cover artwork is splendid. Oh again, it’s a 200-copy limited edition.

LEVEL – Cycla (Spekk)

With the exception of a more “normal” final track, “Cycla” is an engrossing album, finely conceived and structured by sound artist and designer B.G.Nichols. All over the disc, streams of otherworldly resonances and distant echoes of semi-sculpted rhythms accompany the listener, playing hide-and-seek in every invisible corner to reveal themselves again, enhanced by their self-regenerative projection, in the space between the ears and the outside world – and, if possible, showing even more grace. Although pretty consonant, often with a tendency to sadness, “Cycla” maintains a perfect evenness between the obvious will to discover “what lurks behind” the sound and a long-desired passivity, continuously caressed by sonic architectures which seem to contain the teachings of Brian Eno, Steve Tibbetts and Suso Saiz, disassembled and lyophilized into a sense of undescribable gratification of the nerves. With this release, Nichols has managed to put out one of the best “accessible” soundscapes heard in recent times, music which is elegant yet profound.

DANIEL LEVIN TRIO – Fuhuffah (Clean Feed)

An atypical format – cello, double bass and drums – for an album that mixes improvisation, melodic lyricism of the slanted kind and a well perceptible vocal quality in the conversations between two stringed essences. Cellist and nominal leader Levin exalts the singing features of his instruments through a systematic implantation of presentiments and harassments in the evolvement of a three-way trade, a garrulous law-breaker always happy to verify how the decline of jazz can be counterbalanced by an instrumental approach that sounds both materialistically paint-stripped and utterly freehearted, all regulated by an extraordinary technical literature that steals remnants from the mummy of Anton Webern to burgeon – with succulent fruits – in the paradise of dissonant-loving peasantry. Bassist Ingebrigt Häker-Flaten – owner of a superb timbral expressiveness besides a fabulous taste – is able to occupy interstices, tune to the deepest regions of subcutaneous vibration and tread the most impervious paths of resonant winsomeness while keeping eyes wide open when the partners decide to abandon themselves to unconsciousness in the lap of that giant wooden fellow. Gerald Cleaver’s drumming is ideal for this context, hyperactive yet often subdued swinging alternated with wise silences and instillations of moonstruck hobnobbing, the proverbial accompaniment nebulized into a myriad of rhythmic cells, a truly steadfast-in-adversity companion for one hour of exceptional legitimization of instantaneous indispensability. This is a splendid recording, a veritable breath of fresh air also representing the perfect showcase for a triplet of bright talents.

ANDREW LEWIS – Miroirs obscurs (Empreintes DIGITALes)

Born in 1963, Andrew Lewis belongs to the premium class of young electroacoustic craftsmen, “Miroirs obscurs” being a striking illustration of razor-sharp compositional systems. A student of Jonty Harrison and an original member of BEAST, the Englishman also creates music for orchestral, vocal and chamber ensembles. Still, the major strength lies in the masterful handling of concrete sources, and it becomes instantaneously evident that Lewis’ perceptive facility in placing episodes and incidents in a broad electroacoustic context benefits from his earlier studies. What turns out from this DVD is that, for once at least, the program’s length – in this instance, almost 85 minutes – is not going to test the listener’s resistance. This material lacks the academic lacquer and intellectual weightiness of many and one similar presentations, alternatively orientating our interest towards sapiently designed time cells, the commemoration of times and places contextualized by quite a lot of stretched elements that, in a virtually alien acoustic environment, let the door open to memory and its implicit disintegration. In that sense, the composer appears to be interested in maritime settings to a great extent, constructing entire works around them (in the case of “Benllech Shells” he employs the archetypal sonic circumstances of a typical day at the seaside), or applying a systematic alteration of the same constituents until they become an overall different setting (“Penmon Point”, “Cable Bay”). In the final 35-minute long “Danses acousmatiques”, the composer tackles the noticeable superficiality with which the large part of acousmatic pieces deal with the intrinsic qualities of sound – which should be the basis of the whole movement – presenting an assortment of graphic representations of those multidimensional features, a kaleidoscopic succession of virtual realities sounding like flashes that can’t be framed in any possible way.

LGAMBLE – 80 mm O!I!O! (Part 1) (Entr’acte)

I must admit that, after almost 40 years of listening to sounds of every conceivable species, there are still records that leave me at a loss for words. Enter Lee Gamble, father of “seven virtual-hybrid models of spontaneous and ordered (non essential goal) related Celomund O!I!O! computer audio compositions” (of course, Lee, I trust you). Comprised in little more than 19 minutes – it’s a 3-inch, folks – there are more abrupt changes, sudden discharges, alien burps and ultra-short complex melodies here than in the zapped circuit of an electronic pinball machine. Fizzing white noise, extreme panning and continuously morphing timbres – which could have been conceived either by a mad scientist or a deranged dentist – are featured in this (unfortunately) short briefing about the best of what computer music has to offer nowadays. Could have been released only by Entr’acte, the only label whose record covers must be scissor-sliced to access the content. Incidentally, there’s still someone around talking about “seven notes”.

ALAN LICHT – A New York minute (XI)

You could describe Alan Licht’s music as classic minimalism and not be too far away from the truth; this double CD set shows his skills very accurately, mixing his guitar based compositions with more peculiar material, like the initial title track where Alan superimposes weather report bulletins to create an involving “voice-whirling”. Of course, Licht is mostly known for his droning, almost geometric fretboard work and naturally we find lots of it; the best moments in that sense come from “14, Second, Fifth”: about 37 minutes of strings played through various methods, the most prominent apparently a little battery fan who brings out harmonics and a (dis)conforting resonance, like a cloud of motorized insects coming out of nowhere; on the contrary, the final “Remington Khan” is not always lucid like the rest, bringing also lots of recording distortion into the equation, a fact that I don’t fully comprehend in a work of this importance. Nevertheless, the standards set remain pretty high, with an absolute stunner in the gorgeous 6:41 minutes of “Muhammad Ali and the crickets”, where boxing fans from Zaire keep bellowing “Ali, Bouma Ye” (“Ali, kill him”, referring to George Foreman in their famous 1974 match), accompanied by the incessant punching bag pattern, pseudo-metal noise and – of course – the crickets, helping your blood to boil and your feet to keep the steady beat of the piece.

ALAN LICHT & AKI ONDA – Everydays (Family Vineyard)

Tape-based composition will never be out of fashion, although there’s concrete evidence that the world of field recording is steadily becoming yet another way for giving people who don’t know shit about properly making music a chance to inserting their invasive persona in contexts where they’re not welcome, at least by this ever-grunting listener. This doesn’t touch Alan Licht and Aki Onda, who all through the five tracks of this singular record show us intensity and originality in plentiful doses. It takes a sturdy artistic individuality to produce momentum from poor elements, and both the involved parties are up to the task in this case. Onda’s lyrical use of the cassette as a means of evocation and remembrance – but also as a generator of curiously extracurricular patterns – spouses Licht’s cruel maltreatment of his guitar perfectly, explorations of virtual unawareness recalling a past that not even those who lived it might be able to bear in mind. A brilliant demonstration of how sound, prosperous or meagre that it may be, remains the most powerful tool for the improvement of intelligent recollection. A lovely sense of achievement and the perplexity of noticing “wrong” happenings are equivalent facets in a music that transcends genres to turn into pure eloquence. Crawling away from middle-of-the-road avant-garde, Licht and Onda observe unlikely realities with the right attitude, letting everybody realize that birds and looped guitars (the magnificent “Tiptoe”) do not automatically mean that they won’t be trying, a moment later, to disembowel our pet nirvana (“Chitchat”) without losing an ounce of pleasure. The first environmental sounds of our life were the muffled ones that we experienced in the womb; several parts of “Everydays” made me think of something comparable. You wouldn’t say that after listening to the cacophonic, feedback-ish cadenced mess of the conclusive “Be bop”, though.

STEUART LIEBIG / MICHAEL VATCHER / VINNY GOLIA – In the cusp of fire and water (Red Toucan)

This has to be one of the best improvising trios I’ve heard in 2004: excellent interplay, fresh use of instrumental prowess, entwined articulations among exuberant trips. Golia’s reed technique is limpid to say the least, with a creativity that’s continuously fruitful while proposing new sketches of sapient alternative to the obvious. Liebig plays contrabass guitar getting the best from each one of his timbral ranges – from bass currents flowing at the threshold of audibility to free-form fingerings in more uptempo settings. Vatcher’s arsenal is typical of an intelligent percussionist, someone who prefers listening to the others rather than forcing himself upon them; right then you can appreciate a variegated and conspicuously genial personality, capable of distinguish itself without shouting in the chaos. The resulting music is clearly enjoyable and self-selective, leaving out useless memories to look the future straight in the eyes.

STEUART LIEBIG / THE MENTONES – Locustland (pfMENTUM)

This The Mentones’ 2004 album, which gravitates around the very same coordinates of “Nowhere calling” and is just as energetic and beautifully composed and executed. Liebig’s bass riffs, a dissonant mixture of robust, slightly oblique “rockbluesyjazzy” cat walks, are sustained by Joseph Berardi’s sensitively brisk drumming; what could at a first listen be comparable to offshoots of Curlew and Virgil Moorefield is instead shifted to wholly different scenarios by the extraordinary prowess of alto saxophonist Tony Atherton, whose solos incinerate conventional idioms with good degrees of sensual rage, and chromatic harmonica virtuoso Bill Barrett (also a member of Gutpuppet with guitarist Scot Ray, check them out!), one of those players who completely redefine their instrument’s vocabulary while maintaining both feet firmly grounded in their influences’ humus. The final results coming from this commission of lucid visionaries are utterly galvanizing, their ironic diplomacy well portrayed by a track like “Honky Tonk Burn”, which crosses dramatic goofiness à la Nino Rota with Brecht and Eisler on dope, the whole sounding like a demented circus band led by a Daniel Denis/Lars Hollmer hybrid. The Mentones are a group that transcends genres by touching many of them and, as such, are destined to be appreciated and dissed in equal measure. I appreciate.

STEUART LIEBIG / THE MENTONES – Nowhere calling (pfMENTUM)

There are trend followers and unrepentant free birds. There are also free birds who feel it’s their duty to teach us, poor daily jobbers, the necessary techniques to learn to fly, at least in our mind. Steuart Liebig’s Mentones (Tony Atherton on alto saxophone, Bill Barrett on chromatic harmonica, Joseph Berardi on drums and percussion and the leader on contrabass guitar) are bad muthas that will seduce your joints into crackling out some dancing life while stealing your girlfriend with a quirky smile. “Nowhere calling” is a fine 13-piece collection of angular onslaughts, cynical delicacy and concentrated, yet accessible difficulties that rank right there with the best unclassifiable American bands (think Curlew and Motor Totemist Guild with just a few more pinches of rock’n'blues rudiments). Most of these tracks impose a predominant groove, often quite dissonant, over which Atherton and Barrett go for the jugular with unison counter-themes and scarcely predictable sadistic contrapuntal turns. Barrett, in particular, is probably the most complete harmonicist on the market today, able to offer low-budget Delta abstractions and Allan Holdsworth-like lyrical contrivances in the space of thirty seconds. Yet, Mentones’ real strength is their ensemble narrative: picture some sort of fusion group from the 70s undergoing an electroshock lifting that turns the band members into reactivated-brain orchestral engineers. Play loud.

STEUART LIEBIG / MINIM – Quicksilver (pfMENTUM)

I politely suggest starting with the last piece on the disc; in fact, most of the second half of “A single rosehip bursts in praise” is a heavy tour de force through heavier still percussion patterns that risks being skipped if listened at the end of an already demanding record. But Steuart Liebig’s Minim quartet (Liebig on contrabass guitars, Ellen Burr on flutes, Jeanette Kangas on percussion, Jeff Gauthier on violins) is so skilled that the sheer force of their musicianship carries a physicality that makes even the most contorted counterpoints sound light and refreshing. The 23 sonic haikus forming “Mosaic” lean towards a modern school of “comprovisation” mixing freedom, Reich, Stravinsky and Braxton – plus additional influences you’ll be able to hear yourselves – with an always open eye to well travelled technical shapes; “Chrysantemum” is another important statement of almost classical literature, where the multiform artistic culture of Minim trades previous urgencies with arcane suggestions and background connections. 80 minutes of this music must be listened with top attention and the most liberated brain you can wear that day – but the reward is a sure thing.

STEUART LIEBIG / MINIM – Sulphur (pfMENTUM)

The intellectual element is highly evident in every move characterizing Steuart Liebig’s music. “Sulphur” comprises three pieces that contain references or plain influences related to a series of compositional means and technical circumstances that have to do with the syllabic rules of haiku poetry (“Kaleidoscope”), Jorge Luis Borges (“Necrological pieties”), palindromes and terza rima (“The cherry blossom is only perfect when it’s falling from the tree”). Liebig, a master of the contrabass guitar, which he plays in different tunings and combinations of strings, is flanked by three sensitive monsters who respond to the names of Andrew Pask (clarinets), Sara Schoenbeck (bassoon) and Brad Dutz (percussion). The leader structured the pieces in order to respect precise mathematic recurrences – be it the number of solos, the different kinds of grouping or the quantity of measures – over which he tried to set his instrument, handled with preparations and “less bass-like techniques” than usual. In essence, we’re in front of an ultramodern chamber quartet that sounds immaculately complex, therefore extremely rewarding for listeners whose single-mindedness is very high and who own a solid background as far as dissonant counterpoint and thought-out improvisation are concerned; Anton Webern and Igor Stravinsky would have been appreciative of a good portion of these scores. Speaking of the single members, Pask and Schoenbeck’s reflective intuitions and resolute skepticism towards everything sounding stale allow their lines to assume an identity of their own, while Dutz is surely one of the finest percussionists around today, his playing mostly based on subtraction and breathing spaces in a great demonstration of “total control”. Liebig’s timbre is immediately recognizable (even more so for his writing style), nimble dissertations and obstinate knottiness confirming him as a bright mind in California’s new music scene. Those who esteem the label from Ventura already know what I’m talking about, and won’t be deluded.

STEUART LIEBIG / STIGTETTE – Delta (pfMENTUM)

When I listen to half-composed, half-improvised music my curiosity is usually about the level of the performers’ musicianship and the global balance of sound; in “Delta” I found a positive answer to all questions, as this beautiful effort is certainly well decipherable and conspicuously fruitful, thanks to an uncommon level of “semi-approachable difficulty” which expert ears won’t take too much to link to realities such as Motor Totemist Guild, even if – strangely enough – the body-beautiful contrabass guitar played by Liebig would fit nicely in Mikel Rouse Broken Consort’s “A walk in the woods”-era timbral palette (just a fantasy of mine). Instead, these scores range from Stravinskian derivations to obscurely amorphous, Gavin Bryars-tinged reflections, constituting a solid foundation for the dexterous, no-nonsense technical attitude and total dedication to the cause by flutist Ellen Burr, bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck and clarinettist Andrew Pask who – together with the leader’s conceptual elasticity – contribute in equal measure to the objective beauty of the large part of this album, one of the best by the Californian label so far.

STEUART LIEBIG TEE-TOT QUARTET – Always outnumbered (pfMENTUM)

The emblematic wealth of practical intricacies informing both the playing and the compositional aptitude of contrabass guitarist Liebig is only slightly less conspicuous in “Always outnumbered”, a record where the reverence for time-honoured genres such as Dixieland and blues meets the perpetual determination in trying something innovative in terms of raw-boned phraseology and not exactly standard rhythmic notions. Liebig is assisted by three teammates of undeniable ability: Joseph Berardi (drums, percussion), Scot Ray (dobro) and Dan Clucas (cornet). Tee-Tot work remarkably amidst arrangements that fit the familiar and the bizarre together, calling to mind impressions from distant eras immediately pushed away by sequences of contrapuntal malice and successions of solos that might let us think of a juggler and a clown swapping heated opinions and a few glancing blows in the middle of a circus ring. The musicians seem to recognize no impediment to cooperate in whatever the score imposes, evidently complying with the leader’s directives yet gifting the pieces with a rare sensitiveness even in the most intricate sections. There’s much to be glad about everywhere in the disc, and I’m sure that this album is going to persuade the students of the respective instruments, too: the guys play with virtuosity and gusto, never exceeding the limits that divide skill from dullness.

LIEUTENANT CARAMEL – Early tape works (Monochrome Vision)

Russian label Monochrome Vision has been showing its value through the release of exciting archival materials from the likes of Frank Rothkamm and Das Synthetische Mischgewebe. Another intriguing chapter in this book of marvellous stories from the 80s (…and 1993…) comes with this double disc set containing, for the first time on CD, the earliest works by Philippe Blanchard aka Lieutenant Caramel (but also Denier Du Culte, Pierre Bouchet and Felipe Caramelos). In appreciating people experimenting with tapes there’s a fractured feeling, based on my usual attitude which tends to privilege artists showing at least a hint of compositional method as opposed to someone who – in the name of a not really specified independence – throws random sounds calling their mess “music”. Fortunately, Lieutenant Caramel does not belong to the latter category, as the particular mixture of cut-up tracks, disjointed melodies, real world recordings and vocal treatments is always presented with some sort of vague formal structure, which allows a better comprehension of Blanchard’s intentions. The fact that he “organizes and assembles” his material via computer certainly helps in avoiding too many dead spots. What’s indeed noteworthy, especially when considering that the large part of this music was composed more than 20 years ago, is the “puppet show” quality of several of these mini-documentaries, with situations and characters alternated in a continuous succession of dada scenarios mixing influences that range from musique concrete to everyday life. This theatrical attribute – especially visible in the second CD, which comprises compositions where the use of voice is more insistent – could even keep one at security distance. A common error in such a case is trying to decode what happens. No, you just have to treat those utterances and deformations as additional colours in an already rich palette, thus transforming these concoctions in “presences”, radios perennially tuned on the stations of parallel dimensions which appear unemotional at first, then reveal their secrets with repeated listenings.

ANDREW LILES – Drone works #7 (Twenty Hertz)

Twenty Hertz’s “Drone works” series is augmented by this impressive CD EP of Andrew Liles, whose oneiric soundscapes are silently wrapping and deceptively complex. Liles works at the margins of unfamiliar worlds; using electronics, percussion and found sounds he spirals around our ears, immobilizing our sense of alertness, putting everything in the middle of abstract savours and fuscous contemplations. Sounds get disembodied and ethereal without losing their strength during a 21-minute piece that flows much quicker in the head, the result of a mental standstill that’s just apparent. Brilliantly haunting, it is without a doubt one of this collection’s best.

ANDREW LILES – Mother goose’s melody or sonnets for the cradle (ICR)

Should you try to lull your baby to sleep by playing this record, be ready for strange surprises when he’ll be growing up as Andrew Liles has written a series of warped melodies and droning songs, mixing them with more “traditional” narration taken from classic children literature to hassle your aural balance with this bunch of contrasting elements. Backward voices, animal sounds, morphing synthesizer waves and guitars create a fabulous world where nothing is like one could expect – and even when it is, there’s always a lurking fear of something suddenly coming out from nowhere to change the rules of the game, therefore destroying every notion of comprehension that our brain might have been memorizing during the process. Those who follow Colin Potter’s label will find their natural environment here, although a little submerged by bubbling oleaginous waters; make no mistake about it, this is not some sort of luxury joke for kids, instead it is an album whose peculiar shape and delicious craftmanship will bewitch you at first listen.

ANDREW LILES – In my father’s house are many mansions (Fourth Dimension)

By now affirmed as a uniquely talented soundscaper, for this occasion Andrew Liles called fifteen artists to the task of remixing his own music. The few lines of a review are not enough to decode the complex messages disclosed by these disfigured contemplations, as Liles’ work is truly mythical in its impossibility of being pigeonholed. His overtones are bathed in engulfing frequencies, sapiently interspersed with ironic convolutions and aural descriptions of transfigured wonderlands where rabbits eat Alices spitting their pieces in kaleidoscopic whirlwinds. That said, at least four remodelers of shadowy tales stand out in excellence; Irr. App. (Ext.) emphasizes the nostalgic and the sublime, Hafler Trio transmutes everything he puts his hands on into grey ice, Nurse With Wound seem to include Liles in their lineup while Colin Potter’s remix somehow reminds of Salvador Dali’s surrealist pictures. But all of this music brims with extravagant views on forms of life we aren’t likely to meet often.

ANDREW LILES – The dying submariner (Beta-Lactam Ring)

Andrew Liles pumps out CDs by the dozen and it’s just obvious that I am not able to keep his pace, that’s why I listened to “The dying submariner” – subtitled “A concerto for piano and reverberation” – with a lot of delay (no pun intended). It’s one of those cases in which I bought the CD out of the many positive reviews I read, and let it be known that they were right. The composition is divided into four movements, more or less similar as a general concept but slightly different as far as little nuances and colours are concerned. The activity is mostly centred around the low-frequency range of the piano at first, then the nebulous figurations and long-distance echoes elicited by Liles’ hands shift all over the keyboard in grey-tinged snapshots of solitude, at times sounding more like a silent movie soundtrack than a marine landscape. The sea is nevertheless evoked, thanks to hundreds of overlapping chords which – in the haze generated by the infinite reverbs – mesh and gently clash, giving birth to even more extraneous shades, all of them perfectly acceptable to these ears, which every once in a while need a little relief after hours upon hours of relentless attacks (and not always by good musicians). Only at the end of the album the piano morphs into a metallic entity, then Liles closes the show with uncertain muffled articulations that look like a signature of sorts. Another considerable effort by this talented artist.

LINES – In Australia (Emanem)

Axel Dörner, Jim Denley, Philipp Wachsmann, Marcio Mattos and Martin Blume are Lines. They recorded this excellent, highly skilled record during a session in Sydney, in 2000. What I like best about this group is the continuous shifting among instrumental characters: part of the material sounds like it was composed and carefully orchestrated – but it’s not so – and while you’re enjoying that fullness, you are suddenly thrown into small conglomerates of linking electronics, anarchic percussive sounds and brash melodic ideas that never let you catch their beginning or their end. When all is said and done, this CD flows like pure water, never tiring your ears and leaving you asking for more when it’s over.

LISBON IMPROVISATION PLAYERS – Motion (Clean Feed)

“Motion” is a very enjoyable piece of work by a beautiful multi-faceted ensemble. The plurality of evolutions in Rodrigo Amado and Steve Adams’ combinations of baritone, sopranino and tenor saxophones is what most jazz should be looking for these days; emancipating their music from slipslop low-key atmospheres, the two sustain continuous conversations without going astray, not even for five seconds, while Ken Filiano on double bass underlines or smears the picture, depending on temper and feeling, at the same time maintaining himself well distant from overexcitement. The variegated drumming of Acacio Salero calls our attention to another extremely gifted player: his decomposition of regularity is something to listen carefully, his colourful approach totally refreshing and diverse from any other percussionist. The quartet’s fine amalgam makes any comparison useless: this is a record full of positive energy, the perfect sum of four distinguished precious artists.

LISBON IMPROVISATION PLAYERS – Spiritualized (Clean Feed)

In this release, the quartet of Rodrigo Amado (alto and baritone sax), Dennis Gonzàlez (trumpet), Pedro Gonçalves (double bass) and Bruno Pedroso (drums) is joined by cellist Ulrich Mitzlaff in the two final pieces, “Meeting of our Times” and the title track. Here, more than everywhere else, the music is clearly structured in a superior level of improvisation, the kind that makes you think of it as a hybrid, but still jazz-influenced, composed picture. Most of Amado and Gonzalez’s colloquial coordinates are determined by brief spurts that repeat and progressively clone themselves a la Gremlins, increasingly extending their influence until they become a mosaic of shards in a trance of sorts. The couple gets more and more excited with the ongoing flow, beautifully sustained by Barreto and Gonçalves which of course don’t behave like a typical “rhythm section” – but they still are, and work egregiously as such, their pulse the gauge of an irregular heartbeat that seems to symbolize appreciation for life and accumulation of conscious elaborations. This symbiotic experience starts with deep roots in the past, yet it never becomes sheer homage or, worse still, dependence. To summarize it all, listening to this album is an extremely pleasant affair under any circumstance; it does not hit with the strength of free jazz, nor it bores with traditional memories covered with dust, and it works just fine. When the strings come in, a lovely aroma of elegant chamber music enriches our personal enjoyment of the whole.

LITTLE WINGS – Magic wand (Ahornfelder)

Songwriters are not the most frequent object of review here, yet when a record like this appears I’m more than happy to deviate from the norm. Little Wings are the ever-changing (in the line-up) creature of Californian Kyle Field, who besides composing and playing also “gets through making drawings and riding waves”. The songs comprised by “Magic wand” are extremely simple, informed by harmonic progressions that we’ve heard at least a billion times and that, theoretically, anyone able to generate a few chords on a guitar or a piano might conceive; furthermore, a couple of tracks are definitely under average. Still, Field’s approach is particular, warmly detached yet melancholically driven, sung with a voice that sounds as not wanting to even try to look for different timbral hues or melodic solutions. You know what? That’s exactly the point that saves the CD. This cross of softly lamenting crooning and arrangements that recall psychedelic pop and a mixture of typical instrumental characterizations from the 70s resulted quite pleasing after my Sunday morning had begun by cleaning the house and having trouble in breathing given the terribly damp hot weather. I was instantly put in a relaxed condition, appreciating a musician that in another moment could have been easily dismissed. Sometimes it’s just a question of coincidences. Give this man’s music a listen and keep me informed; this writer might be getting old but it smells like there’s some talent in there.

JIANG LIWEI – Caged (Live @ Knitting Factory) (Post-Concrete)

The piece begins with enigmatic interferences suffused by modified ambiences, like the sound of dozens of typewriters sped up first, then gradually set together in a relentless rhythm that makes them appear as a frightening machine ready to mangle the hands of those who try to operate it. Echoing disturbances and computerized transformations succeed in constantly changing dynamic units, but the progression sounds consistent and coherent. At the halfway point, an ominous unfathomable thrum becomes the exclusive focus, only to instantly be silenced and pushed off spotlight in favour of a hasty cut-up of female voices morphing into total incomprehensibility, the whole generating hallucinogenic effects as the millions of fragments become a single flood of electroacoustic data, preferably warped and in rapid revolution. The conclusive section starts with something apparently deriving from nature – maybe water, maybe wood, who knows – shifting the balance of the composition back to tiny ticks and overwhelming buzz, until the abrupt end. Fresh stuff, worthy of your attention.

DALE LLOYD – Aionios the fundament (Mystery Sea)

Preserving the essence and the spirit of his field recordings, Lloyd showers our ears with elemental beauties, incorporating concrete sounds and expert processing in five austere, almost sacral assemblages. Ominous landscapes, made wet by sapient dissolvences, alternate with hisses and crackles seemingly out of some extraterrestrial backdrop, while darkness and light find their correspondence in a mutual respect. Time fathoms our chaotic life disposition, disregarding our imperfections to fog our nerves in a gauzy perceptivity: this is a vast and involving soundworld, where changes and mutations occur very slowly. We’re given all the necessary tools to adapt to this well developed set of spectral experiences.

DALE LLOYD AND VARIOUS ARTISTS – Amalgam (Conv.net Lab)

For his first release on Conv.net Lab, Seattle’s Dale Lloyd decided to collaborate with eleven sound artists instead of working alone. Considering the seriousness of all involved parties (Robert Horton, Nathan and Darcy McNinch, Omnid, Ben Owen, Josh Russell, Stuart Dodman, Ubeboet, Scott Taylor, Heribert Friedl, K.M.Krebs, Jon Tulchin) the results could not have been less than excellent. The convergence of apparently opposed worlds – drones and microsounds, organic and processed, acoustic and electronic – seems to constitute the basic complexion of such a deeply penetrating music; there seems to be a secretly predetermined walk through progressively immaterial states, as we move from sounds of glass and water through clicks, hums and controlled feedback in preparation for what expect us at the end, namely the semblance of a protracted blur of time suspension, a framework where seemingly endless textural delights push the compositions to the highest spheres of sonic meditation. If these men and this label keep such a focus on the development of sound treatments, we’re definitely in for hours upon hours of important electroacoustic discoveries.

LNGTCHÉ – Music for an untitled film by T.Zarkkof (Etude)

It’s good that Spanish soundscaper Lngtché, whose influences range from Cecil Taylor to Stephen O’Malley, hasn’t called his album “music for a non-existent (or imaginary) movie”, as this kind of title has become a worn-out cliché that I really can’t stand anymore. The above mentioned names don’t give a clue about the content of the CD, though: on a first listen, this sounds like one in a thousands of darkish electroacoustic releases that “grace” the life of reviewers: treated guitars, the gurgle of water (warning: this, too, is inexorably becoming a cliché), pretty innocuous drones and a slight degree of “not knowing where to go” after long moments of obscurity. Yet one detects something better than average, such as the sound placement in the mix and a little additional care in the elemental consecutiveness. The composition decidedly takes off in the second half, when Lngtché adds several slow parabolas, murmuring glissandos and conflicting distortions at the basis of a thicker mass of frequencies and noises that shifts the whole to another dimension and level. The expectations of the listener begin to be seriously fulfilled, with that feeling of “something’s gonna happen” that characterizes the best recordings in this area. The atmosphere gets nearer to some of Christoph Heemann’s work in the early 90s (circa “Invisible barrier”) and the overall structure is now completely revealed. I surmise that watching the images while listening to their soundtrack should be an even better experience. At least we know that this film exists.

ANNEA LOCKWOOD – Thousand year dreaming / Floating world (Pogus)

“Thousand year dreaming” – composed by Annea Lockwood in 1990 and originally issued on What Next? – derives from an improvisation called “Nautilus”, conceived the year before by Lockwood with Art Baron and Scott Robinson. The definitive line-up for this version also comprises Libby Van Cleve, Jon Gibson, J.D. Parran, Michael Pugliese, John Snyder, Charles Wood and Peter Zummo. It’s a very sensual tapestry, whose ritual aspect is enhanced by the fairly unusual counterpoints happening between different instrumental families. The most evident feature resides in the exploration of ample resonant spaces, greatly highlighted by the timbres of didjeridoos and conch shell trumpets which, together with a variety of exotic percussion, alter the reality of an otherwise tranquil landscape by engaging sweet-sounding contrasts with clarinets, English horn and oboe, the trombones acting sparingly as elements standing halfway through apparently distant worlds. The composer describes the idea for this piece as “the gradual awakening and release of sonic energy”; indeed the call-and-response mechanism at the basis of this music is a nice representation of that process which, except for slightly more agitated drum patterns appearing towards the end, remains well visible throughout, as listeners can follow the development of a primal impulse into a fully fledged creature step by step. The reissue is completed by “Floating world”, a 1999 collage of splendid field recordings commissioned by Lockwood to all her friends working in that area, who were asked to contribute sounds from locations “of personal spiritual significance to them”. The prominently aquatic character of the track, enriched by repeated cameos from the local fauna, made me recollect about Alvin Curran’s “Maritime rites”. But even in other circumstances, such as Lockwood’s seaming of Steve Peters’ oak tree branches-cum-wind and Ruth Anderson’s sonogram of her own jugular plus a lake in Montana, we’re totally in rapture with the exquisite limpidness of these unprocessed sources, sealed by a conclusive, soul-stirring moan – an aeroplane, a power station, I don’t want to know – which leaves us ever doubtful, yet serenely detached at one and the same time.

ANNEA LOCKWOOD – A sound map of the Danube (Lovely)

In 2010, Annea Lockwood will see her 40th year as a river-recording expert. In 1989 she released “A sound map of the Hudson river” on this very label and now, after five trips to Europe over the 2001-2004 temporal span, a triple CD documenting the forms of life inside and across the Danube, the second longest European river. The set comes with a real map tracing the course of the Danube from the German Black Forest to the Black Sea where it ends; here we can also read the English translations of the interviews realized by the composer for the project, the interviewees including characters as different as teachers, fishermen, police officers, pension owners and artists. Lockwood recorded all the available voices – waters, animals and humans whose daily activity revolves around the big flux – assembling them with typical mastery and an evident inner ear, which is what distinguishes a serious environmental artist from those who just flick a switch, roll the tape and wait while picking their nose. This particular sensitiveness determines that every element possesses the same weight in the composition, although the almost perennial gurgling flow constitutes an ever-present reminder of who the lead actor is. As it often happens, the deepest levels of introspection are reached through simple means: Lockwood chose to put under focus well determinate sonic features, by which the listener is accompanied in regular cycles. Especially noteworthy is the musical quality of the water wash – gulping plops, dripping melodies, dynamic modifications, violent bursts at times. This is something that is perfectly described in the notes: “…the river has agency; it composes itself, shaping its sounds by the way it sculpts its banks”. Of the three records, the most fascinating is probably the first, which comprises the tolling of bell towers whose majesty seems to rise directly from the undercurrents. Highlights of an important release, worthy of every single minute of the attention that you’ll give it.

LOKAI – 7 million (Mosz)

Florian Kmet and Stefan Németh create oscillating chiaroscuro images of perturbed tranquillity through an interesting use of guitar and electronics. There are involuntary allusions to several recent similar project – see the above reviewed Arden CD – yet the duo distinguishes their broken-dream atmospheres with a larger employment of noise and disturbance: good examples come from the distorted drones of “Chuuk” or the initial mass of radio transmissions opening “Histoire DS”. Florian and Stefan’s sensibilities shift the focus nicely, spanning from clear articulations and circular mind-benders to adventurous investigations of electroacoustic implantations breaking an imperfect calmness. Choosing to reduce the record’s duration at about 37 minutes they also show an appreciable will to avoid overstaying their welcome – a rare commodity these days.

FRED LONBERG-HOLM – Dialogs (Emanem)

Look at that nice woodpecker disintegrating a tree with its turbo-charged beak; watch temerarious jugglers handling high-tension sparkles. The wood, the electricity, the nerves: everything is visualized in Lonberg-Holm’s music. Fred shows he’s not a teleseller of low-octane gasoline for spent acoustic engines, nor an outbuilding type of new kid in town. “Dialogs” is almost marginalizing backwards, as the crude sincerity of these improvisations sounds like a finger pointed under the nose of an unpolite audience member, showing him the way out. This is music to be divided among few in a room, a communion of energies that launders cheapness and harmonic imitations of plastic nirvanas; it’s ragged, loaded with sonic goddamnedness, strong and fighting with rocks in its hands. The muscular definition of this cello saboteur is neatly contoured in the blinding light of artistic significance.

FRED LONBERG-HOLM QUARTET – Bridges freeze before roads (Longbox)

Four individual voices overlapping in convulsive fragmentations, yet never exceeding the threshold of a barely disturbed imperturbability; even if Lonberg-Holm is indicated as the “leader”, this is pure and simple “anarchic democracy”. The abundant fruits generated by the artistic sensitiveness brought in by Guillermo Gregorio on clarinet, Glenn Kotche on percussion and Jason Roebke on bass are tangible since the very first listen; the development of a common, if atypical language seems to be the only thing that matters for this quartet. Gregorio’s clarinet is obviously the most prominent voice together with Lonberg-Holm’s cello, the high register completely dominated by this acute double identity; Kotche and Roebke choose to remain mostly in the background, conscious about the equal importance of their fundamental role of titillators of ultrathin atmospheres, where every sound becomes a necessary pawn in a complex game of untold secrets. It all amounts to pretty difficult music, played by bright-minded musicians for the listening pleasure of the most focused aficionados of the “genre” (?)

FRED LONBERG-HOLM / BREKEKEKEXKOAXKOAX – Split (Cohort)

Interesting departure from the standards in the series of split CDs by the label from Monticello, Indiana. While we were used to mainly receive sets of intangible electronica and, in general, variations on the theme of investigational space/drone music, this time John Gore paired a couple of well-known names in the field of lateral thinking, attributing a totally different character to the release. No need to repeat who Fred Lonberg-Holm is, his name linked with just everybody in the most disparate circumstances. Astounding indeed are the cellist’s three “studies”, built upon emaciated structures – often made of a single sound – that in their sonic dearth emanate the apparent inventor’s will of closing the doors to any reading. Harsh, rusty tones, feedback and scarce movement, a physicality that recalls the still present beauty of a top model suffering from anorexia. Brekekekexkoaxkoax (Jacob Green, Glen Nuckolls, Josh Ronsen, Genevieve Walsh) play a lone 27-minute improvisation that explore the nuances of a droning inconstancy, its content not distant from Third Ear Band (in very small doses), ruptured by a non-virtuoso approach to the instrumental depiction. Overall, a rather sincere blend bordering on the drowsy, adding a few precious particulars to a generally calm scenery.

LONDON IMPROVISERS ORCHESTRA – Responses, reproduction & reality (Emanem)

The explorative illuminations presented in these seven improvisations, recorded during the 2003 and 2004 editions of the Freedom of the City festival, set the parameters for artistic philosophy and combined intelligences within a sonic chemistry that destroys canonical subdivisions to raise questions often impossible to answer through sheer words. Echoes of serialism, Zappa and Ligeti seem to appear here and there, like benevolent ghost presences over a horde of gifted musicians who would have made even Duke Ellington willing to go for transcendence. Serpentine elucubrations and blasts of regulated vehemence go hand in hand in these involuntary montages of impressive idiosincrasy to the rules. The imagery gathered by the Orchestra, while effortlessly creative, is a gallery of contributions from the most important names in the free music area; too many great artists to be listed here – and they all deserve the same applause; but, to name just one, it is impossible to resist to Paul Rutherford’s captivating developments whenever he enters the scene. On his chest I appoint a symbolic medal to show my gratitude to all the members of the L.I.O., the kind of resistent warriors constantly trying to save today’s music from certain death.

LONDON IMPROVISERS ORCHESTRA / GLASGOW IMPROVISERS ORCHESTRA – Separately & together (Emanem)

I usually have a hard time in reviewing records by improvisation-based orchestras. Such is the wealth of circumstances, dynamics, instant thinking and abandoned rationality at work that defining the whole with three or four scribbled concepts sounds almost offensive to the players involved. In the liners, David Leahy correctly poses himself this question: “What is the role of a conductor with a group of talented improvising musicians, who have more than enough experience to not need someone in front of them telling them what to do?” Paraphrasing Leahy I’d ask myself how one should reasonably describe the meeting of two large groups including soloists of the calibre of Harry Beckett, Terry Day, Lol Coxhill, Evan Parker, Veryan Weston, Raymond MacDonald, Neil Davidson, to name a few only. Therefore, let me stick to sheer facts. The 2-CD set features the entire concert at the 2007 Freedom of the City by these entities in distinct combinations (LIO and GIO alone, plus an intertwining of both). What members and conductors alike were trying to concoct was a continuous flow of sound which, in different phases, is improvised or conducted. Not even the most expert ears can really determine when a setting is free and where conduction begins, although clues are definitely present. But we’re not here for guessing, thus the best alternative remains discussing this music as a natural phenomenon, forgetful of who’s there, only perceiving changes, eruptions and subversions similarly to the weather signs that make us close the windows when we realize that a storm is approaching. Let’s just say that the first disc is a little “theatrical” in some of its aspects (the participants use the voice too, for instance in Day’s “Too late, too late, it’s ever so late” which deals with human insensitiveness in climate change-related issues), while the second is essentially and inherently musical, the sonic events appearing and disappearing without an express notice of the instrumentalists’ operations, although one can appreciate their absolute dedication to the collective aim. Either way, and there were no doubts about it, these materials demand a lot from the players but especially from the audience. A single listen won’t do it – a minimum of five is required before starting to understand at least the basic connections.

SCOTT R. LOONEY – Repercussions (Edgetone)

An album for solo piano and hyper-piano (that means with semi-prepared elements and techniques) shows that Looney is one of those artists who can make his voice heard in a large crowd. Not a surprise that he has played with the best improvisers on the scene – Oliver Lake to Joe Morris to Henry Kaiser – and collaborates with contemporary dance companies such as Savage Jazz Dance. Gathering stylistic qualities that could be associated to people like Keith Tippett or, why not, fellow Edgetoner Thollem McDonas, Looney explores the instrument with the same audacity, fancy and perception while constantly keeping an eye on the overall scheme of things. Freelance runs and exploded harmonies appear and fade away, clouds pushed by powerful breeze. Significance hurtles out of the holes of boredom, the protagonist always in charge of his aesthetic establishment even when deciding to let the horses run faster. Timbral instabilities and crystalline chords alternate in differently charged settings, no surplusage of notes necessary to explain concepts that just flow from Looney’s mind as balls from an expert juggler’s hands, going up and down without falling on the floor. A style that’s as trenchant as classic, enclosing many facets of present-day pianism but sounding totally personal. Very good things indeed.

LOOPER – Squarehorse (Utan Titel / Absurd)

Those of you who listened to the wonderful “Radial” by Nikos Veliotis will be happy – just like me – to savour once again the magic potions of this sensible cello player, here in a trio with Ingar Zach (percussion) and Martin Küchen (sax). As in the previously quoted record, there’s a fantastic wealth of sustained arco trance; Looper, though, often mix these drones with placid yet ear-piercing frequencies, resulting in soundtracks for an imminent apocalypse, only once in a while interrupted by long moments of total silence where an already enhanced brain can regroup for a while and start again from zero. If you experience minimal improvisation like if you’re deep into meditating, this is one of those cases where one must wear the music all over the body: enjoy the vibrational impact of the cello, the energy channeled by the air blowing into the saxophone, the sparse blessings of a percussive path transforming into pure electric flow. Is this “sacred” music? Absolutely not – but when you play with serious dedication, the enchanting beauty comes out of her abandoned castle.

LOOPER + JOHN TILBURY – Mass (Esquilo)

If we look into a picture long enough, our mind is likely to notice impressions and particulars that do not exist in reality, just like it will generate imaginary patterns when we listen to repetitive music. The whole concept of “Mass” revolves around this experience, which – in my case – was one of deep transcendence and, although I’m adverse to this kind of overabused terminology, very near to pure meditation. This DVD contains two performances – from 2005 and 2006 in Oslo and Stavanger, Norway – by Martin Küchen (sax and pocket radio), Nikos Veliotis (cello) and Ingar Zach (percussion) with the addition of John Tilbury, naturally on piano. The video (realized by Veliotis) consists of a continuous superimposition of pictures, mostly based on sacred images and portraits; users can choose to accompany the visuals with one of the two audio tracks, both lasting almost one hour. The DVD also comprises three video extracts from the Stavanger concert, very useful to understand how the four artists move to elicit the often overwhelming drones and hums that characterize the most engrossing segments. But the real deal is listening to the music while staring at the screen, with all those colours and faces slowly morphing into each other in a perennial shift of masks that gradually lose their human features to assume the semblance of animals, leprechauns and demons but also seem to contain additional mini-countenances that appear and disappear, all of the above – let me stress this point – through sheer concentration towards the TV set and thanks to the great music produced by the quartet (in case you ask, I don’t drink, smoke or get stoned in any way). Just let your brain do the work, kaleidoscopic mutations and disfigured physiognomies contrapting and elongating in intriguing coalescences; the fabulous combination of piercing harmonics, lingual patterns, pulmonary exhalations and decadent inertness devised by Looper fuses magnificently with the typically subdued approach by Tilbury, who only once in a while releases some powerful low-register chords and a few rare arpeggios that remain suspended in between nowhere. But describing the music in detail would be foolish, as this is one of those instances in which the participation to the ceremony is not completely effective without the optical contribution, despite some contrary opinion that I read elsewhere. A veritable trip for ears and eyes, “Mass” instantly secures a place among my favourite EAI releases of all time.

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ – Untitled #119 (Lapilli)

I’m sitting in front of an audio representation of the minutes preceding the apocalypse and there’s no way someone can convince me to move. A little more than 17 minutes is enough for López to show, once again, why he’s so highly rated in today’s soundscaping: from total silence, Francisco nurtures a slowly growing mass of burning frequencies that make me think about a nuclear catastrophe; something you hold your breath for, rather than listening. Just when the explosion seems imminent, everything stops abruptly, leaving you in exclusive company of your body sounds. A terrific miniature masterpiece.

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ – Untitled (2004) (Moso)

While many composers struggle to find new ways and materials to aliment the flickering flame of their artistic void, López keeps releasing fascinating music without the need of deviating from his main path, which remains perfectly delineated by his creations, always full of unusual acoustic phenomena and distinctive soundscapes born from a series of raw sources recorded by himself or given to him by fellow sound artists. “Untitled (2004)” contains nine rousing examples of Francisco’s aesthetical point of view, including a fabulous homage to Pierre Schaeffer – “Untitled #163″ – which in less than 20 minutes juxtaposes finely detailed field recordings, silent reflections and subsonic movements establishing a direct connection with the core essentials of our biological entity. Several shorter tracks manage to keep us constantly receptive, the most emotional being “Untitled #161″, based on the pulse of human breath (by Cecile Martin); this piece seems to represent the perfect balance between man’s need of survival and the artist’s urgency to exorcise the unnecessary complexities of inner research; it’s just another enthralling chapter in one of the best recent works by López.

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ – El dia anterior a la emergencia de los adultos de magicicada (Purplesoil)

The music is there but only your house’s walls and selected parts of your auditive system respond to the connection. The piece lasts only a little more than 15 minutes, yet it is a masterpiece; a single subsonic drift comes out a little, then withdraws, then again returns to occupy the corners of the ceiling, slowly taking possession of your essence. Moving around the room, the sound becomes more intense or is almost completely cancelled in a sort of illusory phase whose gradual consumption is completed just when the body recognizes this throbbing code as familiar. Impossible not to be impressed by this game of contrasts between tension and comfort, which confirms López ‘s current state of grace. The “repeat” button is absolutely recommended.

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ – Untitled #164 (Unsounds)

Another impressive work by Francisco López, this time based on urban field recordings made in Brussels (together with TMRX, Johan Vandermaelen, Martiens Go Home and Building Transmissions) and reworked by the Spanish sound researcher to respond to a commission by Argos Festival in 2004. This composition is a game of contrasting energies taking their nourishment from the very silence they come from. The first part is built upon a deep pulse sounding like a sleeping giant’s heartbeat, a fabulously suspended sensation of invisible life happening under the surface of the unknown. About 20 minutes into the piece, the treated sounds of the city become a powerful wind whose impetus constitutes an ominous presage from which we feel strangely protected, like being wrapped by a thick cocoon – but not for long. Cyclical clicks and mechanical breaths bring us back to more concrete revelations while whooshing ectoplasms – apparently, running cars in tunnels – emerge as a charming element even if acting as a sort of distraction from the basic soundscape. The central section presents the strongest “industrial” intensities, whose hypnotic allure is soon replaced by ghost-like clouds of introspection, undercurrents of low frequencies and percussive clatters. City sounds are also perceptible as “presences” in the final movements, just like moans from the souls of mariners whose life was claimed by the sea; this is the most emotional section, a mass of droning streams and scents of desolation leading everything to the end.

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ – Untitled #180 (Alien8)

This time we got a slightly more agitated soundscape from López. Even if this composition has no shortage of long, breathtaking moments where we’re left alone within natural (or less) reverberations, subsonics and our own heartbeat, there is also an incredible amount of cut-and-paste of the most various sources, such as breaking glass, animal growls, closing doors, walking on snow, powerful winds. And many additional noises, often coming in fragments so short that we don’t have the time to understand what they are. As usual with the Spanish composer, the quality of the recording is at the highest level; the listener is subjected to a continuing series of changes in the sonic scenario, abrupt shifts that always seem to catch us off guard, forcing a mental reorganization. One tends to expect “the worst” even in the tranquil sections – and it usually happens. The piece ends with about five minutes of buzzing hiss, another enigmatic choice for the prolific López, a man that never releases anything under the “very good” grade.

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ – Lopez Island (Elevator Bath)

The title does not refer to a personal possession of the composer, it’s just an American island in the Pacific Ocean; the namesake album deals with piecing together sources recorded in that remote area during the winters of 1999 and 2000 and subsequently subjected to some degree of studio treatment. After a silent portion, we’re welcomed by sounds of raindrops, some of them heavier than others, thus causing sharp ticks and snaps that, in their pure nudity, surpass all the digital micromolecules heard in most laptop releases nowadays, all of this surrounded by perennial winds and distant washing. About 17 minutes into the piece, a short nocturnal segment introduces a series of unhappy sounding moans by some unidentified inhabitant of the forest. A typical segment of “López silence” divides this part from the next and longest one, which begins with something like looped and processed thunderstorm somehow dampened by the very same wind that rips through the majority of these recordings; it gradually rises both in volume and extraneous noisy appearances until it becomes a menacing – make that evil – presence whose voice is coloured with a metallic/shortwave-like gradation, accompanied by an ever-present rumbling foundation. Although recorded in an island, all of the above recalls urban desperation, as elliptical murmurs and flanged spirals of lamentations wrap us with an uncomfortable tissue. It finally cuts to silence again until the very last minute, in which a final helping of deeply affecting howls in a marine climate kisses us goodbye.

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ – Wind [Patagonia] (and/OAR)

This is the last CD that I listened to in 2007, right in the middle of the final December evening – so much for firecrackers and champagne – and the opener of the subsequent morning. While I’m writing, as it often happens, the windows are open and an icy winter breeze in a glowing sunny afternoon is being heard, the effect on the fallen leaves that of an irregular rustle interrupting the first day of January’s somnolent reprise of activities. From here, this is seen as the completion of one among the innumerable cycles of which our existence is full. In this same frame, Francisco López’s recordings of winds from the Argentine regions of Patagonia (Chubut, Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego) finalizes the triptych started in 1998 with “La Selva” and continued with “Buildings [New York]” in 2001. As he explains in the liners, the composer was (is) interested in “an extreme phenomenological immersion led by anti-rationality and anti-purposefulness” in a “world devoid of human presence”. López, a trained entomologist and accomplished deep listener of this planet’s many voices, is also among the very few who have an actual chance to experiment with the above described conditions, his recordings documenting situations where nature and self-consciousness become parts of a whole set of drastic states of mere being that only the fittest can endure. In a strictly “musical” sense, three basic kinds of wind are captured in this album: furiously ripping discharges that seem to destroy the microphone’s capsule, distantly roaring whooshes whose voice is akin to hearing a faraway jet, progressively calmer settings that close the show reducing the level of perception down to a typical “López silence”. It’s the depth of the implications that transforms a potentially normal document of natural sounds into a galvanizing, reinvigorating event. The Spanish soundscaper needs no additional words to highlight an already recognized mastery in this game.

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ – Live in Auckland (Monotype)

“Live in Auckland” was recorded at the School of Creative and Performing Arts of that city in 2004. Our favourite entomologist takes us by surprise at the beginning of the concert, almost instantly projecting the listeners in a thrumming, hissy, essentially industrial environment full of clanging and thudding eruptions. Quite a difference from the interminable gripping quietness which the Spanish usually subjects us to. About ten minutes into the performance everything stops abruptly to leave room to distant echoes of winds and insects – we’re back to classic López, my headphones accusing distortion from the inexorable whams that define this section. The intensity of the buzz increases, a sense of pre-explosion placing its hands on our throats, yet nothing happens. A series of irregular clatters is submerged by rapidly advancing drones that end suddenly in favour of stranger manifestations, something like bionic woodpeckers attacking long-suffering trees. Another pattern appears, followed by superimposed clock ticks in a truly surreal moment, whose hypnotic magic defines one of the best sections of the whole disc. The impressive mass of scarcely recognizable sounds shifting the track’s weight to the drone zone is also strategically placed, and extremely engrossing; yet there’s always something rumbling or mumbling somewhere, either underground or on the soundscape’s surface. The piece proceeds according to these systems and rules until the abrupt conclusion, a great aural experience without second thoughts. What’s to be learnt from this lesson is that one may try and recur to silence to be considered a serious composer these days, but it’s the method through which silence is evoked – even with sound and noise – that makes that artist special. Francisco López has been working on this for years now, the fruits of his research never resulting in unsatisfying music. You just got to be open to the inevitable surrounding din of human activities which, channelled in the right way, might near poetry sometimes.

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ – Untitled #188 (Con-V)

Approximately 72 minutes of the most typically unfathomable López in this edition, which comes in an entirely black digipack (it’s not the first time that a record by the Spanish composer is characterized by such a kind of exterior, a delight for finding the CDs amidst piles of thousands of releases indeed). The attention-grabbing feature in this circumstance coincides with the lack of absolute silences, the fundamental element that habitually distinguishes long fractions of this artist’s work. The quietest sections incorporate some sort of perceptible movement, too: might be an uneven breeze resembling a cross of spurious electrical energy and asymmetrical interference, or remote roaring presences that we won’t succeed in accurately deciphering. Suspensions that – like in every other subdivision – last for interminable instants, the following chunks either gradually introduced or suddenly appearing, just an abrupt cut to a new prospect. Interestingly enough, there’s also a revisiting of certain settings erected upon thumping rhythms made up of intimidating concurrences of urban noises (or so it seems – with FL one is never sure about anything, the man rendering singing birds akin to the murmur of a ghost). The mastery shown by López in connecting the right dots and lines even when the whole appears just as an untidy heap of clanks translates into this writer’s hypnotic somnolence, caressed by the ever present harmony underscoring that dominant amassing of hostile machines. Or are they?

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ / STEVE RODEN – Le chemin du paradis (Fario)

As always in the case of this kind of material, the debate is open: how does silence affect a composition? How can one accept a record that can be listened only at high volume, in headphones, or in utter silence? How can you judge emissions bordering on an infinite silent bliss? “Untitled n°129″ by López, contained here, lasts almost 30 minutes in which very few sounds can be heard, all at exceptionally low volume. Still, one can detect a rumbling underground vibration in the head, always fearing that something’s going to explode sooner than later. Roden’s “Slab/Tilt” is slightly more accessible, moving indescribable blowing electronics from the left to the right – and vice versa – in the stereo field. The collaborative track giving the record its name is the most “continuous” one, full as it is of low reverbs and lunar halos. At the end, I keep thinking that this is only another way of listening, for which we must increase our perception level. The jury is still out, but my own vote is always favourable to deafening silences.

FRANCISCO LÓPEZ / SCOTT ARFORD – Solid state flesh / Solid state sex (Low Impedance)

This double CD pairs two of the most eminent manipulators of expansions and contractions born from a competent work on electroacoustic derivations. In “SSF”, López explores a vast dynamic range, his phenomenal experience on the thresholds of audibility partially put aside in favour of a painstaking process of impressive modifications and overwhelming energies whose effect is comparable to a separation of your senses. Torrents of electricity, pumping lows and shattering vibrations take this music to the highest level of magnitude, putting López’s work in the same rank of John Duncan’s and Daniel Menche’s best; this is one of the most complete compositions I’ve heard from Francisco, his controlled disorder also being a powerful means of self-introspection. Arford’s “SSS” fuses more concrete sources with equally awesome low-frequency engineering; as opposed to his Spanish counterpart, Scott’s scenarios change abruptly, often surprisingly after our psyche is lulled during long moments of semi-displacement. Arford places his morphing sounds in an evolving framework of resonant interferences, hisses and utterances that have “anxiousness” spelled all over the place. Getting the brain and the auricular membranes used to this shifting bubbling takes its time – but once you learn going with this overloaded flow, the reward in terms of nerve power is a sure thing.

LOS ANGELES ELECTRIC 8 – Los Angeles Electric 8 (Self Release)

The name of the ensemble makes the intentions apparent: eight electric guitarists articulating digital dexterity through “classic vacuum tube amplifiers”. Ben Harbert, Felix Salazar, JohnPaul Trotter, Brandon Mayer, Marc Nimoy, Andy Nathan, Chelsea Green and Philip Graulty produce mostly clean or mildly saturated tones from their axes to tackle a variegated kind of repertoire that includes names such as Shostakovich and Mendelssohn (reproducing this kind of scores without descending into nonsensicality is not an easy task indeed – not to mention that, quite often, the originals sound ridiculous themselves by now – yet this group somehow succeeds) and compositions by Nathaniel Braddock, Randall Kohl and Wayne Siegel, the latter’s lengthy “Domino Figures” being the most interesting track of the program, a coalescence of modern minimalism and skeletal harmonies with lots of beautiful resonant halos. Braddock’s “III Tempered Lancaran” is clearly influenced by Balinese gamelan, the strange tunings making sure that the metallic qualities of the rhythmic pulse are improved, thus suggesting just intonation. The classics are finely executed but, for obvious reasons, the pathos deriving from these versions is negligible: LAE8 behave brilliantly, but I’d have a preference for them to focus exclusively on contemporary composers, as it’s there that collective spirit and solid skills get better highlighted. A pleasurable record, in any case.

HANNES LÖSCHEL – Messages (Extraplatte)

This CD demonstrates that Hannes Löschel is one of the best new music composers today. Fronting a quintet with keyboards, strings, electronics and bass clarinet, the Austrian explores the concept of the wrong/absent messages that we all find in our answering machine when back at home (in fact, the typical intervallic beeps and telephone noises are crawling under the music’s skin throughout). What we get is a very well conceived scheme of modern chamber music on the verge between score and improvisation, bathed – in typical Löschel style – in careful filtering and sampling backgrounds. The four movements are all extremely beautiful in their non-definition of a genre; the bass clarinet of Ernesto Molinari is brilliant whenever present, and Michael Williams’ cello is played with intelligence and heart. All instruments speak directly to the soul, even in the most difficult sections: in my book, that means excellence.

HANNES LÖSCHEL – Herz.Bruch.Stück (Loewenhertz)

I must admit that I’m particularly affectionate to Hannes Löschel’s music, not only for its undoubted quality but also because the Austrian was one of the very first artists reviewed in Touching Extremes in 2001, the year in which he kindly started to send me his ever-interesting works. Of course the pleasure of listening to Löschel’s releases remains intact to this day. “Herz.Bruch.Stück” is his most atypical project until now, defined as “a life’s journey from the wedding to the grave” in Peter Ahorner’s liners. This is better explained by the record itself, a splendidly executed melange of original compositions, traditional Viennese songs, rearranged pages from Schubert and Strauss’ repertoire and, needless to say, improvisation. The leader (on piano) is at the forefront of an octet formed by Klemens Lendl (voice, violin), Michael Bruckner (guitars), Walther Soyka (accordion), Karl Stirner (zither), Thomas Berghammer (trumpet, flugelhorn), Bernd Satzinger (bass) and Mathias Koch (drums). Gorgeous musicians, all of them, with a particular mention for Bruckner, owner of a technically gifted, literally unique guitar style (listen to his solo introduction in “Warum”, probably the best track of the CD). While many sections are strongly typified by Berghammer’s heavy-hearted trumpet playing, Lendl’s vocal timbre recalls Lars Hollmer, and it’s to the fans of that great Swedish artist that this album could appeal very much given its unpredictability, based upon a continuous genre-jumping even in the space of a single song. Dramatic modulations, theatrical crescendos mutating into slow-rock riffs, vibrating jazz moments and local folklore are masterfully mixed in something that may even sound “easy” at times, but certainly is not. It’s only the multi-faceted photograph of a hundred experiences, synthesized by the coherent knowledge of a young, remarkably mature composer.

HANNES LÖSCHEL / PAUL SKREPEK / MARTIN ZROST – Albert (Loewenhertz)

Starting with a pure jazz feel, the first moments of “Albert” could make you think that this is actually an old fashioned “live at Ronnie Scott’s” by a new trio of young turks; but when elegant piano chords are placed into infinite repeat by a loop, you start to realize that a strange dream is unfolding in front of your eyes. Albert is the name of an old New Yorker that used to tell his stories to Löschel when he stayed there; his voice can be heard in some of the tracks, speaking normally over an hypnotic background or completely modified by the trio’s machine dabbling. The CD often reaches the highest levels of sound treatment and – sonically speaking – is one of the most ear-pleasing among the ones produced by Hannes and his entourages, alternating static parts in which my head wanders around in semi-conscious state and direct, punchy slabs of found/sampled sounds and free percussion. To be listened at late night, in silence.

HANNES LÖSCHEL / ACHIM TANG / DAVID TRONZO – KINDS – The very life of arts (Loewenhertz)

Maximizing the potential of their wonderful eclecticism, Hannes Löschel, Achim Tang and David Tronzo sideswipe many different areas of contemporary music in an interesting coalescence of composed and improvised material. There is no dominant factor or genre, only a series of concentrated dialogues where the mainly percussive/prepared voice of Hannes’ piano and the strange machinations of Achim’s bass architectures introduce David’s elucubrations on his slide guitar, which certainly does not suffer from egotism, perfectly fitting in the sapient prose of this peculiar trio. Like in every scheme involving the Austrian composer, “easy” is not an adjective to be used as this music offers repeated changes of perspective, requiring the most concentrated approach to enjoy subtle intricacies and raw liquefactions which are rendered with total technical command.

LOS GLISSANDINOS – Stand clear (Creative Sources)

Kai Fagaschinski (clarinet) and Klaus Filip (sine waves) offer their gradual process of frequency disintegration through this meaningful duet, articulated in three movements. The amazing control of every minimal nuance by Fagaschinski guarantees photocell dynamics in sounds that are unbelievably surgical, sometimes barely audible while they mix with a surcharged silence, broken only by suffocated inner ear noises and – just maybe – by some skipping heartbeat. Filip moves his waves with molecular precision, remodeling the cerebral equilibrium while making wax residues of every malleable substance in a try for a controlled torture of the membranes, which vibrate until your audio memory tells them to go with the flow, without opposition. The duo obtains your full attention through a deceptive understatement, in which aggression is subtle, almost chemical; the outcome of these procedures is uneasily distant from the expected: a clear sign of progress.

RUSS LOSSING / MAT MANERI / MARK DRESSER – Metal rat (Clean Feed)

It is difficult to accept that music so deeply affecting has been recorded in a single session, which lasted less than four hours (I chuckle when I think of U2 taking years to release two arpeggios and three chords – but let’s not digress). In fact, the responsiveness between the players that characterizes “Metal rat” is on such a high level that it just sounds like it was pre-conceived or at least discussed in advance. No dominant voice here: Lossing plays in delicate, ever-conscious spurts that let us breath the rarefied air of instantaneous cleverness. Maneri’s unique microtonal phrasing makes a virtue of uncertainty, suspending every judgement or consideration about the path to follow until a moment later – but that moment is likely to bring more doubts, if not sheer sorrow. Dresser is one of the most discerning bass players in the world with a reason, his tone infusing the pieces with a touch of needed security while at the same moment seducing Lossing and Maneri’s voices with sympathetic veils of resonance. The music we receive is like an unexpected present, a virtual box containing the very things we needed in that particular moment. The language used by these artists belongs to the high spheres of improvisation, a combination of sadness, hopeful determination and clairvoyance which defines greatness, separating regular releases from rare jewels, of which “Metal rat” is certainly one.

LOW DYNAMIC ORCHESTRA – Low Dynamic Orchestra (Alice)

A masterful effort, mixing six improvisations that sound like they were composed and scraps from the repertoire of John Cage (“Five”), Cornelius Cardew (“Treatise”) and Mats Persson (four pieces among the best of the CD) whose scores are open to a kind of regulated freedom. The quintet comprises Kjell Nordeson (percussion), Sten Sandell (piano, harmonium), Amit Sen (cello), Peter Söderberg (lute, teorbo, guitar) with the illustrious guest presence of double bassist and composer Stefano Scodanibbio, whose marvellous tone permeates the whole album, wrapping it in a massive yet delicate cocoon of textural fascination that includes magnificent harmonics and roars from some sort of underworld; one can almost smell the wood in his “Bass solo”. Sandell’s piano depicts figurations whose knottiness is directly proportional to his harmonic expertise; never expect to hear a platitude coming from those hands. A special mention must also be made for Söderberg, whose sober playing is splendidly complementary to any direction the group decides to follow. What really stands out is the balance reached during the combined improvisations, detailed and unobtrusive as an autumnal sunset in which every tree is surrounded by an oblique light exalting the different gradations of its leaves. The Orchestra creeps out of your speakers with elegant needleworks that just wait for the right receiver to be appreciated in all their seductive grace, in one of those records we feel the need to return to on a regular basis.

BJÖRN LÜCKER – Aquarian drum song (Creative Sources)

An academically trained percussionist and composer, Lücker is a free-lance artist who has collaborated in the most disparate settings – jazz to rock, improvisation to fully fledged orchestras. His knowledge is well perceivable throughout “Aquarian drum song”, a three-movement composition which, apart from very few piano notes, was completely performed on drums, cymbals, timpani and percussion. I don’t possess the technical expertise needed to read a drum score (assuming that this piece was scored) or understand how many hours of practice or what level of skill development is necessary to execute this work. I can only suggest that it does sound composed, not improvised, and pretty linear in its components – even in the most agitated intersections, which do not abound. What’s also to be said is that listening to a long piece of similarly conceived and arranged music is demanding in terms of patience, especially because of a timbral palette which can’t certainly be defined as “wide”. Lücker seems rather interested in the structure of the “song”, not too much in colour (which is visible, but not as prominent as its rhythmical essence). Therefore, at times one is left with an impression of having witnessed the unfolding of a refined exercise more than a proper creation. Of course this is not the case, and the seriousness of the effort is not in discussion. Let’s just say that a bit of additional complexity and a little less duration would have helped to avoid the sense of flatness creeping out here and there.

LUNAR ABYSS DEUS ORGANUM – Brusnika (Drone)

A 7-inch by Russian Evgeny Savenko, “Brusnika” presents two tracks full of different strokes. Mixing synthesized, atmospheric and vocal sources Savenko creates nice multiform structures enriched by a sort of mystic feel that – for once at least – does not sound like a trendy posture. In this music one can detect various recollections, most of them probably involuntary, incarnating an amorphous entity that meshes Feldman’s “Three voices” for Joan LaBarbara and whiffs of electronica from the seventies, everything enhanced by a competent exploration of the low-frequency abyss (pun intended).

LUNT – Broken words and lost answers (Hitomi)

This nice artifact is my first meeting with Gilles Deles’ music under the “Lunt” moniker; in fact, Gilles has already released several records since 2002. Basically working with guitars, electronics, small noises and ambience, Lunt creates repetitive atmospheres with looping devices without sounding too derivative, if not for very rare moments somehow bringing back a few Eno/Fripp memories, promptly faded after a while. The best comes in most static tracks, such as the very beautiful “I left the light to fade behind my windows”, where everything seems imprisoned under a melancholy spell; also the closing track “Paradox of floating arrow” stands as highly introspective and must be enjoyed – like the rest of the record – at low volume in “ambient” setting for best results. Never completely tranquil, Lunt’s palette has many new openings I’d like to see exploited in future releases – maybe adding even more “static guitar” layers?

RENÉ LUSSIER – Le Trésor De La Langue (La Tribu)

Examples of unjustly forgotten artists abound in my memory, one of the most recurrent being René Lussier, an adroit composer and accomplished guitarist from Québec who, instead of receiving accolades for outstanding merits, to this day is shamefully overlooked: no articles about him on hip magazines, no release advertised if not in low-diffusion publications. Not a word wasted for Conventum either, the magnificent RIO-derived group formed by our man in the 70s that the “progressive” world seems content to ignore (although someone still dips the pen in honey for overvalued byproducts like Stormy Six, go figure). Hell, even the CD reissues of Conventum’s two LPs went out of print in the blink of an eye. Over the course of 30-plus years, Lussier – who turned fifty last year – has produced a formidable body of work, scoring soundtracks, operating in the acousmatic field, releasing solo albums that stand proudly in the élite of probing music, the large part issued by Ambiances Magnétiques (trust me: you can’t actually get any respect without a copy of “Le Corps De L’Ouvrage”).

Now is your last chance to jump on this creaking and scarcely populated bandwagon. As a matter of fact, this is probably THE reissue of 2007, re-establishing “Le Trésor De La Langue” as the most recognized among the Canadian’s records while adding TWO discs worth of unheard tapes that complete the project, attributing the definitive shape to something that started, pretty timidly, in 1986. That was when Lussier got illuminated on what he calls “a sonic road movie”, a conception that would use French language – a fundamental issue in Québec, where the French community is under the constant menace of being more or less overwhelmed by American habits and idiom – as the basis of a musical piece. The “treasure of language”, according to its seeker, was to be found by listening to people talking in the streets, on the phone, in a bar – but also to the library recordings dealing with that area’s folklore and politics. The composer says: “It’s remarkable what melodies we speak to each other every day! And no one’s the least bothered by these phrases, but transpose them into music and they can become surprising, even disturbing! “

“Disturbing” for this writer is the scary, if apparently light-hearted command shown by the involved musicians (both the “names”, which include Jean Derome, Fred Frith and the late Tom Cora, and the less known, equally magnificent Claude Beaugrand, Richard Desjardins, Alain Trudel, Claude Simard, Pierre St-Jak, Jean-Denis Levasseur, Céline Chaput) in transforming the “treasure” into a complex, furiously odd-metred polyphony of fantasy-drenched sketches, ever-changing flows, intricate counterpoints that assimilate this Frankenstein-like creature to certain Zappa (who, in truth, had roughly tried the same approach in 1983, Steve Vai’s guitar doubling FZ’s improvised vocals on “The Man From Utopia”), and also to Henry Cow, Albert Marcoeur, 5 UU’s, atonal pop and disjointed jazz, the whole sounding simply like René Lussier. Difficult music with a purpose, the penetrating, lucid vision of someone who does not feel comfortable in stylistic clothing. Hypothesizing the hundreds of hours needed to put all those “irregular” voices on staves is enough to make one reel; hearing the stunning final result could have anybody out on their feet. Distinguishable in the source materials are Charles de Gaulle’s “Vive le Québec libre!” speech from 1967, and a reading of FLQ’s manifesto. Everything rocks in a different way after the “Lussier treatment”. Still, the truly puzzling situations involve “regular folk conversation”, male/female exchanges highlighted by compositional choices in opposite timbral ranges – flute vs trombone, bass vs cello, and so forth. Astonishing stuff whose richness, ironically, can’t really be described by flimsy words.

The archival discs feature a more recent track, “La mort du Concorde” (dedicated to Pierre Bourgault) and a “best of” collage of live performances (1993-94) of “Le Tresor”, obviously resulting slightly different given the technical impossibility of reproducing the original’s exact details on stage, despite the occasional appearance of snippets from the studio album (mostly synchronized by Bob Ostertag’s expert sampling). The “treasure” refracts a different light, pungent irony and enthusiastic fervour substituted by an almost bitter tendency to dissonance and closure. This notwithstanding, the playing remains amazing throughout. The concert fragments are seamed to selected parts of the soundtrack to “Le trésor archangel”, a 1996 documentary by Fernand Bélanger dedicated to the venture.

I had not been listening to “Le Trésor De La Langue” for years, yet this is one of those albums that overcomes the “test of time” commonplace; the additions are deeply meaningful, not previously discarded accessories refurbished for the occasion. The cultural weight of this opus is heavy, now like then. If René Lussier were to be remembered for a single affirmation, this must be it. Here’s to hoping that this superb re-edition will help in giving him his due, for this is mind-stimulating, intrusive music that should receive a much wider exposure.

LUTNAHIMAT – Kleine Mietzekatze (Entr’acte)

In the unique series of 3-inch CDs by this intriguing label comes this 13-minute single piece of hypnosis that sounds like a cross of Nurse With Wound and Cranioclast in their most minimalist maquillage. It is all based on a strange, involving cycle of repetitive low frequencies spiced with scraps of slowed down taped voices (luckily, just a little, as this is one of the things that I like less in experimental music at any level) and something like a pitch-transposed looped feedback. A humming deep pulse in the background completes this nerve-rubbing experience, once again showing Entr’acte’s will of dealing with many different fields of contemporary electronica. To be put in “repeat” mode, ad libitum.

LUV ROKAMBO – Maze (Public eyesore)

Japanese improvisers Toru Yoneyama and Osam Kato are Luv Rokambo. This absolutely lo-fi CD captures pretty well the essence of their music, which in my opinion has solid foundations that need to be developed and carefully crafted. Through instruments and several toys – plus percussives – the duo ranges from almost silent and lulling atmospheres, based on plucked and arpeggiated strings, to distorted washes of echoing guitar and suffering, free-sounding vocals. I’d like to hear more of them, but above all I’d hope to listen to a better-quality recording to get all their details in full.

LUV ROKAMBO – Do the glimpse (Public eyesore)

Yoneyama and Kato are quite a duo: with just guitar, vocals, keyboards and toys they’re able to raise some serious psychedelic hell. Meandering through repetitive trance mayhem, native indian-like chanting, bastard rhythms, noisy assaults, Luv Rokambo manage to fill the gap between Keiji Haino and Merzbow, never disguising their almost naive attitude – better still, making a major force point of it. Ear-flogging segments explode after long hypnotic parts in a dissonant river that, even in a lo-fi setting, is floriferous and full of micro-organisms apt to fill your room with good, tasty soundcurrents difficult to be contained by any sort of floodgate.

SU LYN – Clay angels (Bruce’s Fingers)

A peculiar record produced by Simon H. Fell (who also plays in it), “Clay angels” is a collection of lunatic songs by vocalist Lyn, moving along coordinates which I have not been able to link to much else; the nearest comparison that came to my mind is Barbara Gaskin’s work in duo with Dave Stewart, but Lyn’s material is much more “tangential”, based as it is on a 4-track cassette aesthetic principles and rather ingenue dreamy lyrics. Every once in a while, the music opens up to “regular” chords and progressions, yet most tracks are based on scarce dissonant strokes, preferably from samplers or keyboards played by Lyn and Fell. Stuart Braybrooke on drums and Roger Chatterton programming rhythms complete the lineup of this atypical – even for Touching Extremes’ standards – record, made of recollections, whispers and interesting melodies but also of strange fastidious arrangements.

RAYMOND MACDONALD / GÜNTER BABY SOMMER – Delphinius & Lyra (Clean Feed)

A hi-energy duo that’s also capable of infusing refinement and reflection in their music, which is a first-class mélange of robust tone, expert drumming, tribal expression and free jazz. MacDonald has recently come to be known as an accomplished instrumentalist, having collaborated with names of the caliber of Keith Tippett, Maggie Nicols and Lol Coxhill; besides, he’s a psychologist working with sound applied to mentally handicapped people. Over the course of these eight tracks he often lets his channels completely open to spontaneous manifestations of vitality, under the guise of vocalizations, utterances and laughs. Still what strikes the most is the fervor of his saxophone playing, which presents all the right proportions needed for him to be recognized as a great soloist, a mix of strength and finesse that gives birth to technically advanced, yet extremely fresh-sounding excursions in the most exciting improvisational meanders. The dexterous capabilities of Sommer, rightly defined a “monument” in the press release, are definitely a stimulating term of comparison for his younger comrade, potent rolls, multiform accompaniments and African-influenced patterns always remaining perfectly delineated even when the excitement of the moment is fully visible, at times almost overwhelming (“Down at The Tonne” kicks some serious ass). It’s difficult to dig out something really original from a percussion/reed juxtaposition, but MacDonald and Sommer have achieved a functional formula to maximize the fruits of their healthy-minded conversation in an album that sustains the weight of reiterated listens, each time yielding new discoveries and refreshed pleasure.

YOSHIO MACHIDA – Hypernatural #3 (Baskaru)

Third volume of the “Hypernatural” series, started in 1997 and to date culpably ignored by your reviewer, this CD from Japanese Machida identifies oblivion as its core notion. “Nature consists of a myriad of different memory-oblivion circles”, the composer writes before applying a knowledgeable touch of magic to a cycle of field recordings, mostly captured while involved in international cooperation in locations such as Tanzania and Myanmar. Machida knows his tools inside and out, working with steel pans and regular instruments besides Max/MSP and Live4, being perfectly conscious of how often a circumstance should be recurring in a mix, applying the right processes for a thorough decontextualization of the same, the powerful effects of a source rendered unrecognizable at the basis of the whole. This music is not what we’re used to call “evocative”, though, as the composer largely (but not exclusively) prefers suggesting a primary shape, a morphing glimpse of audio non-verité that must somehow be finished by the listener’s imaginativeness. The upshot is an electroacoustic blend where material foundation and inspirational emotion work in concert to aliment the will of finding smoothness in what appears unreachable at a first glance, that zone of our brain which we never visit but sometimes spits out, unsolicited, painful recollections of something that wasn’t actually experienced. Sounds acknowledged yet unfamiliar, an abnormal disorientation that’s also among the best places to be lost in.

MACHINEFABRIEK + STEPHEN VITIELLO – Box music (12k)

Dutch sound artist Rutger Zuydervelt (aka Machinefabriek) got in touch with Richmond, Virginia’s Stephen Vitiello in occasional fashion while exchanging emails for the purchasing of a CD; the idea for an active musical collaboration came shortly thereafter. Usually, a long-distance artistic rapport is based on the swapping of files; instead, the couple decided to reciprocally send boxes containing the most disparate materials to make music with (which, essentially, are listed in the title tracks). The sources include everyday objects such as egg slicers, chocolate sprinklers (!) and plastic bags and more strictly sonic derivations like broken records, speakers and cassettes. The resulting amalgamation is fairly thought-provoking, but at the same time completely in line with the canons of Taylor Deupree’s imprint. Ensconced behind a timid notion of dynamic ambient, these sounds walk surreptitiously amid flashes of concreteness, still maintaining a veil of mysterious intangibleness for the large part of the record. Duskiness of all meanings, qualms about an unpredictable future; there’s no actual description for this music if not a sheer association to familiar states of mind. The whole without an ounce of nostalgic factors, the presence of warped vinyl notwithstanding. Those boxes were enshielding the foundations of a strange kind of awareness-enhancing allure, nourished by subliminal pulses and far-flung recollections immersed in slightly corrosive digital liquids.

MACHINE FOR MAKING SENSE – The act of observation becomes the object itself (Rossbin)

The quartet of Stevie Wishart (hurdy gurdy, vocals + electronics), Amanda Stewart (voice + text), Rik Rue (analog and digital manipulations) and Jim Denley (wind instruments + electronics), Machine For Making Sense are intent in the exploration of “relations between linguistics, poetry, speech, music and notions of sound, science and politics”. They have been active as a sonic project since 1989, after meeting at the Ars Electronica festival, progressively orientating their work towards site-specific situations. Describing these creations is not simple, although familiar factors are all but frequent and a good portion of the ingredients is detectable. For starters, let’s just say that MFMS elaborate snippets – instrumental or vocal, yet essentially snippets. There doesn’t seem to be an actual hierarchy in these structures: successions of events cause listeners to focus the attention on what happens in the very moment, without letting them think about what could follow, leaving no apparent trace of the previous happenings. The voice-related aspects are definitely central, always tackled with unusual intelligence: no useless improvisation, no stupid cry-outs, no virtuosity. Instead, labial segmentation, rhythmic glottology, gulping instability – in a word, almost total unpredictability of what a human body can throw out as shapes of phonemic diffusion. Denley’s winds are one of the few traces of long emission, held tones and upper partial sapience – and also “customary” extended techniques – accompanying the irregular constructions of his companions’ elucubrations in the rare moments where the whole might be smelling like a well-known brew. The electronic element is intelligently applied – utterly invasive or a little phosphorescent according to the circumstance, gloriously at the forefront in the final track “Observance 11”. As it happened with another Rossbin release – Alessandro Bosetti’s unsettlingly wonderful “Il fiore della bocca” – this CD is more something to reason about than a sheer “record to enjoy”. Still, as a listening object per se it stands among the most satisfying – and original, if you will – listening experiences of the last two or three years.

MAGICICADA – Everyone is everyone (Public Guilt)

The press notes narrate that, in order to spread his music around, Christopher White (aka Magicicada) dumped 25 copies of his “Static line” CDR without permission in the avantgarde bin at Tower Records. The 25 unsuspecting buyers who took the risk found just one of the many facets of this Atlanta artist, who is also a sound designer and photographer. “Everyone is everyone” is variegated, brisk and well crafted, a teapot of deviated psychedelia, rancid electronica and sounds coming from forgotten offshoots of Ed Wood’s “Plan 9 from outer space”, all of the above floating in a broth of Biota and Zoviet France with exhausted batteries. Using dozens of acoustic and electric instruments, manipulating tapes, voices and elastic looping, deforming most sources until an imminent overload, Magicicada succeeds by not taking himself too seriously; his music maintains that “homemade vibe” that makes me prefer this CD to hundreds of “one-zither-note-in-a-300-second-digital-reverb” releases dressed in Zen philosophy but totally meaningless. At least, White lets us share some of his fun – and the drones of “Cause” are blood-icing in their beauty.

MAGWHEELS – Evebuildingbomb (Ad Noiseam)

David Sullivan is Magwheels. Announced by a wonderful cover – a little girl looking up the sky while holding tight to her doll – this is a strong statement, by all means. Guitar sounds come from everywhere, creating waves of distortion alternating with washes of chordal superimpositions. The wall of sound produced by Magwheels in his deepest moments is so massive that you can hardly realize what’s going on, while your speakers struggle to bear the low frequencies of all those powerful drones crawling around. This record won’t leave you indifferent, one way or another: its violent kind of attack, though sweetened by several more lyrical sections, is gifted with a raw beauty that will repeatedly ask for your attention.

MAGWHEELS / STONE GLASS STEEL – Pane (Ad Noiseam)

Operating on the thin border that separates dark ambient and noise treatment, Magwheels (David Sullivan) specializes in a cross of onrushing grey areas of harmonically suspended soundscapes and cold glances to desolation, this last character nearing him to the best “post-industrial” projects without losing an ounce of his distinctive traits. Sullivan’s new tracks are a collection of presages, a handsome wealth of creativity through guitars, samples, field recordings and computer. Stone Glass Steel’s work on this CD is admirable; Philip Easter puts some magic dust to Magwheels’ entire output, reassembling it into a new hydro-electric central of spectral unpredictable chords and powerful droneworks. Definitely a major result, where Sullivan puts the fundamental seeds and Easter grows the plant to its full beauty. “Pane” is best listened to when the sky is full of huge, menacing clouds.

RUDI MAHALL – Solo (Psi)

Entirely performed on bass clarinet, these seven tracks by Mahall tell a lot about his ability to communicate via angular messages, calls and responses, pauses, short melodies. Sometimes he seems to play the speech of a bird, but most of all Rudi is extremely conscious of the limits of his instrument, which paradoxically ignite his determination to the point of ignoring them. Occasional spurts of harmonic flotsam and irregular multiphonics cause a slight difficulty in the translation of these particular codes; the improbable patterns and configurations of the clarinet’s lines mesh very well with a little bit of voice – a mix of deep breath and grunt – that Mahall adds to the recipe. This music’s physical presence is not huge, yet it sinuously penetrates both mental attitudes and domestic corners, establishing a closeness which grows up with the passage of time, finally convincing even the most cynical listener.

ASHIS MAHAPATRA – Orange of (True-False)

Debut release by an Indian musician whose creations are guitar loop-based transitions through various states of gradual alteration of otherwise pretty regular harmonic figurations. To me, the difference between listening to “Orange of” by headphones and from the speakers is evident, and I definitely have a preference for the latter; in such a fashion, the rather simple structures of Mahapatra’s tracks fuse in a mire of fuzzy waves, interlocking patterns and hazy repetitions that work well as an accompanying background or – if you’re in the right mood – hypnotic distraction from reality. I’ve already found several comparisons in the press, the most common being Fennesz, and we’re indeed not too far from there, even if this music is a little more commentary-oriented and probably less profound. Aidan Baker it ain’t, either. We’re talking of a nice album whose straightforwardness makes its undulating character the reason for a good try, without too many expectations but in the certainty of appreciating the honest effort of a sensible artist.

TONY MALABY / WILLIAM PARKER / NASHEET WAITS – Tamarindo (Clean Feed)

Tony Malaby’s playing calls your attention violently without sounding brutal. One just needs to leave material things going their way and dive down in the flow, especially when his soprano starts dictating the rules of an otherwise untranslatable jargon, where notes are not squandered around but are given as precious presents in a beatitude of furious consciousness and linear home runs. The rhythm section of Parker and Waits endorses the saxophonist’s vision with the ease that’s typical of trustful comrades, each one influenced by a different credo which, miraculously, reveals itself to be the same for the whole trio at last. The six tracks of “Tamarindo” fly away shortly, mixing a juvenile-like indifference to danger and the rapacious hunger of those jazz players who know, deep in the heart, that they’ll still need to learn something at the end of the path they’re following now. Music that invalidates the theory according to which inundating someone with ideas equals rendering the audience frustrated. In this case, it’s our body-and-soul totality that asks for more, be it Malaby’s whirlwind of prattle and invocation, Parker’s growling similarity to a severe father reproaching a son, Waits’ limb-stretching labour that refuses to negotiate with percussive cheapness. A sample of improvisational purity that must not pass unobserved, standing amidst the overall best Clean Feed releases – no questions asked.

RADU MALFATTI / ILYA MONOSOV – Radu Malfatti / Ilya Monosov (Bremsstrahlung)

As all the double-name releases in this label’s series, these two discs come in a square metal box with archival cards as inserts. Radu Malfatti’s “Discrete moments” – erroneously indicated as “Selbander” in some of the copies – features Nikos Veliotis’ grey-and-lead cello amidst long (VERY long) silences, ruptured by the appearance of mournful harmonics and whispered drones that sound like if they were recorded near an urban traffic area. The expectation gets at times overwhelming during the interminable portions of total hush, but I’d gladly put this piece in infinite repeat mode, if only to listen to those fabulous arco insufflations. Ilya Monosov’s “Music for listening” is computer-and-trumpet extreme reductionism: again, long silences and sporadic emissions, some of them pretty polite, others slightly distorted, all very short. It lasts about 13 minutes and I tend to consider it as a nice, funny game rather than a real “composition”. Overall, an interesting pairing of not-too-distant conceptions of new music, but in this case one of the parts is decidedly superior to the other.

RADU MALFATTI / MATTIN – Whitenoise (w.m.o./r.)

Consisting of two pieces about 20 minutes long, “Whitenoise” is one potent excursion into petrifying umbrae. While the first half is sort of a “question/answer” between ectoplasmic presences manifesting themselves in between an overwhelming silence, the second track is more of a continuum where Malfatti’s airy textures and Mattin’s thinking memories create a tapestry that’s a cross between a distant sea and an even more distant highway, both listened at night from a corn field. When the end is about to come, a stroke of noise introduces to new frequency drenchings, a mixture of crickety tongues, hums and glass-perforating overacutes counteractive to each other, yet impeccably sheltering me from any movement I may have wanted to make towards elsewhere. Help yourself through broken nothingness.

RADU MALFATTI / MATTIN – Going fragile (Formed)

Clusters of quietness. A concept that many years ago would have been object of derision but today – thanks to recording like “Going fragile” – is the basis of a movement consisting of almost no movements. These improvisations, recorded in October 2005 in Austria and Italy, are quite different in their structure; the Vienna segment is made of long silences broken by Malfatti’s soft breath and murmuring gurgles, along with Mattin’s feedback taking different identities, from short shocks to promiscuous frequencies and again to abnormal air currents. The track recorded in Tarcento is (a little) more extroverted, being for its large part characterized by a sort of communion between the sources, which seem to privilege a parallel interaction yielding a caressing layering of barely touched tones, unlikely harmonics and the weak distant noise of what sounds like an amplified fan. This music’s depth makes sure that finding words to describe it become an almost impossible challenge.

ROBERTO MALLO – Vribación (Taumaturgia)

Mallo is a drummer, and this is indeed a 34-minute album for solo drums and percussion, part of it (…or everything?) recorded live, with just a modicum of electronics. Once upon a time I’d have killed to hear a record like this, as drums were my very first instrument as a kid. Now it’s a little different, but let me tell you: this CD will not last in our perennial memories, yet this man can play. We’re not witnesses to a lacklustre set of thuds and crashes, or the attendants of an accelerated course on paradiddling dullness; this music is performed with gusto and, quite often, an adequate compositional logic underscoring even the most repetitive sections. The tension of the skin, the smell of the wood, some feedback and a bit of sample-and-hold recurrence, straightforwardness all around and, in general, an innocent sense of lack of restrictions and freedom from rules made me appreciate the effort enough.

MANDARIN MOVIE – Mandarin Movie (Aesthetics)

Rob Mazurek’s new project is full of chaotic fury, unrepressed rage and a high degree of raw beauty. This sextet (Mazurek plus Alan Licht, Matt Lux, Steve Swell, Jason Ajemian, Frank Rosaly) starts from rusted fragments of non-existent themes to produce hellish cries from distorted sound treatments and mangled dissonant chords played belly-ached in full turbulence mode. At times sounding like a three-legged cross of Fred Frith’s Massacre and Mnemonists’ first utterances, Mandarin Movie also have a sweeping urge of continuous migration from elegance per se, preferring instead the blinding lights of a kaleidoscopical evisceration in order to let everyone know their music’s enormous staying power; just listen to the final track “The highest building in the world” – then don’t talk for at least a couple of hours.

MARC MANNING – A skeleton, soon and then forever (Dragon’s Eye)

“Life is only a fraction of the time that the body endures on earth”. That is the concept behind this CD by Marc Manning, a San Francisco artist and musician whose work has been produced under various aliases and is defined as a “veteran of several Philadelphia atmospheric bands” (although the names “The legend of Boggy Creek” and “Everything is fine” don’t report to my memory). This could be described as an ambient/installation album based on a mixture of clean and just slightly saturated guitar tones, overlapping and superimposing until a wavering sea of chimes, plucks and notes is generated. Many records have utilized these means to arrive to the same shores, and Manning is not exactly innovative in using his bag of tricks that contains no actual trick. Most of these wanderings revolve around the standard six-string tuning (namely the typical open E chord) and there’s no way – especially for guitarists – to avoid a sense of “extremely well known”, to use kind words. We can’t really say that this is a bad record, as there are sections that gently accompany your activities without disturbing. But the whole results rather inoffensive to these ears: a few changes should have been introduced along a path of over 50 minutes. Exclusively for collectors.

MARC MANNING / YANN NOVAK – Pairings (Dragon’s Eye)

It’s been a long time, but I can finally start a review by using the dreaded word “ambient” again. That’s right, “Pairings” – a series of elaborations for electric and acoustic guitars and voice (Manning, aka Heavy Lids) and laptop computer (Novak) – could easily be placed in that zone especially because of its basic melodic and harmonic content (with a couple of intensely droning allusions: the second part of “Pairing 1”is splendid in that sense) which “showcases the tender relationships between songs, instruments and musicians”. Hold your horses, though – it’s not really all sugar and candy: the processing work that Novak applies to the sources, which allows the material to remain in a safety area of reverberating consonance, sometimes becomes a way of disturbing an otherwise excessive calmness. These hazy guitar waves undergo slight discharges, minimal fragmentation, discreet pitch transposition while maintaining their essential placidity, letting us enjoy the “barely there” presence of the music, halfway through a backward rubbing of our securities and the peek-a-boo appearance of sonic leprechauns that seem to have fun by rotating knobs and slides when the artists are turned somewhere else. This element of controlled intermission is what distances this release from the mountain of useless records systematically churned out by the frequenters of this genre. Instead, this CD is intriguing enough for at least two consecutive spins at late night.

MANPACK VARIANT – Sticky wickets (Digitalis)

Everything that gets touched by someone belonging to Peeesseye’s genealogic tree is transformed in muddy rust, delicious electroacoustic vomit, devastating blackouts of those parts of the brain that decide cheap shots towards fellow humans. Manpack Variant (Jaime Fennelly and Chris Peck) are no exception. Coming in a sleeve whose artwork (by Jason McLean) is nothing short of delirious, this artifact presents seriously distorted hypnotic treatments for the neurons of those who still want to do something different from spending years of their lives learning how to cut human resources in relation to a budget. No instrumentation is given – guitars must be there, though, and lots of pedals too – but it doesn’t matter. This is an utter demonstration of brute ignorance about what’s commonly intended as “beauty”, a pissed-off hymn to bad behaviour that might cause damage to the ears if the headphone’s level is excessive (no kidding, folks: be careful, these guys don’t give a damn if your nephews will have to use the language of signs when trying to communicate). Acrid electricity choking stomach and neck like a poisoning solution, with a few exceptions (the subterranean hum at the beginning of “AC Ferries”, for example – I’ll leave to you the pleasure of discovering what comes after). Dangerous stuff for people who cry easily, indigestible for those in search of a guru, thoroughly incomprehensible for the ones who get next to enlightenment every six hours or so, but whose only interest is money.

LIONEL MARCHETTI – Dans la montagne (Ki Ken Tai) (Chloe)

Chloe presents us with a 3-inch CD containing an impressive 1996 short composition of musique concrete by Marchetti, mostly built upon human desperation and pain materializing themselves through heartaching cries and whiplash-like percussive cracks over an unstable background of haunting vocal “presences”, whose timbral range goes from birds through malevolent spirits. The twelve minutes keep the attention alive throughout, never losing the grip on our tense nerves thanks to a constant momentum that seems to put even the expert listener in a sensational jeopardy. An emotionally charged, very touching piece.

AL MARGOLIS / IF, BWANA – Rex Xhu Ping (Pogus)

Through his amazing detachment and synthetic focus fused with a maniacal analysis and placement of every single sonic detail, once again Al Margolis has found a way to tell us something worthy of “Magna cum Laude” appreciation, such is the uneradicable beauty of his freakish conglomerates of musical literature edging the boiling waters of acousmatic autism. “Natraj” and the alluring “Frog field” are deviated specimens of hunchbacked minimalism, “Bwana style”; instead, “Tattooed love muffins” sees the scarce light of mutilated speech in a crescendo of creative processing and piercing frequencies – yet, it still sounds like a static block of constantly changing coloured auras. “Cicada #5″ is an engrossing performance of Adam Bohman’s talking tapes accompanied by a dark underground electronic background, while “Quaderni” is a tape/voice piece exploring more oneiric realms, even if it has a degree of “psychedelic” temperature in its anxious oscillations. But my overall favourite track is “Oy Vey, Angie”, where a small group of loonies – “Orchestra D’Fou” – starts from scratch in slowly taking your cerebrum away with a delicious ode to aural mucilage or – if you prefer – a meditation on the contortion of a blind creature’s fantasy stimulated by nine entities use their improvising sagaciousness while locked in a tanked aquarium.

AL MARGOLIS / IF, BWANA – An innocent, abroad (Pogus)

Idiosyncratic as hell, Al Margolis’ music must have told something strange to the mind of some director at WDR Köln Radio, commissioners of the American composer in 2006. Upon hearing the material, the liners explain, they stated that it sounded too “new music-y”, deciding against broadcasting it. Did these people really believe that If, Bwana would supply them with a neo-classic score? As Mr. Wilson said, god only knows. The CD features two compositions, both based on Lisa Barnard’s utterances. The title track, subdivided in four movements, was generated by a 16-minute improvisation that AM/IB “duplicated and extended”; then he gave different tracks to flutists Jacqueline Martelle and Jane Rigler to interact with, assembling all the parts in a nightmarish patchwork complete with electronic treatments of Lisa’s vocal trips. The result is a mix of XX century avant-gardism and lysergic atmospheres, a dissonant sinuousness that could be difficult to digest for newcomers, certainly not for those in the know of this man’s artistic consistency throughout an unlikely career. It works even better at whisper volume, functioning as a series of ghostly presences that seem to come out of the remote corners of a room accompanied by delirious tweets and gurgling moans. The final and shorter selection “Issue” sees Barnard and Margolis alone – voice cum electronics and processing. It’s a gorgeous piece, halfway through the lamentation of my cat Jerry when his stomach suffers after eating a rat (I’m not kidding: he emits a modulated “oyoyoyoy” that verily recalls fragments of this work) and a drugged meeting of yodelling muezzins about to fall into convulsions. What I love most in this man’s oeuvre is exactly the eternal suspension between intense experimentation and the will of trying solutions that no academic institution will ever accept as “serious”. Needless to say, for this reviewer “academia delenda est”.

BOB MARSH – Viovox (Public Eyesore)

Thanks very much to Bob Marsh for having written my review, since everything that happens in this CD is perfectly described in the sleeve notes, including the explanation of the ever-present peculiar vocalizations. What? I can’t do this? OK. Let me start with the instrumentation: voice, violin, cello, looper, harmonizer and a Kaoss pad. Fifteen tracks, which Marsh rightly catalogues as “rantings, ravings, sermons, scenes, little operas and whatever else they might be”. Indeed, given also the lo-fi quality of the recording which renders most of this music pretty murky, I instantly recalled the bedroom experiments that this writer made in the 80s with a couple of friends and a pitch-transposing vocoder. Ah, the laughs. The protagonist here is a couple of tads more serious, despite the fact that many of these words are just processed fragments of utterance. Then again, reading titles such as “I’m a sucka”, “Fuck it all” and “Calm down” one thinks of psychological problems (but no, it’s only another Public Eyesore oddity, god bless). At the end of the day, this is a nice specimen of sci-fi-meets-padded-room absurdity where murmurs, bellows and instruments become one and the same, boiling and bubbling like a hot quicksand which could even try to swallow your attention. One manages to take a last breath before saying goodbye to normality.

BOB MARSH / THERESA WONG / BRYAN EUBANKS – Luggage (Last Visible Dog)

San Francisco’s Luggage Store Gallery is described as “the tolerant home of the longest running avant/experimental music scene in the country”. With all kinds of extraneous voices and outside noise available for improvisational exploitation, it was the perfect place for two excellent sets whose common denominator is cellist Bob Marsh. In his duet with Theresa Wong, herself a cello player, indetermination and style mockery are just two of the many aspects of the game, which is often played in consideration of the particular “edge-of-silence” expressive ability of the two artists, who are constantly aware of the meaning and direction of their inventions while being involved in open-minded rhapsodies full of cello harmonics and spiraliform embellishments, with vocal interjections (by Wong) added for good measure. The conversation between Marsh and saxophonist Bryan Eubanks is equally rewarding, and even more reflective; the couple catches elongated reluctances from the air, transforming them in slowed down birdsongs and polypetalous flowers of imagination where graciousness and freedom of spirit get happily married, despite the divarication between these players’ enormous sensitiveness and the suburban atmosphere surrounding their exhibition, police sirens and everything else included.

AGUSTÍ MARTINEZ – Are spirits what I hear? (Etude)

Agustí Martinez is a saxophone player from Barcelona who grew up in several chamber orchestras and jazz bands, then began to perform solo in the mid-nineties. This is his first release, a very good one. The initial “Serie B (for Scelsi)” is a one-note theme alternated with lyricism spotted by irony and desperation, a firm statement of intents under any circumstance. “For Pau” nears certain areas of John Butcher’s work, but instantly runs away from the dangers of classification, becoming infectiously multicoloured and rhythmically unpredictable; Martinez is a player that loves silences and pauses, which deepen the meaning of every note he plays. Even the occurrence of (by now commonly used) lingual-and-salival spurts is more welcomed than accepted. In “Meeting”, voice is added to augment and expand the palette; sharp outbursts and membrane-carving harmonics precede a whistling anti-song whose body is boned by additional glottolalia. Indeed, Martinez’s personal approach makes him different from most saxophonists, essentially due to a more pronounced rhythmic presence (check “Cross-Light” for reference). “Moc and Caniche (to Paula)” is the most rage-and-enthusiasm act, where smoothness and elegance are thrown into a pot of dense articulation and sulphuric straightforwardness; the result is probably the best in terms of compositional interest. “Che Collons!” – a title that makes me suspect that Martinez knows Italian idiomatic expressions quite well – is a long improvisation whose balance of collateral significance, serene melodicism and disturbed spontaneousness is probably the best summary of everything that Agustí is able to conjure up from his right mind. Instead, “Tic” allows him to mix bubbles and rainbows in a metamorphosis of technical prowess, as effervescent scalar runs collapse all at once, delivering the instruments from jazz impediments. The title track is based on the tube-ish sound of the air, things we heard in a thousand records of the genre, but executed with precision and musicality by the Catalan. Overall, this album is permeated by an evident mastery of spacing and timing that renders the listening an extremely pleasing experience any time.

ANDREA MARUTTI – The subliminal relation between planets (Nextera)

Recorded live in the small rural town of Archiaro (Calabria, Southern Italy) during a festival of electronic music in August 2007, this is a classic dark ambient album of today – very long, slowly unfolding, apparently menacing but in truth rather innocuous. In typical fashion, the instrumentation is not specified, although synthesized and sampled sounds – heavily processed to become interminable shadows – should be at the basis of the performance. Those who read this website regularly know that I’m not an enthusiast of this kind of release. Apart from my well-known position against the myriads of amateurish dabblers proliferating in this area (from which Marutti, who seems honest in what he does, should be excluded), what’s utterly ridiculous is the “cosmic” angle generally attributed to drone-oriented soundscapes, usually by people who don’t have a clue about what “self evolution” really means. That said, taken at the right moment and considering the fact that this is a live recording, this CD works alright in spurts. This listener can’t find new words to indicate how a rumbling mass takes centre stage in the mix, or to applaud the precision of cross-fades that put a mourning pseudo-choir in the background to bring forth echoes of metallic clatter instead. I do like when the whole gets near immobility, so that one can stop for ten seconds, hold the breath and mentally nod “yes, this is good”. Overall, a few interesting moments amidst things sniffed as pretty regular. Best used as a soft presence at late night (for me) but the hardcore fan of the genre will certainly be satisfied.

JEFF MARX & JEFF “SIEGE” SIEGEL – Dreamstuff (Ayler)

Tenor saxophonist Marx and drummer Siegel showcase bright talents in ten improvisations where the right balance of freedom and regulation seems to be the main bedrock of their approach. Except for “Bird’s Sanctuary”, whose character is pretty ritualistic and deeply meditative, most of the tracks show lots of percussive sinuousness and melodic resourcefulness, resulting in a thoroughly gratifying experience. Marx’s corpulent tone never falters, delivering lines upon lines of forceful malleability which ranges from an extreme to another of the improvisational fantasy’s rainbow arc. No chance for him to be inserted in some heavy-duty shelf: after one’s convinced of having systematized that voice in a context of influences, off the man flies from our fist with swirling insurrections contradicting the previous codes of his playing. Siegel is one of those drummers whose polyrhythmic mastery transforms the “skin factor” into something that can be digested either as an unsophisticated marvel (“I don’t understand it, but it’s beautiful!”) or a demonstration of anti-egocentrism, as he privileges thoughtful interaction and sensitive underlining of his comrade’s virtues rather than exposing himself in full bodybuilder booming pose (case in point, the gorgeous “Kind Of Like Talking”). Nice effort from both artists, a veritable breath of fresh air that will find you satisfied, if not energized at the end of the album.

PASCAL MARZAN & ROGER SMITH – Two Spanish guitars (Emanem)

A guitarist is speaking here yet, from this point of observation, very few things are more boring than records for two or multiple guitars (well, maybe except the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet). From your typical jazz duo (one plonks inversions over II-V-I whilst the other sticks modified Superlocrian scales to nothingness as insignificant mosquitoes in the torrid summer air. Splat!) to “Friday Night in San Francisco”, among the most horrid examples in that sense – and the perfect explanation of John Belushi’s raptus in “Animal House”, when he crashes a guitar against the wall. That said, for our good luck this is not that kind of cheap-trick uselessness. For starters, Marzan and Smith are not that specimen of polished virtuosos who exist only for winking to themselves in the mirror, Mennen-style, while playing (not that I would expect this on an Emanem album). These segments were recorded at Smith’s home – take a look at the domestic setting on the photos adorning the cover – in total freedom, not an ounce of stress, using every available inch of strings and wood to produce a fine blend of improvisation that will draw garlands of acknowledging smiles around the neck of those who don’t want to hear a standard anymore, not even having a revolver pointed to the head. The guitarists casually throw fragments of probabilistic intersections like enlightened litterlouts, without caring about their destination or the eventual need of some sort of aesthetic law to obey to. Coming down to the nitty-gritty, the rationale behind this method privileges the instantaneous exchange of information – whatever it is – as opposed to six-stringed sob stories and mellifluous vacuousness. Conversations that easily sustain the whole length of the CD, and we know that this label does not issue 35-minute discs. Significant free music played on guitar is for a special breed of elects. Marzan and Smith received the call many years ago.

MIYA MASAOKA / JOAN JEANRENAUD – For birds, planes & cello (Solitary B)

The title may be self-explanatory, but if you think about some sort of new age relaxation program you’re very far from the truth. Miya Masaoka recorded the sounds from the San Diego canyon – including more than 150 species of migratory and native birds, passing aircrafts, motors and distant unclassifiable signs of additional human activity – with the help of Marcos Fernandes in the early morning of March 15, 2004. She later asked cellist Jeanrenaud, a former member of Kronos Quartet, to use advanced techniques in order to match or highlight some of the sources previously captured on tape. Given the highly evocative power of all this material, it’s all the more incredible how – especially at good volume – one can still feel a lone wolf just by listening to this enormous mass of frequencies, the perfect cross between the repetitive character of some of everyday life’s noises and the unpredictable behaviour of our responsive systems when we’re left in front of that very vital pulse which we never listen carefully enough, if not when it’s too late to be overwhelmed by its frightening beauty.

MASUL – The arousal city (Creative Sources)

The duo of Paul Giallorenzo (synthesizer, piano, found samples, computer) and Thomas Mejer (contrabass saxophone, found samples, computer), Masul are a pretty mysterious proposition since the very first minutes of “The arousal city”, a recording juxtaposing two live performances from 2004 and 2005 in Chicago. Darkish loops and pulsating asynchronisms depict dejected atmospheres in which Mejer’s saxophone recites an important role, underlining faint remembrances and flickering nocturnal lights with long sighs, sputtering syllables and apparently incongrous abstractions. Giallorenzo works undercover, but the fact that I didn’t hear a single recognizable synthetic timbre for the large part of the CD is the best certificate of programming intelligence I could attribute in this instance. The treated voices of “Arousal City #2″ and “Pops” sound like a disquieting nightmare where all the senses are drowned in molasses, while “Arousal City #3″ is the only segment with the pretence of a proper “rhythm” and a few elegant keyboard lines over it. Half theatre soundtrack, half suburban meditation, this series of sleepy, blurred snapshots is one of the most atypical releases in Creative Sources’ recent output and, in a way, one of the most unsettling ones. We’re never sure of what’s going to happen, remaining completely entangled in this strange deformation of reality, a kind of disturbed trance that wraps us inexorably, just like a spider does with its prey stuck in the web.

STEPHAN MATHIEU – On tape (Häpna)

Contrarily to many self-made living room pretenders releasing records that are long and pointless, Stephan Mathieu decided that a little more than half an hour is OK to express his concept. Of course he’s right: this is beautiful electroacoustic simplicity, where field recordings and extreme minimalism find the way to avoid a polarization, growing organically through the whole piece. If not totally peculiar, this record is certainly a sort of a peacemaker amidst torrential flows of coldness; though slow and detached, “On tape” actually outpaces twisted awkwardnesses and arrested developments, sounding refreshingly vital and politely warm with its processed sources and stable design. Sometimes a little is enough and Mathieu just proved it.

STEPHAN MATHIEU & JANEK SCHAEFER – Hidden name (Cronica)

There are times in which the real, essential beauty of a sound is better discernible through its misshapen version, its hidden harmonic contents suddenly appearing before our ears like an acoustic aurora borealis. There is also a good chance that the very spirit of that sound come out – even more clearly – by discarding its potential role as a part of a structure, in order to simply enjoy its mind healing power in terms of physical gratification, through a process of sheer repetition. This kind of result is usually achieved by the best minimalism, a quest for the zero of the significance through the pursuance of a complete mental void (in the positive meaning of the term). “Hidden name” is an album that joins the crux of all the above described phenomena. Mathieu and Schaefer used a series of instruments (including piano, clarinet, cello, flute, trumpet, accordion, sitar singing bowls and bells) plus field recordings, voices, games and found records, to generate elongated layers of static chords, environmental reflections, heartbreaking parabolas and nostalgic juxtapositions of ancient melodies and vinyl noise, which they later edited to create this absolute masterpiece. The eleven pieces are not linked in a single suite, yet maintain a visible coherence that blends their core meaning in a unique wholeness, and the sources are manipulated in spectacular fashion. A belltower is the basis for a quivering slow loop in “White Wings”, then is engulfed by a muffled mix of instruments. Pizzicato strings are repeated ad infinitum in “Aisle”. A piece called “Quartet for Flute, Piano and Cello” surprises the listener with a Jon Hassell-like concoction that seems to be reproduced by a cassette player forgotten in a subterranean cell, then ends with the most menacing low-frequency throbs one can conceive. “Maori Love Songs” is a postcard from a world that I can’t just imagine as existent, voices wailing in absurd arrangements of rhythm guitars and inhuman reverberations. “Fugue” is a chorale that one would like to use during the body-to-soul transition while tripping to eternal silence. The final “The planets”, the longest track at more than 19 minutes, is an emotional detachment of sorts but works as a conceptual link between our will to penetrate the unknown and the acceptance of our uselessness, all the while remaining suspended in never ending galaxies that nod to Yes’ “I get up, I get down” from “Close to the edge” (those who will laugh at this reference are hopeless nincompoops, I really mean it). Stephan Mathieu and Janek Schaefer have created music that I really feel as moved by a special kind of grace, and that also touched me very deeply. To be listened for many decades to come, “Hidden name” should be an example for many pretenders, a good reason to put laptops away and start listening to life itself.

KOUHEI MATSUNAGA – For Gemini and back to Heian (Feld)

Should you try to do something else while listening to this 3-inch, Kouhei Matsunaga’s torrential liquid of chipmunk electroacoustic outrage will force your attention back up to the maximum limit while hitting your membranes with high-frequency oblique uppercuts, fracturing abstractions and fusing contraptions in heterogeneous hints to Asmus Tietchens (to which one of the two tracks is dedicated) and to several other ragged glories of low-budget tape-laptop-glitch-noise music. Still, a headphone listen reveals subtleties that not many people can afford nowadays, giving this music a “fully grown up” character; not bad at all, in this world of meteoric itineraries.

KAFFE MATTHEWS – CD eb + flo (Annette Works)

Playing a theremin and “converting live things” is what Matthews does in these reconstructions of performances held in various sites. Straight out of my chest, I’ll say I felt a prominent “Alvin Lucier vibe” as soon as I immersed myself in this not-so-easy listening. The best method to catch the whole Kaffe Matthews’ frequency spectrum is either walking around the room so that corners and obstacles help refracting and reverberating the waveshapes and feedback layers all around your membranes. On the other hand, wearing headphones will surely help defining the granular images encountered during these 104+ minutes; sometimes you’re just forced to stop in your tracks whatever your activity is at that very moment. Going from Eliane Radigue-like warm, slightly undulating timbres to the borders of grey-to-white noise in a low frequency galore, for sure Matthews knows her way to give a good refreshing to your well worn music making/listening concepts.

WADE MATTHEWS – Absent friends (Sillon)

One could easily compare these electronic improvisations (“100% software synthesis”, writes Matthews) to abstract painting, as no trace of linearity is to be found here; textural morphing and disturbed glissandos alternate with white noise, bubbling bombs and dynamic fractures in a collection of irregular manifestations bursting with struggling energies. Although the variety of forms generated by Matthews is nothing short of enormous, listening to “Absent friends” is a pretty easy task, as this music sounds like looking for your biological sore points, confronting them with harsh perfection, making nerves and brain muscle stronger after the cure. Without a hint of rambunctious sensationalism, this album succeeds in keeping our attention awake for its whole length, confirming Wade Matthews as one of the names to keep our eyes on.

WADE MATTHEWS / INGAR ZACH – Morke / Lys (Creative Sources)

Six improvisations for electronic synthesis and percussion – each one titled with the translation of “Darkness/Light” in various languages – show Matthews and Zach doing damage to the imperturbable smoothness of regularity, thanks to temperamental exchanges of multiform epithets and magmatic advices. There are various instances in which distinguishing the sources is pretty difficult, such is the firecracker-like exposure of what sounds like a pillhead’s dream and the amplified noises of spermatozoa swimming in sulphuric acid. This music wants to blow everything out of proportion, yet it is ready to accept unforeseen events as a primary reason for its very existence; the utterly anarchic behaviour one can detect in the creative process becomes the origin of a set of new peculiar rules, in which paradoxically the concept of “interplay” is less important than the chance of allowing each sonic emission to fully achieve its completion, therefore defining the overall texture of these engaging pieces.

MATTIN – Broken subject (Free Software Series)

Eliciting controversy is the name of the game for Mattin, and I myself am not really convinced by some of his numerous projects (the “Songbooks”, for example). But when it comes to using a laptop the man knows what he’s doing, and the presentations that he pretty regularly churns out are thought-provoking, psychologically impacting and often noisily beautiful – a raw beauty, that is. “Broken subject” contains all of the above mentioned features, its functional mixture of muteness and extremely gritty sonic gravel at the basis of a 30-minute performance recorded in Berlin. The album works well both by listening to the tracks’ original succession and in “random” mode; the result is the same, a modernist brand of computer music that takes no prisoners. At the beginning of the first track one almost believes that what’s heard is not so hurtful, but nothing could be more wrong, as we’re soon incinerated by furious winds of harsh, skin-ripping sibilance scarred by granular instability. We get used to that after a while, and it feels nice – so, take these three minutes of hush on the chin to spoil the party. No problem: that, too, is great. Then, what does Mattin do? He restarts the process, adding a measure of oscillation (there are fragments that sound like wavering sirens processed by a distortion pedal for midgets). Bits and pieces of this composite are meshed, alternated and erased at once. Then, silence again. Half an hour has gone, it seemed much shorter; good sign, I’m instantly replaying this thing. Very solid outing – among the Basque’s best in my book.

MATTIN / TAKU UNAMI – Shiryo no computer (Hibari/w.m.o./r.)

Both men look around with circumspection, precursive of their openness to incidental factors; Mattin and Unami unbalance our conventional scrutiny of taciturn habits with a well equipped depot of muted signals and blistering feedback. Their thick-skinned coolness between petrifying silence and scattered flotsam of spare mechanical gadgetry has the same look of an old neon lamp that’s losing its grip: flashing or just slightly flickering, nevertheless it still hypnotizes, giving an aura of decaying straightness to the impurity of a deserted street. In this uncultivated economy of means, the sheer postural noises of our body and the wind that rumbles under the roof become ambassadors for the slow death of routine sonic itineraries.

MATTIN / TAKU UNAMI – Attention (h.m.o/r)

The thing lasts 74 minutes, long silent segments broken by a clean guitar (by Unami) that sometimes – peculiarly – sounds like a Fender Rhodes electric piano. No noise, no explosions of rage, no screaming. Therefore don’t be scared when Mattin (on voice only) appears and invites you to “turn up the volume”. I won’t be telling more, because no surprise should be spoiled. This is conceptual stuff, and one has to listen. That’s not enough indeed, we should pay attention. Did you read the title? The listening subject is continuously invited to do that, as in a test. Other kinds of consideration are present, too, but the essence is there. Understand or not. A few guitar notes, a few sentences, silence. It’s all here, and if “this is good quality music” that “deserves your concentration” (the Basque artist’s not-so-subliminal message…), that will have to be determined at the end. Unami, and especially Mattin, have grown us used to this kind of exercise, and I’m one who loves to feel challenged – or plain stupid – in front of similar outings. Still, those who give up before the arrival declaring that this is rubbish are all the more stupid. The point is: why writing a review of such a CD? The answer would be: we do what we want in our own website. Even typing words about this record while playing a Ray Russell Quartet album.

MATTIN / AXEL DORNER – Berlin (Absurd)

Acoustic phenomena. Noise. Silence, but a silence enriched by our own heartbeat, the buzz of the blood flowing and the pumping of the auricular membranes. What is the perfect observation point for a record like “Berlin”? The answer lies in finding the right spot to allow our system to reach its maximum adaptive response, which – at different moments – can be an individual aggregation of stimula or just a distracted reaction, like waving a mosquito off your nose while you’re concentrated on reading. Mattin’s lower-than-lo-fi computer discharges and functional attacks on the ears via stinging highs and ultrawhite noise mix very well with a very concentrated Dörner, a man who can guarantee many long moments of intimate gratification through an array of trumpet sounds that range from utopistic exhalations of bronchial freedom to affirmations of frequencies that would make my lonely boiler happy to have finally found a partner for life. Three sections that proceed in spurts and attempts, most of them successful, to delineate a logic for those sentences which logic would like to destroy, all the while maintaining a functional link to a near future where these raw materials will become a socio-physical means of vibrational consciousness (which is not always good, though: opened are the doors to many not-so-bright minds, as most people aren’t able to perceive harmony in mind-bending circuits, much less use this acoustic phonetics coherently) but also the signature that distinguishes those who are born “sound artists” – Mattin and Dörner definitely are – and their totally useless sub-shadows. The rest is all for our sensitive discernment to distil, and those of you with the right inner instrumentation will find “Berlin” a very meaningful release.

MAUGER – The beautiful enabler (Clean Feed)

An extraordinary rhythm section (ha!) featuring bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Gerry Hemingway – two authentic stalwarts indeed – evidently creates much more than “rhythm”: they devise in fact composite textures of intertwined patterns, contrapuntal inventions and even short silences encouraging alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa’s flights of fancy. This line-up brings back the pleasure deriving from listening to jazz as it should be properly conceived and executed, their interplay concentrated and spacious at once, actually giving the idea of a distinct unit without a real necessity to focus our interest on the single voices. Yet by doing precisely that we have the opportunity of enjoying the unpolluted ability of three terrific artists. The spiritual correlation among the musicians is substantial since the very first notes in creations as effortlessly palatable as the clear-minded discoveries of an advanced soloist. While there’s no shock in finding out, once again, that Dresser and Hemingway approach the music with warm passion and strenuously intelligent zeal, at times sounding like in awareness that this is the final day on Earth despite maintaining a marvellous coolness, the prominence of Mahanthappa’s voice is what probably identifies the overall tonality of the album: unrestrictive melodic cleverness, composed ponderings and probing investigations of angularity functioning in concurrence with the sound of wood, strings and skin to stamp a seal of authority on a classic trio release.

ALBRECHT MAURER / NORBERT RODENKIRCHEN – Hidden fresco (Nemu)

The name of Albrecht Maurer kept ringing a bell in my head, then I suddenly remembered him as a part of a fantastic Emanem project by Kent Carter’s String Trio; conversely, this is my first meeting with Rodenkirchen. Both artists are virtuosos in their respective trades, coming from different backgrounds that somehow found a perfect trait d’union in the music they perform as a duo. Using gothic violin, medieval flutes and harp, the couple conceived an album containing almost one hour of outstanding music, motivated by many factors but definitely sounding like a strange brew of middle age, native Indian and traditional Asian, the whole in a modern classical dress. Even more impressive is the fact that this stuff is mostly improvised, because the bulk of the pieces contained in “Hidden fresco” is more or less comparable to scored compositions with just a modicum of variations. The title refers to Leonardo Da Vinci’s theory according to which artists see the object of their creation in advance when observing a rock formation or a stained wall, and several tracks refer to pictorial and visual techniques (“Tempera”, “Craquelé”). But this is not so important when compared to the splendid timbral poems that Maurer and Rodenkirchen bring out of their instruments, which the high quality of the recording exalts and enhances. Like every other Nemu release, this is a gorgeous example of over average sonic craftmanship, a record whose beauty does not depend on genres or classifications.

MAWJA – Studio One (Al Maslakh)

Featuring Michael Bullock (contrabass and feedback), Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet) and Vic Rawlings (cello and surface electronics), for sure Mawja are a trio whose attitude is not overly expansive towards the audience, their music being based upon a consecutiveness of mostly subdued plumbeous scenarios, essentially characterized by background spurious inertia over which the players examine various combinations of unfriendly improvisations and noisy transmissions. There are tracks in which certain gradations are more evident, but the general sense is one of collective edginess, each one of the musicians trying to find a way to place additional measures of anxious harshness amidst strange frequencies and instrumental utterances that cross-pollinate animal voices and radical electronics. The fifth segment is the most convincing example of what I mean, a deadpan undergrowth of semi-controlled feedback and grumbling intricacies whose volume increases with the passage of time, Kerbaj’s trumpet sounding (as usual) more like some mechanical appliance or malfunctioning vehicle rather than a blown-up brass. Occasionally, the music almost seems to stop altogether, like if Mawja were searching another way to render their creativity even less charming to the ears; their ideas remain nevertheless interesting, exposed as they are in a half-scientific, half-segregationist costume. A difficult album, scarcely communicative and without bright colours yet presenting us with several fascinating moments. The artists’ seriousness is out of question.

MAWJA – Live One (Chloë)

Neither Michael Bullock (bass, feedback) nor Vic Rawlings (cello, surface electronics), who have been playing in duo since 2000, had an idea of who Mazen Kerbaj was when the Beirut cornet-and-objects player went to the US to look for improvising comrades in 2005. They gave a chance to a suggestion by concert organizer Mary Staubitz and met, 30 minutes before the very first set (who said “rehearsals”?). There is no question of who, what or when if a human being is able to perceive the core essence of a vibrating pattern; needless to say, Mawja are in the condition of doing it. The two improvisations presented in this disc were respectively captured at Chicago’s WNUR and Washington’s Warehouse Next Door, both constituting a fulgent example of what these guys can do when applying their sympathetic knowledge to the sound sources. What’s played represents a holography of scattered remains, where timbral detritus, hum, hiss and (un)controllable discharges move, in a way, windingly, surrounded by atmospheric conditions ranging from the metallic degradation to the frequency saturation. Over-acute emissions and scraped strings encyst themselves in a seemingly hostile environment, managing to transmit security codes and ciphered messages the sense of danger notwithstanding. Working feverishly around the margins of grittiness, the musicians reach a level of semi-industrial poetry that I only heard from the most respected protagonists of this long-running snagged electro-acoustic saga (yes, AMM and Keith Rowe but also Morphogenesis). Often it’s virtually impossible to determine what instrument is giving voice to its bowels; that’s usually the sign of excellence, and this CD contains plenty. Extremely concrete yet elusive music that defies interpretation, nourished by lapidary gestures of intolerance towards neutralism.

MAGDA MAYAS / KOEN NUTTERS / MORTEN J. OLSEN / CARLOS GALVEZ – On Creative Sources (Hail Satan) (Creative Sources)

Should we take the album’s title as a pun on famous jazz editions? Just asking, because this quartet for piano (Mayas), double bass (Nutters), percussion (Olsen) and bass clarinet (Galvez) is an unambiguous look back to the origins of Ernesto Rodrigues’ imprint, the years in which even the less audacious among the improvisational units were beginning to take account of the extended techniques that are considered as a given nowadays in their “impromptu repertoire”, although they probably sounded fresher at that time. EAI was starting to develop its (frail) muscle, and everything from the scraped strings of a piano to the exploration of the over-acute regions of a reed instrument was saluted as innovation. I’m not telling that this album sounds dated, not at all. The four musicians regard the entire palette of their machines as a permanent source of timbral fulfilment, implying a perceptible eagerness and an attitude unmistakably defined by eloquent track titles (“Pitch”, “Non Pitch”, “Loose Surface”, and so forth). The adjustment of a pair of ears with these sequences of well-positioned swaps – whose qualities range from oversensitive give-and-take to mildly surprising intermissions breaking quasi-hushed settings – comes pretty effortlessly. Neither a real zenith, nor new tricks to get wonderment from are to be individuated; instead, this is an unswerving action of examination of instrumental dynamics all over 38 minutes. True, we’ve heard numerous correlated records in the last decade, but this particular one is very good. It emanates integrity, and that’s what this listener loved more than anything else.

JIM MCAULEY – Gongfarmer 18 (Nine Winds)

Half-composed music – or structured free forms, if you will – is probably what I like best when listening to solo acoustic guitar. Besides owning a dexterity which could silence many pretenders, Jim McAuley has an unique gift of transforming his imagination and dreams into untarnished grace; he’s capable of putting your heart in full-resonance mode with delicate ornaments and evocative counterpoints and arpeggios then, all at once, he mutates his machine in an Eastern instrument through string detuning, a trick he performs pretty easily despite the fact he does it while playing the tune! Atonality and romanticism – minus the sugar – are both present, too (listen to the succession of “1+2″ and “Nika’s waltz”) but great news also comes from Jim’s use of the 12-string, as he is the first guitarist I’ve heard in a long time trying to tame this beast without sounding like a Ralph Towner clone. At the end of this record you feel a little more optimist and somehow relaxed – and that speaks volumes.

DARREN MCCLURE – Softened edges (The Land Of)

Quietly, unassumingly, The Land Of is becoming one of the labels to keep an eye on. They do their thing almost unnoticed, each release possessing a singular dignity that is also gifted with natural beauty. Darren McClure alternates slowly unfolding meditative electronics and field recordings, the latter at times slightly disturbed by electrostatic interferences – check “Pink river”. This disc might be a cure against the excesses of hedonism typical of self-made products: modesty and absence of theoretical mendacity are at the basis of little miniatures whose unobtrusive character remains in evidence even when the sonic mass gets thicker. In that moment, we are confronted by a nucleus of pulsating frequencies and magnetic radiations that float around the air at first, then stand in place while being in movement, dead flowers on the surface of a placid sea. There’s a strong rhythmic component in a track like “KG court” that wouldn’t be out of context on For 4 Ears, its subterranean drive vaguely reminiscent of atmospheres usually elicited by people such as Günter Müller or Norbert Möslang, only with a definite touch of humanity. Elsewhere, old tricks like the “locked groove” effect still appear fresh enough, when accompanied by lulling, trance-inducing harmonies. Lyophilized minimal sapience delightfully rendered in a finely crafted album.

THOLLEM MCDONAS – Solo piano (Pax Recordings)

Maybe the correct definition for Thollem’s incredible, all-genre pianism is “large-scale”. In about 46 minutes you can experience a series of tripping flights through the suspensions and the affirmations of a technically over-advanced magician whose grip on every cognoscible aspect of those 88 black and white keys is as strong as a garrotte on Bela Bartok’s neck. The variety in McDonas’ garden of chordal laboriousness and melodic saltations can’t receive justice from my words; this music’s longevity is directly embossed in a genetic code which bears the stigmates of experience bleeding with a profane interest for what’s still behind any digital discovery…and quite often those fingers seem to know the answer to most of the upcoming interrogatives in good advance. Intimate and lyrical, overpowering and broken-boned, these thirteen compositions never tell a lie to our inquiring minds: Thollem McDonas is for real and “Solo piano” is yet another sample of his highly entertaining mastery.

THOLLEM MCDONAS – Racing the sun, chasing the sun (Creative Sources)

When one listens to Thollem McDonas’ keen-scented navigations of harmonic seas, every chord or flurry coming from his piano transports right back to a past time where learning to actually play an instrument was not an option if you wanted to become a musician. “Racing The Sun, Chasing The Sun” is wonderfully complicated – you could well get seasick if trying to thoroughly follow those monstrous digital precognitions – yet it has that talkative contrapuntal hyperalimentation, typical of Thollem’s most enthralling playing, which will force your body and soul to become a small part of it. Fecundating those silences that still linger in his music every once in a while, this passionate artist mixes reflection and effervescence – often in the very same moment – to establish his unique citizenhood in a one-man universe amidst the frazzled specimens of “free-thinkers-once-corporate-today” musicians who carry on despite the fact they’re without a clue of what they’re doing since years. Instead, Thollem McDonas is a justicer of the worn-out, his instrument a magic machine of rejuvenation of a vocabulary which can still be redintegrated in a fantasy world where we can go astray without ever feeling an ounce of fear. For this reason only, we all should thank him.

THOLLEM MCDONAS – Poor stop killing poor (Edgetone)

This live album delivers more pearls of wisdom by that magnificent lone wolf specimen named Thollem Mcdonas. This man’s ardent playing seems to be modeled after centuries of musical knowledge; helped by the peculiar resonance of Detroit’s Bohemian National Home, Thollem wanders helplessly in search of lost recollections, which he finally finds only to immediately neglect them to turn his attention towards the end of another rainbow. During this quest, rare delicacies and absorbing shuffles find their shelter in his out-of-any-standard hut made of brain, heart and fingers, where he makes sure of nurturing these creatures even when facing the hardest of times. Once again it’s time for some lese-majesty crime, in order to savour the moment in which the isolated being gets out and mentally destroys the certainties of those virtuosos who get more consideration just because they landed a luscious contract on an important label. Mcdonas has a gift, the same that ancient bluesmen and griots had: he carries the past within himself, even the events that he didn’t live, and lets us feel them through chordal successions that fuse Stravinsky, silent movie soundtracks and what Zappa called “bionic ragtime” referring to Conlon Nancarrow; we can find Charlie Chaplin, Friedrich Murnau, our grandma’s photo and an ectoplasmic Charlemagne Palestine in the space of a single track (try to dip your toe in “The clown of war” to get an idea). This music is revolution, respect for the heritage, sorrow; it’s a slap in the face of those who still pay hundreds of dollars to hear a few yelps and watch selected ass oscillations over a single D-major arpeggio lasting 20 minutes – yes, that’s still you Keith, did you think I had finished? In a word, Thollem Mcdonas is a remnant of that dying macrocosm where our cultural background was generated and in which we now stand as frozen witnesses of a progressive annihilation, which musicians like this one desperately try to postpone through their art. Let’s stick to all this and try to survive, even if the office and the TV dinner are still lurking.

THOLLEM MCDONAS / ARRINGTON DE DIONYSO – Intuition, science and sex (Edgetone)

These duets for beat-up piano (TM) and bass clarinet (ADD), at times underlined by drones that sound like bagpipes or hurdy-gurdies (but probably aren’t), are a revelation of sorts if you recall the ebullience of the protagonists’ characters in various unconventional projects. This time, though, the proverbial hyperactivity of Mcdonas’ hands and the fury habitually brought into being in De Dionyso’s improvisations are kept in check by the very temperament of this production, structured in four parts that start similarly to an invocation and conclude by celebrating a still strong sense of free will. The clarinetist’s timbre is often stunning, his command of the overtones beyond belief, the corpulent mass of vibrations coming from the reed and the instrument’s inside conduits relentlessly overpowering. Mcdonas responds with sparse notes at first, then he enters the scene gradually until the integration between the respective visions is complete, different types of resonance – instrumental, corporeal and of the soul – entirely merged in an exceptional display of assimilation and uprightness. Certain artists gaspingly try to appear inventive, yet end up raising only bubbles and foam; on the contrary, these musicians let the interior currents indicate the truthful route, calmly waiting for the music to unfurl in front of their ears, which – just in case – are always more than equipped for that indispensable touch of fine-tuning of the whole.

CHRIS MC GREGOR’S BROTHERHOOD OF BREATH – Bremen to Bridgwater (Cuneiform)

Every once in a while, a lucky find of old tapes from some obscure vault uncovers musical treasures we can subsequently relish in a joyful celebration of love for the highest calibre of art. When we become aware of the fact that most of today’s music, including jazz, is rapidly downstreaming to stagnating nothingness, then a spectacular record like this gets released, reminding us there’s still a sparkle of hope. A mix of three different concerts, “Bremen to Bridgwater” is a showcase of great tunes and gutsy improvisation, like rarely one expects; the absolute devoutness to the cause showed by Mc Gregor’s orchestra is coupled with their elevation to an uncommon grade of instrumental literacy igniting the sacred fire of freedom. Take a look at the list of the involved musicians and you instantly know you’ll be hooked: it’s almost 2 hours and 40 minutes of torrential great playing by everyone and there is not a minute of dullness even if you search with a gas lamp. In my opinion, this is one of the best live albums of the last decades.

CRISTOPHER MCFALL – Four feels for fire (Entr’acte)

This must be one of the most impenetrable albums that I’ve heard recently. After five tries, though, I feel able to pronounce its quality as superior, yet a proper description still eludes me. McFall is not short of explanations, indeed: a composer since more or less 1997 he first worked on music based on piano and computer, later switching his focus on “the distillation of minimal sound compositions from field recordings and audio tape experiments”, with particular relevance given to “the seemingly endless heat, grit and turbulence that is typical of summer in the mid-western United States” (McFall has been living in Kansas City for the last six years). In between the various acknowledgements we find Miguel Tolosa, Jos Smolders and Asher Thal-Nir. But there is nothing really associable to those artists in terms of sonority; on a purely conceptual level, a comparison could be made with Marc Behrens’ recent “Architectural commentaries” on this very label. Still, “Four feels for fire” is obscure, muddy in a way, analog-sounding, often subaqueous in its “no-light-at-all” character. It all starts from processed tapes of course, but what’s on them seem to perennially revolve around a poetic of no escape, like in a world populated by hunched entities born to perform their one and only task, lacking any ambition to look for a better future. An aesthetically uninviting mixture of hissing interferences, groaning parabolas, urban malaise and gliding sonic slime that works wonders as a complement to the uncertainties of our own rationality, a swamp that we can easily fall and drown into without no one caring, bordering on an engrossing nocturnal landscape which no human has been able to see until now.

CHRISTOPHER MCFALL – Solemn words for a fabled apparatus (Gears Of Sand)

Christopher McFall is a poet of the urban solitude. The sources for this gorgeous record were captured during a time in which he was “contending with a series of abrupt transitions”, his reaction being arming himself with a recorder and walking through the city, “recording endlessly, searching for answers”. Honest: no one better than this presumptuous observer will get near the understanding of this kind of feeling, including the above mentioned search, for reasons that don’t need to be explained. Let me just tell, though, that Mr. McFall gained my full solidarity. And after playing the CD, there’s another word to be added, and that’s “respect”. This is an example of how a field recording-derived album should be conceived; all it takes is a keen ear and a good dose of profoundness, which I’m sure the composer owns. Increasingly obscure situations where cars, steps, aircrafts and clatter mix seamlessly constitute the backbone of a creation which obtains the simultaneous results of having the listener forget reality for a while, still focusing the attention on frequencies that reality itself generated. The treatment applied to the tapes is “scientifically natural”, filtered out shades and enhanced pulsations changing the sonic morphology of otherwise regular events (check the short fourth movement, an understated masterpiece). Sounds that own inherent musical qualities, this man capably transforming their apparent inharmoniousness into materials to which the psyche can lean upon, and learn to defend against sudden bursts of idiotic behaviour. Details are unnecessary: it’s a whole world of subterranean beauty, needing total tranquillity for a thorough appreciation. A splendid work, confirming the Kansas City-based artist as one of the right names to follow. “I have no answers or philosophies to provide”, he declares. Believe me, Christopher: this is what we’ve been looking for, and you got there. Not everybody’s able to.

ZELJKO MCMULLEN – Disorder (Shinkoyo)

The looped piano superimpositions of “Gently” are alone worth the price of this CD: they appear abruptly after long moments of “harmonic noise” coming from a series of instrumental patterns and sources (…I’m almost sure there is Steve Reich hidden in “Dissolve”…) expressively altered by Zeljko McMullen, a New York resident who works in the field of musical phenomena applied to our conscious and unconscious perceptions. For McMullen, noise – if treated like a meditation process through reworking and transformation – has the power to “pull one into another space” as it manifests itself as pure experience. While the concept is not exactly new, Zeljko shows finesse and explicitness during his beautiful “rumble-to-discharge-to-heavenly-destruction” cycles, through smothering hallucinations and infinite displacements that will be appealing to fans of repetitive music at medium difficulty level. Don’t let these considerations fool you anyway, because all through the duration of “Disorder” McMullen comes out as a talented autonomous personality and an entity which I expect to materialize often in this saturated area of work.

MECHA FIXES CLOCKS – Orbiting with screwdrivers (Alien8)

Mecha Fixes Clocks is Michel F.Coté, whose multitask approach to music making has always yielded good results, his albums under the Bruire moniker an excellent specimen of lively imagination enhanced by the freshness of his systematic change of perspective. “Orbiting with screwdrivers” carries a combination of mystery and extraneousness from any given canon, its flavour determined by a painstaking work on every nuance of the many instruments used; its creator alone is credited with “electronics, percussions, keyboards, accordions, computer and home mades”, but he’s flanked by a who’s who of Canadian independent musicians which includes – among the many – Diane Labrosse, Martin Tétreault, Jean Derome, Tom Walsh. Most of this music sounds like a presage; no recurrent themes, no moral obligations for macrocephalous orchestrations or pompous contrapuntal developments. Every sound seems to exist just for the short section it belongs to, a barely perceptible continuity broken by piano or guitar drops and deeply resounding bass coming from nowhere amidst complex relationships of underground electronics and weak string lamentations; the finest example can be heard in the cinematic “Nano rotary for nothing”, which somehow incarnates the whole aesthetic of this project. Coté does not want his vision to become too popular, remaining hidden behind this series of fantasies that one could compare to a black-and-white dream where all the components move in a sad choreography despite the absence of a defined meter or – heaven forbid – a “rhythm”. It happens that many of these pastels are in synchrony with the muted qualities of our most reflective self; yet they disappear after a while, leaving no trace of their evanescent significance – just the vagueness of a frail beauty.

MECHA/ORGA – Holder (Absurd/A Question of Re-entry)

An interesting aural document by Yiorgis Sakellariou, who underwent several medical examinations at the hospital after he fainted while being treated by his dentist. After the recovery, he went home with a tape containing the sounds of the Holter (yes, this is the correct spelling), an apparatus that records heart and body rhythms for extended times; this CDR is all based on that source. In about 36 minutes we hear the unadulterated sound of the machine, an irregularly oscillating buzz similar to the wave emitted by an ancient analogue synthesizer, at times contrasted by spurts of distortion and electrostatic charges transported by a radioactive wind. But Sakellariou saved the best for last: he sampled and edited some of the original sounds to create a gorgeous piece that crosses subsonic rumble – think a distant storm slowly approaching – and the sudden growth of a monster speaking through mangled distorted emissions, comparable to Daniel Menche’s “incinerating” visions.

MECHA/ORGA – From a piner (Lab For Electroacoustic Media)

After having enjoyed his “Holder” CD on Absurd, I can’t help but also strongly recommend this effort by Greek sound artist Yiorgis Sakellariou, who gives us the gift of about 40 minutes of amassed clouds of intense electronic swirling that start calmly enough to lull us into a benevolent hypnosis – think Nurse With Wound’s “Soliloquy for Lilith”. This initial spiraliform tampering is the prelude to the appearance of impressive frequencies which – in the second and longest movement – juxtapose the breathtaking rumble of an earthquake with overacute sibilances similar to crickets in a summer night, everything slowly evolving into an almost unbearable, catastrophic power that, at one point, forced this reviewer to quickly lower the headphone level (which wasn’t high in the first place) to avoid ear destruction. A fabulously fierce imposition of sonic pressure, only partially replaced by the final track showing a “gentler” side of Mecha/Orga that nicely contrasts the disruptive John Duncan-like energy of the previous section.

MECHA/ORGA – 56:24 (Absurd)

I don’t even want to know what was used by Yiorgis Sakellariou to generate the drones that give life to “56:24″; it’s just one of the best albums of its kind and I’ll take it as it is, starting from the great photos on the cover, a cafeteria that somehow reminds me of the place in which Jimmy (actor Phil Daniels) finds himself alone and desperate after his life has gone awry, towards the end of “Quadrophenia”. Back to Mecha/Orga, the vicious circle of oneiric rings and harmonic spiralling starts quite softly, almost as a background. The plot becomes more intricate after a few minutes, as the loops begin to reciprocally interact, generating a growing state of dissonant tension that lasts about 35 minutes, amidst engrossing sub-basses and highly vibrational rumbles. After that, Sakellariou shifts gear with stomach-gripping glissandos and frequency accelerations, elevating the music to a higher sphere while also turning the record from a “good drone album” to a “can’t miss” example of static hypnosis that generates anxiety rather than comfort. The final twenty minutes are in fact a transit through the Styx of dissonant stridency which nevertheless maintains that “sacral” element that distinguishes it from the mass of one-key shamans about whom I already spent too many words in the past. The Greek sonic terrorist puts our brain on the edge of expectation, a nuclear explosion is anticipated, we’re ready to duck and cover, the ears are about to melt…but it suddenly ends, quite abruptly. No casualties. Great stuff, the best I’ve heard from this composer.

ROEL MEELKOP – Momentum (Nonvisualobjects)

In the liner notes, Meelkop stresses the importance of the difference between listening to these sounds at home as opposed to the installation settings for which they were created. Nevertheless, “Momentum” lives comfortably in a domestic (and possibly very quiet) situation, being composed with a keen sense of dimensional analysis where every sonic entity follows trajectories which could seemingly be aleatoric at times, yet they often have a guided missile-like precision, arriving exactly where one’s expected to receive them. Appearing like faint signals, these emissions inhabit silence with educated discretion bordering on a self-centering inwardness; fragments of human voice and electronic surges rarely surpass intensity levels near to subsonics, but when they do – like in the reclusive fallout of “NU”‘s drones – the whole body gets crossed by a sensational overcharge for a few wonderful instants. It’s that kind of aural world where sultriness is left completely out of the picture – and it’s delicately addictive.

ROEL MEELKOP – Numbered four (A question of re_entry)

Concise and straight to the point, “Numbered four” is made of great stuff. One feels a little worried when the sounds coming from the headphones are surpassed in volume by the computer’s hum. That’s how the record begins: microsounds of the most inaudible species – but we do hear them, nicely deployed amidst electrostatic discharges and irregular rumble, similar to a storm as heard from long distance. About five minutes into the piece, a static background enters the picture: imagine a post-nuclear landscape, additional tiny secretions and an icy wind containing what I perceive as a slowed down metallic croaking of a frog, but it could be a sampled-and-processed-until-unrecognizability “something” (maybe a percussion?). Halfway through the track, something akin to fake jingling bells is soon destroyed by distortion and hiss, which remain in command for a few minutes, until another background noise – like a malfunctioning boiler – slowly comes to the fore, changing the cards on the table once again to introduce us to the piece’s finale with electro-bubbles and subsonic activities spoiled by sparse alien interferences. Thus Meelkop’s dedication: “Put together in two thousand five for my boys”. What have these kids done to deserve such a treatment?

LUBOMYR MELNYK – KMH (Unseen Worlds)

The “black hole” of my minimalist ignorance, facilitated by several hopeless researches after reading the artist’s surname wrongly spelled on an Italian book (indeed this man’s oeuvre was so obscure that even Google didn’t suggest the transition from “Melnick” to “Melnyk”) is now finally explored. Yes, there is evidence of Lubomyr Melnyk’s music on this planet, this being more or less the first official release of his magnificent work, which was previously (un)available via extremely limited private editions. Based on the concept of “continuous music” – a concoction of repetitive structures and dramatic nuances with many more harmonic shifts than in, say, Palestine or Glass’ early pieces – Melnyk’s compositions took their shape in the mid-seventies while he was working with choreographer Carolyn Carlson, whose figurations the pianist described as a “virtual explosion of the entire physical plane”, developing “the moving and the standing still all at once phenomenon”. This pretty much sums up the music, an incessant vortex of interconnected arpeggios exploiting the natural resonance of, and also the contrasts between, the upper partials – something that the composer declares impossible to absorb by just listening to a record; one has to be there while the music is played. It’s indeed static but ever-moving, at one and the same time romantic and mesmerizing, doubtlessly remarkable in terms of technical proficiency and aesthetic luxury; yet it remains, so to speak, humble, and it’s better enjoyed at medium-to-low volume. Talking about Carlson, those who have watched her performance “Dark”, accompanied by Joachim Kühn’s solo piano commentary, will find several contact points (not necessarily musical, I’m rather referring to the perception of the surrounding space) with “KMH”, which also reminded me a lot of Simeon Ten Holt’s magnetizing multi-keyboard marathons. Yet, Lubomyr Melnyk immediately gets appreciated by this writer as a one-of-a-kind specimen, as I imagine his transcendent yet penetrating look while he’s still trying to locate that invisible point where music in its physical essence is left behind and more important issues of indivisibility and wholeness are emanated either by the spirit of the player or the sounds generated by his creativity. Passive listeners, fake musicians and mere record collectors can’t do better than just hope that something similar happen to them one day. In another life. Which does not exist.

MEM1 – Alexipharmaca (Interval)

Described as “an electroacoustic hybrid” by the press release, Mem1 are Laura Thomas-Merino (cello, electronics) and M.Cera (electronics), “Alexipharmaca” being their second full-length release, inspired by poems written by Nicander of Colophon (a Greek pharmacologist) about “plant and animal poisons and their antidotes”. Not that one could guess this influence from the music, a fascinating mixture of cello loops and real-time manipulation that possesses dissonant angularity and beguiling ambient charm in equal doses, and which I haven’t been able to compare to anything else – a major plus for my judgement’s criteria. Twelve improvised tracks show the full extent of this duo’s capabilities, mostly based on a gentle materialism in which modified sources and virtual environments constitute a sort of parallel world that, when listened at “slightly-more-than-a-whisper” volume in a quiet setting, appears populated of microscopic creatures and alimented by faintly warming energies that establish a direct connection with our nervous system, helping it to discard extraneous disturbances. An elusive, instantly captivating album that I strongly recommend to be enjoyed without headphones, “Alexipharmaca” is a positive surprise on all accounts and the demonstration that, no matter how many records we listen to, an everlasting curiosity is the key to welcome discoveries.

DANIEL MENCHE – Invoker (Antifrost)

By now Daniel Menche’s music has reached the very top in the “statically monstrous” gallery. Leaving behind a past mostly made of (excellent) wall-of-noise releases. the Portland artist raised his bar higher with his recent output, a series of wonderfully inspiring albums where few sources – usually regular instruments – build cathedrals of deep perceptions. “Invoker” starts with a low-register frequency pulse, grows until sound’s like it was recorded right into a reactor, changes to vibration of bass strings until harmonics mix with the whole room’s reverberation (and with the sounds outside my window, for that matter). Finally I’m left alone with a low rumble introducing the frying electric magma of the last track, ironically near to the older harsher production. What comes out of my speakers is similar to uncontrollable radio spectra, penetrating ears and brain until exhaustion, driven by the urge of a well channelled rage. The closing is almost silent, it all started there…

DANIEL MENCHE – Skadha (Antifrost)

Menche is a sonic scavenger who’s able to present evolution through the analysis of electroacoustic spare materials. Manipulating all sorts of frequencies to a paralyzing effect, Daniel’s approach in “Skadha” is another look to the ever changing midstreams generated by tormenting crunchy discharges mixed in a magmatic liquid of educated noise. Low vibrations bicker with masses upon masses of growing tension, lulling the body to the point of total indifference to what’s happening nearby: I was enshrouded by a crusty cloth of chemical substances in acousmatic camouflage yet completely irradiated by Menche’s face-slapping transients. Even at low volume ears are thoroughly solicited all the way, so that the dynamics’ changes get their maximum impact on each one of your sensible organs. Self complacence has always been out of the question in this artist’s career but – without a doubt – this release confirms once and for all that his trip to excellence has reached its destination – and the guy is probably looking at the map to see where he’s going next.

DANIEL MENCHE – Eye on the steel (Substractif)

This album marks the return of Daniel Menche to some of his more violently noisy output, even if still there are moments of bubbling drony frequencies and calmer sketches of pre-earthquake subterranean activity. After an intense growth in the first minutes, the incredible variety of sources and colours by Menche captures attention through seducing the ears and making them addicted to a charming, not disguised evilness. Where there’s no mercy for “good sounding” sonic pastry, right there Daniel operates his tumbling spurts, releasing fleshy bits of nervous energy while keeping the reins of exuberance well tight. Desolation and shredding seem to alternate in this displaced meditation on sound disembodiment; yet, I tend to compare this music to a giant fire you have no way of estinguishing – once you think it’s over, right then new sparks have begun to raise higher flames. Their lights you won’t escape, until you become ebrious and finally reduced to ash.

DANIEL MENCHE – Drunk gods (Lapilli)

“Lapilli” is the perfect label name for these fabulous twenty minutes, a cauldron of interference, electric hum, crackling drops which grow in tension and periodicity, just like hail starts with a couple of little icicles then transforms itself into a roof bombardment. “Drunk gods” finds Daniel Menche returning to his primordial virulent fervour that stands between overflowing wrath and vehement momentum. The excruciating forces that this performer is able to put forth in his disciplinarian use of noise is something to behold; lows and highs struggle for life in the frequency dominion, discolouring the sky and fading in a single stroke of natural, almost physiological rage. Somehow, when the sound has finished its devastation, the soul is relieved: we have been raped and baptized – at the same time.

DANIEL MENCHE – Heavy (Banned Production)

Issued on a 3-inch CD and lasting less than 20 minutes, “Heavy” is a powerful single drone centred around a fixed frequency area, like an extraordinary “Om” delivering bodies from spurious residues. It only changes in intensity and equalization, as every once in a while repeating cycles of electricity and sonic radioactivity take that single buzz and apply a stratospheric spin to its already enormous centrifugal force. Just when we’re nearing the explosion point a disintegration happens, concluding this short composition with a total mangling of every known significance. The sounds stop abruptly – so does our sense of expansion of an evil awareness – but my ears are ready to start all over again.

DANIEL MENCHE – Together we shall melt mountains with our blood (Waystyx)

Another dose of the “Menche therapy”, this rare CD won’t catch you unaware if the man from Portland has already reanimated your dying speakers in the past. Like in a well-rehearsed ceremony, the electric flow starts from silence, soon becoming the intense invocation of a million desperate souls, whose force resides in the vibrational impact of dissonant mantras where one figures metal rubbing, alarms ringing and voices screaming in a total abandon of senses to an eviscerating imagination. In Daniel’s music there is an apparent duality between movement and stasis that changes the listening perspective without the need of additional procedures; it’s a mass of self-regenerating potency, based on a concrete body of absurdly intense sounds surrounding our small entities with frightening vehemence, only to open up to reveal itself an emotional outbreak. Those who are touched by these bony hands are doomed to remain in the realm of the dumb forever – let this monster of contrasting frequencies do the speaking.

DANIEL MENCHE – Flaming tongues (Blossoming Noise)

Never mind that Daniel Menche’s recorded output is reaching Muslimgauze-like proportions, with an average of almost one monthly release; fact of the matter is that this man’s passionate battle to transform “percussion/concussion and sound/noise” in an exhilarating mass of fundamental frequencies has brought him to the highest positions in the roster of sound artists who have a total deconstruction of our senses as their principal objective. “Flaming tongues” finds Daniel looking for new paths through a bigger involvement with harsh percussive discharges that progressively transform themselves in large waves of radioactive pleasure; all resonates in perfect tune with a sort of cosmology where planets and satellites are organized in gradually morphing frameworks. The deriving emissions – scary as they may sound at first – find their way to a complete homogeneity with the nerves; the effect on the listener is akin to being treated by a dozen masseurs whose hands release small doses of electricity while they slap our muscles with controlled violence.

DANIEL MENCHE – Radiant blood (Substantia Innominata)

The first release in a new series by the German Drone label, “Radiant blood” is a 10-inch vinyl where Daniel Menche deals with two completely different aspects of “furious resonance”. On the first side, the Oregon shaman evokes a magmatic sea of shimmering noise generated by the fusion of various distortions, extracting textures and harmonics even from what sounds like a hopeless slow destruction of every human trace. Yet the best is saved for the second movement; what I perceive as a repeatedly stricken piano key in the lowest region of the keyboard slowly leaves its places to a mysteriously appealing chant of undefinable layered drones, disturbed by more noises which – with a modicum of imagination – one could think as the devil’s voice. Truly impressive stuff, confirming Menche’s overwhelming dominance in this artistic field – and that includes Merzbow.

DANIEL MENCHE – Jugularis (Important)

“Jugularis” is one of the most intense releases by Daniel Menche and that’s saying a lot. Its three movements explore one of this composer’s favourite fields, that of interlocking percussive patterns of various length and speed mixed with the resonance of metals and the sheer auricular pressure given by a few raw sounds. Cloned and repeated ad infinitum, these cycles become hordes of unrestrained elemental manifestations that render this music comparable to the prelude to a huge catastrophe. Yet, the preamble never gives way to a real event, it just grows and grows until the muscles feel the need to exercise, the legs want to start walking, the hands would like to play the head like a conga. It’s that involving. Amidst this auricular ordeal, multitudes of rhythmic prototypes (often in composed meters: I distinctly perceived figurations in five and seven) characterize a ritual during which a state of trance is reached by the receivers – at least the ones who can afford to sustain such a test – who are at the same time annihilated and so full of energy that they would be able to front any opposition. At the end of the album, a sigh of relief is the first reaction; but it’s soon realized that one has become addicted, as there’s an immediate feeling of something missing. We’re back to our mental and corporeal decay. What would I do without this man?

DANIEL MENCHE – Beast resonator (Roggbif)

Is it possible to achieve equanimity through agonizing trance? “Beast resonator” shows that it is. The formula is classic Menche, a frightening recipe of “percussion and concussion” which includes tribal drum patterns, something similar to handclapping amidst rattlesnakes, and – in this particular instance – treated voice (also by Menche) generating long “oms” that appear as a deviant mantra from hell at the end of the first movement (of three). What intimidates is usually avoided like the plague, but this man has by now established an impressive control on every aspect of his music, defining a style which took years to finally attract a well deserved wider audience (…indeed, many of today’s worshippers around my geographic area, at that time probably intent in revisiting Spandau Ballet, were nowhere to be seen when “Incineration” and “Static burn” came out, but let’s not spoil the party). This album could very well be considered as the second part of the recent “Jugularis” as far as rhythmic information and energy transmission are concerned. There is no virtual reality here, only blood-curling helplessness in front of a basic force that’s able to shake both a body and the ground from which that body absorbs its vibration. One feels connected with the earth, part of a complex design through which our being achieves a fulfilment of sorts; meanwhile, our nerves are barraged with hit-and-no-miss punches of intersecting raw patterns which excite our sensitive organs, pushing them to the maximum limit in an apparently ceaseless sensual overload. But it finally stops – after about 72 minutes – and this beast’s brain is still resonating the morning after.

DANIEL MENCHE – Kanticle (Ferns)

When artists define a genre or a style, confirming their abilities with each and every disc they release, the task of reviewing records that are consistently excellent without repeating ourselves becomes quite hard. Such is the case of Daniel Menche, whose recent focus has been directed on two major areas of work, namely “mildly harsh” string treatment and reiterative percussion. “Kanticle” is a 3-inch that uses sounds of zither as the basis for a magnetic track, starting with slow touches and asymmetric oscillations that introduce us to a typical crescendo of intensity culminating in quasi-violent resonance. As in his fabulous “Deluge & Sunder”, Menche’s vision benefits from splendid chordal adjacences that clash and arouse, blossoming into a fecundity of scintillating sonic possibilities not distant from the insides of a grand piano. It’s not an out-and-out attack, then, even if teeth-grinding overtones instil some degree of apprehension here and there. But the fulfilment of the listener is a sure thing with this obscure little gem.

DANIEL MENCHE – For the beasts (P Tapes)

Menche is a renowned animal lover (check his blog for some photo of wonderful creatures that he himself portrays or even rescues during his trips) and “For the beasts” is a fine dedication to the matter. The heavy drumming characterizing the piece – which comes in another mini-disc – is reminiscent of his work with KK Null, continuous intersections and superimpositions of percussive patterns growing into a fiendish ceremony in which no human mind can determine the beginning and the end of the rhythmic designs conceived on the spot by the Oregonian. The kaleidoscopic process of augmentation of the parts also generates a sort of implicit hum, like a surrounding halo of electricity that seems to protect the music by external interference, while contributing to a state of physical exhaustion in these 20 minutes of idealistic, if embryonic shamanism.

DANIEL MENCHE – Wolf’s milk (Utech)

“Wolf’s milk” represents the deepening of a different interest for Menche, in that it explores those zones of vibrational resonance – mostly around the extreme regions of the frequency spectra – that have already caused many people to credit this work with a citizenship in areas that coincide with terms like “darkness”, “ambient” and “drone” (this, one would say, denotes once again the extraordinary fantasy of reviewers). It could be easily pointed out that the Portland artist has been droning – definitely with a personal style – since the early nineties, way before many respected saints of the humming groan; yet this is Menche’s first real congress with those presences whose manifestations explicate through the power of repressed bellow and moaning slow motion. The composition is divided into three movements defined by different, at times barely recognizable sources: organ, gongs and trumpets, alone or in combination. In terms of sheer sonority, the first section is impressively quivering, the second owns a metallic ill-tempered disposition gravitating around a pre-explosion state while the third is probably the most satisfying one, fusing all timbres into a mantric perturbation that places the music in the same territory of albums like “Deluge and Sunder”, with less repressed tendencies to deflagration. I surmise that some of the original timbres have been altered in the studio, since I still can’t conceive how trumpets can sound like mosquitos (hear for yourselves). As I already wrote elsewhere, this new course of Daniel Menche’s production should place him nearer to classic minimalism more than anything “industrial” or “post-watchamacallit”, as this man’s intuitions demonstrate that he’s in possession of something that many “artists” are sorely lacking: a spirit.

DANIEL MENCHE – Bleeding heavens (Blossoming Noise)

Let me tell you a short story. When I first listened to “Bleeding heavens”, the heating system was still dormant in the house, therefore my limbs were freezing that night. As soon as the music started, nourished by a customary eruptive crescendo where membrane-quaking subsonic discharges corroborated by grimy distortion blitzed the control room of compressed nerves, it dawned on me that enough was enough: I would use the sounds conceived by Daniel Menche to set my own body on “full sizzle” mode. In about ten concentrated minutes of listening, the mission was accomplished: closed eyes, relaxed muscles, fingers willing to move again, breathing coming much easier. Everything achieved through a complete abandon of physical defence, those spontaneous tight postures that we assume to protect ourselves, mostly from stupidity but also from the elements. Thus, the abnormally radiant, harmonic-doused communion of flesh and spirit generated by the Portlander’s vision (in this instance derived by the “deconstruction” of trumpet and organ, yet it’s more like a smothering nuclear massage) functions in a way that one can’t help but define psychosomatic, provided of course that the listener is completely open to this kind of dynamic stimulation. The record comprises four movements that, short transitional spans aside, are seamed in a coherent suite. As usual, Menche controls the mass expansion and the overall pulse totally, not allowing any element to become preponderant in the mix, the whole resulting in a pulverizing amalgam of fury and mantric annihilation. Love or hate it, this man’s output is steadily evolving into something even more serious than I myself expected years ago, as he keeps changing perspectives, timbres and conceptions in the eventual consecutiveness of his pieces, all the while subjecting us to a skull-numbing stranglehold that sends radical information to our being, arousing dispatches of vibrational libido that cause veritable addiction. Instead, it’s a brain-rejuvenating cure.

DANIEL MENCHE – Glass forest (Important)

Looks like Daniel Menche’s intention is to release music only though LP and DVD in the future. I’d subscribe to the latter format right now, convinced that the Oregonian’s sonic materials should be extended over the course of very long temporal distances. Then again, it is said that the pieces will score experimental movies in that medium – my drooling increases by the minute. More about old-style albums later (and look for the review of “Body melt”, the companion vinyl release to this CD, here). For the moment let’s enjoy “Glass forest”, three movements of classic Menche trance, each one with different compositional spices to savour. The first recalls the most “tribal” albums – think “Raijin” – with a series of superimposed rhythmic patterns causing the skull to get crushed by a cross of a dozen of freight trains and an African baptism alimented by bionic energies. The second meshes ultrasonic pierces and crunchy matters, a tranquil walk by a marsh ruined by stinging killer insects injecting corrosive liquids in our system. The veritable masterpiece of the disc is the final section, where the composer reaches the perfect balance of ingredients typical of his best work: a basic pulse – could be an electronic source, but we’ve often been tragically wrong in guessing what this man uses in the studio – is just blemished by background rumbles and irregular percussive outbursts, until a reiterative metallic template takes centre stage shaking the nerves through alien resonances and on-and-off throbbing potentials. Imagine being overwhelmed by crumbling rocks while trapped in a car on the railways of one of the above mentioned trains, which is inexorably approaching. With a DVD you might still hope to postpone the inevitable end and remain happily terrorized; in the “other” situation, you’d have to wake up and flip the side of a long-playing. What’s your preference?

DANIEL MENCHE / KIYOSHI MIZUTANI – Garden (Auscultare Research)

“Garden” is the sound of dead silence breaking into an endless dawn, it’s the mountain’s heartbeat, it’s the rebellion of birds to any conventional wisdom – and much more. Sharing duties on “high” and “low” sounds respectively, Mizutani and Menche walk on the thinnest rope separating a microcosm’s real life from an extraordinary transcendence. There are no words to express the shocking beauty of this environmental composition; its sounds go from the barely perceptible movement of insects to very distant barking dogs, from chirping loops to monumental shakes of the inner part of the ground. The slow intensity growth characterizing the piece is both tantalizing and menacingly unstoppable. Reaching this level of fulfilment when working with such a scarcity of elements will be hard for anyone; while I hadn’t met Kiyoshi Mizutani’s work before, I can safely assume this is one of the best Daniel Menche records ever.

MERCANSER – Mercanser (Void Of Ovals)

How would you like being treated to some seriously warped muzak-cum-composed-metres by someone who can arrange pretty well (or maybe is just able to program a sequencer in the right way), the whole reproduced on low-budget keyboards and drum machines? And what about plain idiot songs to counterbalance the instrumentals? OK, here we go. Mercanser are a nightmare of easy melodies, robotic stupidity and cheap preset-fuelled emotions as conceived by a third-grade cousin of Vangelis and played by the friends of Ken and Barbie after a barbecue party. This is badly artificial mental contortion, something that – should someone spin it while attempting to have sexual intercourse with the lady of their dreams – will most definitely metamorphose that woman into a rubber doll. It’s dreadful, yet fascinating – the sleeve photo, idem. Fans of Residents could definitely find a measure of congeniality in it (there are also voices, yes) and I smile approvingly, in loving memory of my old experiments with a 4-track Fostex decades ago.

MERE FEU – 40 tetes (Absurd)

According to the liner notes, the over 31 minutes of “40 tetes” are the audio documentation of a crematory ceremony attended by Lionel Marchetti (who mixed and edited the whole) Christophe Cardoen and Emmanuel Petit. This is finely crafted musique concrete in the wake of the late Luc Ferrari, where every sound owns a deeply affecting intrinsic value: from the whispers of the crickets and the barking dogs to the slowly burning flames putting in motion a mechanism of popping and clicking noises while sparse metallic percussives appear, the piece finally lies upon a soft bed of relaxing frequencies leading this aural trip to its worthy conclusion – the return to the silence of the night. Without breaking any rule, a beautifully detailed and truly perfect short electroacoustic story has been penned by the very essence of sheer sonic occurrences, captured by the recorders in a quite mystical moment.

TODD MERRELL / AIDAN BAKER / PATRICK JORDAN – Nagual (Archive)

The beautiful photographs – a forest and an amass of superb clouds – that adorn the cover of “Nagual” give only a faint idea of its musical content. Looking at the instrumentation (shortwave radio, guitars, electronics, processing) and remembering the ambits in which these artists have worked, we realize in advance that an experience of altered perception will be likely met. The four tracks – recorded live in Hartford, Connecticut in 2004 – are presented as a single unit, a 60-minute suite that easily reaches the highest positions in my personal space/ambient rank of the last five years. The feel of proximity given by the ethereal qualities of Baker’s loops, the otherworldly voices and the modified emissions coming from Merrell and Jordan’s radios generate a state of perennial floating that, for a change, doesn’t sound like refined new age. Depths similar to the ones reached by the best Lustmord are observed, segments of gentle guitar arpeggios and powerful tempests of indefinite aural matter representing a stimulation for the being to remain awake, all the more in those moments when the tiredness of living amidst stupidity starts knocking at the door of our mind. The beginning of “Cygnus” is just memorable in its simplicity, a graceful line repeated over and over by Baker upon a fairly static background whose sonic appearance resembles a cross between the slow breathing of a whale and an aircraft taking off, before wailing moans by bionic mermaids define the evolution of the piece towards completion. If this cynical grumbler liked this one so much, then lovers of the genre should consider “Nagual” a must.

MERSAULT – Raymond & Marie (Formed)

I dare to detect a hint of deep-seated individualism in each of the components of this trio, arrived with “Raymond & Marie” at the second outing. Curiously enough, this three-minded sharp-sightedness is exactly what makes this music work so well. Differently from other EAI collectives, Mersault are perfectly conscious of the value of the single parts; if the total yields excellent results after all, it’s only because their sense of self-restraint and will of not over-exceeding prevails on the potential struggle for the affirmation of a specific idea. Strong personality and egoism are indeed very different things, and these men know what they’re doing. In this particular instance Tomas Korber (guitar, electronics), Christian Weber (double bass) and Christian Wolfarth (drums) seem to privilege the addition of strata, rough lacquers and laminae as opposed to subtractive processes and consequent quietness. While there are several instances in which one of the musicians might be found naked in front of an open door, exposed to a chilly current (“have to do something to get out of this hush”), the ensemble playing is hardnosed as rarely heard in this zone, often capping a seriously boiling violence (mostly courtesy of Korber’s electrically charged undulations and uber-hissing manipulations and Wolfarth’s frictional use of cymbals and metallic objects) which explodes only in the final two minutes. Amidst the evil winds the tent is nailed to the ground by Weber, whose style has become deservedly recognized in recent times, quality low-frequency garnishing and unchristened plucking preventing the music from following the siren chant of undesired abstraction. Engaging moments of cohesive brutality see Wolfarth adding fractured rolls and skin mistreatment, alternated with sections where both Weber’s arco and Korber’s drones wrap our shoulders in a deadly embrace which is also the carrier of the most intense quaverings of the whole album. “Raymond & Marie” comprises thought-provoking, stimulating, unpleasingly beautiful playing for those who don’t like security.

SZILÁRD MEZEI ENSEMBLE – Nád / Reed (Red Toucan)

Inexorably, the name of this composer – a Hungarian who was born in Serbia – is becoming increasingly visible on the up-to-the-minute jazz scene and, from what I’ve heard, deservedly so. Mezei is able to achieve a complex stability of influences in the material he pens, which is strongly rooted in the popular traditions of the geographic areas he grew in. Fronting a large band (14 elements including himself) in this occasion, the violist fortifies a quest for authenticity which is perceptible in every instant. Music made of familiarities, furtive crossing of borders and rankling wounds, in which the orchestration constitutes a fundamental terrain for the growth of floriferous melodic plants. Dissonant themes and folk reminiscences interlock in a context where nothing sounds passé, yet one clearly feels the weight of earlier periods that will never be forgotten. Ample spaces of theoretical chaos (often generated by the out-of-phase superimposition of precisely written parts) make sure that the collective endeavour is rewarded by a multitude of energies working without loss of concentration, renewing the intention of bringing the composition to the level of “inspired suffering” typical of the acceptance of an unavoidable fate. The many directions towards which the score pushes are not mystifying, otherwise representing a metaphor for independence, the one that’s desperately longed for and is still reachable within. The mission is problematically thorny, but it can be done.

SZILÁRD MEZEI QUINTET – As you (Ayler)

There is some serious grit to be found in this quintet’s music, comprising Szilárd Mezei on viola and kaval, Albert Márkos on violoncello, Kornél Pápista on tuba, Ervin Malina on bass and István Csik on drums. Mesei, who was born in an independent area of the Serbian Republic named Senta, is the composer of the four extended tracks on the CD, yet he sounds just as a nominal leader in a finely balanced group that repeatedly crosses the boundaries of everything standing in between free jazz and folk tunes, all the while showing a galvanizing fury that after a few minutes makes us feel invigorated to the point of enthusiasm. Mezei’s intricate lines draw inspired diagonals and oblong protuberances amidst Csik’s rabid drumming in “Outside the game” (which is opened by a great solo by Malina), eventually managing to join Márkos’ cello in a series of parallelisms leading towards a serene detachment from the by now remote concept of “tonality”. And when the going gets really tough, the tough get going: Pápista enters the scene in the second half of the CD, both in “Rain, rain, rain” (the most nostalgic theme on offer, by the way, even if it soon gets disintegrated into cells and particles) and “Thistle”, his tuba reinforcing the collective’s tissue with a powerful presence that not only helps his companions in their vigorous statements, but causes an impressive augmentation of the sonic mass’ thickness, which doesn’t contrast the ensemble’s struggle to preserve the spirit and the fervour animating every minute of this material. Believe me, it won’t take long before you’re hooked: when musicians are still hungry, we can even keep calling this damn thing “jazz”.

SZILÁRD MEZEI / ALBERT MÁRKOS – Korom (Creative Sources)

Viola and cello make for a magnificent combination, this duo celebrating a wedding typified by present-day romanticism and witty improvisational options. The subdivision of “Korom” in diminutive sections (down to 19 seconds) comprised between the longer pieces beginning and ending the album attributes an inner symmetry to the whole configuration, a welcome addition to an already exquisite experience. The players investigate singular aspects of sonic free will with self control and moderation, absolutely not afraid of letting the horses go every once in a while. What starts like an almost regretful look to far-flung temporal landscapes often turns into a restless consecutiveness of calls and responses, the “scrape, scratch and pluck” factor gaining considerable weight over the course of the set. Yet the most striking attributes of this music reside in the artists’ quest for extrapolating newness from unplanned sketches and designs which, at the same time, seem to have been conceived a hundred years ago, such is the magic aura of improbability and secluded grief that these phrases originate in the soul of the sensitive listener. There’s not a moment in which we were caught unprepared by this unpretentious splendor. A seriously involving record, the unforeseen gift from two musicians whose curricula are definitely impressive (check them and remain in awe, especially in reference to Mezei’s) yet still worthy of being exposed to bigger and bigger audiences.

MHA – 11:46 – 09:01 (Aposiopèse)

A beautiful aquatic photograph adorns the cover of a nice 3-inch CD by a gentleman from France, whose name is James (I don’t know if Mha is his real surname, but this is not important) and who used guitar, bass, glockenspiel, microphone, minidisc and field recordings to conceive two tracks – titled exactly as you see, with just their duration – that keep a pleasant company over the course of 20 minutes, especially at low level in the early hours of the morning. The first takes its shape from unidentified voices to remain suspended mid-air with gentle chords and volume swells, while the second introduces a few additional harmonic movements, most notably within the realms of string-ish gradations that contribute to change perspectives a little bit, although leaving the general character of the music quite similar to the rest of the disc. Think about a mix of certain sides of Eno’s more melodic materials and, for those who know him, Hypnos label’s guitarist David Tollefson, the whole covered with a charming simplicity giving this artifact a graceful warmth which is much appreciated from this observation point.

MI & TRIGGER – Error_05/Auto_Face (Chmafu)

As idiosyncratic as a variation on a fiendish process of decomposition, this stinging improvisation was recorded live yet it sounds more like a studio cut-up in which past experiences and future dreams meet to chew the voices of regular instruments and throw them up, snippets of a reality that refuses to be observed from any angle whatsoever. Swantje Tessmann (violin), Sebastian Berweck (Nord Modular G2 synth), Eric Dresher (flutes) and John Eckhardt (acoustic bass) implement noise principles within their unquestionable technical proficiency by fragmenting the sonic scenery into a million of torrid crumbles of feedback and layering rheumatic fevers of teared up synthetic oscillations. The sturdy ostination applied by Trigger to disintegrate improvisational conventions is well represented by the sputtering profane lamentations of the strings, which amidst the volcanic fumes of Berweck’s synthesizer assume the role of balancing forces in this finely (de)tuned reproduction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

MIBA – The corplate porblem (Pax Recordings)

Mark Bartscher and Kristin Miltner create sound patchworks paying just a little debt to minimalism and “classic” electronic music, yet maintaining a well definite personality that separates their art from the myriads of computer-based projects sprung out of every living room and studio recently. Using mostly animal and human samples, mixing them with contrasting frequencies and arranging rhythmic tapestries with multisound strata, MiBa show us a jumble of memories and feelings, pulling out a few pages of their aural diaries and showing us the complete reversal of them. Their pollination results in a music that can’t be immured by schemes – concrete? acousmatics? – and also has a mark of sincerity and freakish intoxication leaving me with jagged thoughts and a plurality of imaginary escapes from reality.

MIDWICH – Natural wastage (Evelyn)

This short (30 minutes) CD is one of the best Evelyn’s releases, being a single “minimalist” track centred on a hold organ chord, surrounded by several variable shades coming from different kinds of electronic generators. Like most static compositions, “Natural wastage” is better enjoyed trying different listening positions and walking around the room so that sound refracts differently according to angles and head posture. The beautiful layering combinations will do the rest, gently lulling your suggestions and encouraging that torpor we all need every once in a while. This is music gifted with simple, effective beauty.

EMMANUEL MIEVILLE / ERIC CORDIER – Dispositif: Canal Saint-Martin (Xing Wu)

Many individuals are unable to properly listen. Dissecting noise until harmonic components are found and deployed, detecting a logic in what superficially amounts to sheer din, elaborating contrasting messages and different impulses until their core is reached. Sound artists Mieville and Cordier tend a helping hand to those who want to learn a bit about the process of active listening with this project, a real-time composition that took its form in 2005 at the Centre d’animation Jemmapes in Paris’ City Hall. Placing thirty microphones all over the place, which comprises various halls and offices plus “several floors of rehearsal rooms for dance, music, theatre”, the two comrades originated a sketchy yet efficient acousmatic piece interspersed with laptop-triggered “sonic objects” and movements from the surrounding life and activities, with emphasis on the urban landscape and a pretty evident human participation. To this, a few sounds captured in Normandy were also added. We hear people chatting, singing and whistling. In the background, a marching band or the wheezing currents of familiar hullabaloo filtered by a ventilation duct appear, rendering the whole as a flanged reproduction of the buzzing bustle of a large amount of beings whom we can’t distinguish singularly but all contribute to the final patchwork. The work is a valid example of what can be achieved through the exploitation of subjective approaches to perception and, although a tad predictable in some of its parts, deserves careful consideration.

SEI MIGUEL – The tone gardens (Creative Sources)

“The tone gardens” is a three-movement suite that materializes a peculiar kind of iconography, where rhythm and space are arranged irregularly but follow an inflexible logic. The link between unbrokenness and fragmentation is subtle, but the interest of the whole composition lies right there: Miguel’s pocket trumpet courts Fala Mariam’s inquisitive alto trombone – both instruments played muted and full-tone depending on the section – like in an intelligent chat between two neograduates during the final party at the university, each one trying to explain the reasons of their choices for the next future. This reciprocal succession of affirmations and questions evolves over a basically static surrounding environment – Cesar Burago’s “dead radios” are a primary reason – that becomes progressively unquiet, thanks to Burago’s excellent work on bio-percussion and, above all, to the involving textures generated by Rafael Toral, who uses different sources in each movement – computer sinewaves, portable amplifier feedback, modulated white noise system – to weave non-subliminal backgrounds and ear-catching bursts full of fascinating contradictions and misquotes, organically ephemeral but whose nutritional value for the ears is quite high. Miguel’s scoring expertise shines brightly throughout the CD; he radically alters the coordinates of expectation by developing an architecture of clear figurations and roughly delineated shapes. This composition represents a landmark in his career and it must be scrutinized at least half a dozen times before getting an idea of the extent of its cleverness.

DAVOR MIKAN – Täuschung (Cronica)

Based in Vienna, Davor Mikan “creates music about failure, beauty, lust and delusion in the context of psychoacoustic effects and in a personal sense (self-delusion).” Translation: this is a 37-minute CD with 31 very short tracks, which the composer developed in the last four years. His procedures include algorithms, handmade music (meaning what?), generative graphic tools and granular synthesis. These descriptions give only a faint idea of how the record appears, although understanding is not difficult given the label we’re dealing with: “fragmentariness” is indeed the necessary password. There’s no chance to get used to something, because that something is not even there. Glimpses of ideas appear then crumble and break, disfigured by the studio treatment; sheer noise accompanies the subsequent disillusion. Milliseconds of silence, then a graceful looped melody sounds as if termites were munching its core. Flint-hearted noises and ultra-distorted rejects form bodies whose shape and colour is nevertheless accepted and, in a way, loved like an ugly sister. The canon is more or less the same throughout the duration of the disc, which is a realistic example of manipulation of sonic snippets that sounds good without being historic. Still, this is a stayer, made with extreme care and respect for the overall artistic concept, whatever that be.

MIKRONESIA – Iris or comfortable too (Gears Of Sand)

Mikronesia is the nom d’art of Michael McDermott. Piano has been his favourite instrument since, as a small child, he was sitting on his grandmother’s lap while she introduced him to the infinite world of the 88 keys. Yet, as life brought in its influence under the form of other involvements (namely playing with various bands and solo electronic music), the artist left the original object of interest alone for a long time. In 2007, though, McDermott decided to go back to the big box, exploiting its timbral properties to conceive a brand new composition mixing the best of two worlds (with a Harold Budd/Brian Eno inspiration, just for starters). Modifying the results with a laptop and an assortment of pedals, Mikronesia serves now an album that surely doesn’t sound neither “Eno” nor “Budd” and is indeed quite personal, this being the feature that made me focus on it a little bit longer than my usual average in these genres. Many of the sounds heard are kind of suffocated – like perceived with a pillow on our head as we desperately try to sleep, the neighbour’s daughter practicing her solfeggio exercises in the contiguous room – and, when in headphones, sometimes a distinct distortion creeps in. Not sure if it was meant to be there – we’re not talking Vangelis-like engineering here. But all those strange electro-deformations – reverse reverbs, glitches, broken waves and interrupted drones – amidst this general atmosphere of “ugly beauty” somehow work well, and in the right conditions and circumstances this is a CD that could introduce several nice revelatory moments. Give it a good test. “Amorphous ambient for discriminating minds”, anyone?

STEVE MILLER / LOL COXHILL – The story so far…/…Oh really? (Cuneiform)

There’s a revealing moment in the Steve Miller interview contained in this set’s booklet, as he explains the reasons of a lengthy withdrawal due to a profound dissatisfaction with his technique. “I was hearing music that I couldn’t play”, says the late pianist. This tells everything about Miller’s honesty, while also indicating what every artist should do when they feel that inspiration is not coming in the right way. Still, this double CD is another important item in Cuneiform’s history of relevant retrievals of forgotten materials and deleted releases, as it puts back in availability two long out of print collaborative LPs recorded by saxophonist Lol Coxhill and Miller in the early 70s, which remained practically covered with the sand of oblivion until now. As it often happens with reissues of obscure records, no master tapes were available; the copy on CD derives from a vinyl-to-disc transfer with various kinds of digital cleaning. Assuming that, since you’re reading this website, you know who Lol Coxhill and Steve Miller are (…and if that’s not the case, I can’t certainly narrate their careers in pills in the space of a review – surf the web!), the material comprised here owns that fascinating aura, halfway between nostalgia and youthful enthusiasm, characterizing most of the Canterbury-related expressions of that era. Besides the ingenuous purity of the duo improvisations, one can already catch glimpses of Coxhill’s future developments as a solo performer, Miller complementing his “absolutely free” explorations with phraseologies whose structure is evident – those technical habits that he came to hate, indeed. For collectors and avid fans, there are good portions of previously unreleased goodies, including live recordings (in glorious mono) and 20 minutes from the “proto-Hatfield and the North lineup of Delivery” (Miller and Coxhill plus Phil Miller, Pip Pyle, Richard Sinclair and Roy Babbington). Those who are into this stuff will enjoy this one a lot, treating the lo-fi quality and the frequent naïveté as archival manna.

MIMEO – Sight (Cathnor)

A one-hour composition, the result of Marcus Schmickler’s synchronized juxtaposition of eleven one-hour CDRs containing about five minutes of sounds – place, source and method unknown to each participant – according to a “rule” inspired by painter Cy Twombly’s occasional choice of blindfolding himself while creating; “Sight” is also a pun referring both to this occurrence and Twombly’s name. In this occasion, MIMEO were Gert-Jan Prins, Thomas Lehn, Kaffe Matthews, Peter Rehberg, Jérôme Noetinger, Marcus Schmickler, Christian Fennesz, Phil Durrant, Rafael Toral, Cor Fuhler and Keith Rowe. Let’s just put aside the most obvious approach – the “where is Rowe, where is Toral, where is Fennesz” one – because “Sight” finds its relevance in one thing only, and that’s SILENCE. What breaks silence is a signal of presence, a “being there”, a “still alive” factor that makes sure that the music still has a pulse, and we too. It’s neither important hearing electronics on a regular basis, nor realizing about a stick placed amidst the guitar strings causing a bouncy jangle. We won’t have our life changed by farting analog waves, distorted shortwave outbursts and – by now omnipresent – fixed hiss. If I restricted myself to determine and judge those components, I could easily place “Sight” in the number of excellent EAI albums that I experience daily, declare it as another of reductionism’s last stands and come home dry. No, the most important aspect of “Sight” is the relationship between what’s in the record, what’s outside the record and silence. If a sibilant mixer, an overdriven radio and a synthetic oscillation come together, fine – but we’ve heard hundreds of more or less similar concepts. But if a rumbling drone and a remote hollow bell happen to meet amidst an overwhelming silence and – being extremely lucky – an airplane moans in the faraway skies in the meantime, something serious moves within the receiver of that combination. Chances, indeed. Let’s not delude ourselves, then: the average record collector will probably be unable to penetrate the essence of such a release (to be honest, I think the same for most everything nearing these territories) because very rarely given the possibility of listening as it always should be. In silence. Something that’s becoming scarcer than water. Cy Twombly may have wanted to experience blindness while painting, but I wonder if people will ever try subjecting themselves to muteness, being them “artists” or not. I don’t think it will happen anytime soon. Still, there’s an awful lot of dumb music around already.

MIMIR – Mimir (Streamline) / Mimyriad (Streamline)

A god of wisdom from the Old Norse mythology, Mimir (pronounced with the accent on the first “i”) is also a multifaceted artistic project that rarely I have been able to literally delineate and/or classify, such is the impenetrability that welcomes the approaching listener behind only apparently easy ways of access. Then again, it’s difficult not to remain puzzled when a talented visionary such as Christoph Heemann is involved – HNAS to Mirror and In Camera is a long, long path indeed – and this gathering of individualist geniuses (founded by Heemann together with Legendary Pink Dots’ Edward Ka-Spel) is the exact type of object that slips away like wet soap when trying to stick a label on it. Luckily, the two earlier releases by this collective – which includes Elke Ka-Spel, Andreas Martin, Phil Knight (aka Silverman) and Jim O’Rourke besides the originators – are now obtainable on a larger scale after having been (un)available on scarcely diffused vinyls and CDs in the past.

Although points of continuity between the albums do exist, they’re as diverse as brothers from a different wedlock. “Mimir”, originally a double LP on Flabbergast, mixes echoes of psychedelia, Krautrock, and shapeless disjointed trance with repetitive guitar patterns that could link it to a kind of “progressive minimalism” typical of certain settings from the 70s. It also features parts that one should ideally sentence as Pink Floyd or Popol Vuh-influenced, but what would you say if Klaus Kinski brought out his (six-stringed) axe instead of acting as a proper Aguirre, and started arpeggio elegies with a filtered melting background of keyboards, flutes and strings? There’s a sublime section during the longest track, where superimposed monk-styled voices raise thick clouds of ancient doubt in a foaming density of significance that goes much beyond the mere concept of a “recording”. This could very well be the symbol of an album that remains a gorgeous unsolved mystery, now like 17 years ago. The distant pianistic unhappiness that ends the first movement, or the pre-Mirror glissando washes at the beginning of the third, are alone worthy of the whole set.

“Mimyriad”, rather shorter at about 38 minutes, preserves the semi-acoustic factors – guitars are much in evidence throughout – and the general unpredictability of these artist’s concepts, sounding a little more “folkish” to these ears (it’s a compliment, mind you) despite the presence of elements that certainly wouldn’t apply to Pentangle. Again, we sniff a vaguely circumstanced Syd Barrett guidance yet it must be noted that, all over both discs, there’s not a minute of music that sounds photocopied from someone else’s. The beauty and, at the same time, the problem of Mimir’s expression for many people is precisely this refusal of pigeonholes. Synthetic rollercoaster hand in hand with looped tapes, fairly unrecognizable derivations constituting the tissue of altered states whose aural character appealed, and will probably appeal, more to fans of realities nearing, say, Nurse With Wound than static music aficionados.

All in all, these are important pieces of stateless musical culture; weighing the merits of their relevance – not to mention their unquiet attractiveness – would mean killing the chance of letting them penetrate our life, which would be a shame. Still, if just single shots were allowed, the first album is unsurpassable.

MINAMO – A herdman’s life (Esquilo)

Compared to the usual canons of this Portuguese label, a little different music comes from Minamo, a Japanese quartet comprising Keiichi Sugimoto (guitar, computer), Yuichiro Iwashita (acoustic guitar), Namiko Sasamoto (keyboard, saxophone) and Tetsuro Yasunaga (electronics, small drums, harmonium). In about 26 minutes, “A herdman’s life” presents various facets of a half-bucolic, half-electronic quietness which uses the acoustic features of the instruments and drenches them in pretty digestible settings, meditative digressions moving at a regular pace. Sparse percussive backgrounds and simple piano/guitar chords suggest pictures of latent sleepy non-concentration, like if Minamo just wanted to enjoy the morning light during a walk through the country; as a matter of fact, there’s even one section in which cowbells become the basic rhythmic device. It’s a strangely conceived kind of music, pretty “normal” yet not obvious in any way; its presence is felt as welcome, but probably you won’t remember its complexion after less than 24 hours. But, quite often, it’s better that way.

MINIMAL SELF – Formula of reversal (Wavetrap)

John Everall, AKA Minimal Self, sampled and radically transformed his own speech to create “Formula of reversal” and there is absolutely nothing here that could make you think about vocal sounds: minimal patterns, noisy oscillations and irregularly percussive electronic fragments are built in a music that won’t take too long before finding a spot in your brain and decide for itself about the psychological effects it may have. No easy escapes or tepid vapors, it’s more like taking a bath in mucilaginous waters, where even the force of tense muscles can’t get you free of a general sense of being uncomfortably sticking to something you don’t even want to think about. These sounds constitute an immixible composite you have to accept just like it is; impassibly repeating themselves all over the record, sensations remain firmly planted and impossible to treat with indifference. Human voice can take you so far.

PHIL MINTON – No doughnuts in hand (Emanem)

This is a classic case of “I don’t know what to say”. Probably we should start by writing something along the lines of “WWF must protect PM”. I believe that any career mention or methodological depiction is by now futile when analyzing this gentleman’s output. Minton is 68 this year, but the spirit animating these improvisations is invigorating for just anyone who has a heart (Bacharach pun intended). His portrayal of hysteric wives, strangled ducks, interference-scarred radio speakers, multi-voice drunkards is as unique as the bumbling, uncoordinated stutter of a baby trying to emit the first utterances. This is not the place to write of the “mechanical aspects” in free improvisation; this has to do with phenomena telling apart someone who’s really, truly special from the masses of wannabes populating the music world. Oh, right – what about the CD, you ask. 37 petite pieces to be guzzled like chips, one after another, for circa 51 minutes of entertainment, absolutely exhilarating, outrageously multifarious in their flight-of-fancy purity. Countless characters, virtuoso effervescence, well-dressed rage, cutting intelligence. Everything contained by a little disc, yet I’m in literal awe when thinking to the baggage of skill and quantity of discernment that can be enclosed by a single brain. A listening experience that brings back the joy of living, and the will to have a good laugh. A forgotten urge, nowadays, in the lands of intellectually contorted idiots who “study” for decades only to be found speaking to themselves in the street at the end, having miserably failed every shot at intelligent action. Phil Minton, we owe you.

PHIL MINTON / ROGER TURNER – Drainage (Emanem)

This duo is more about arguing than exchanging opinions, but – mind you – it’s absolutely not a misalliance, as Minton and Turner channel their constantly renewing energies to an audience of enthusiasts applauding crazily at the end of every set, in admiration of their unrepentant “anti-everything” heroes. How right they are: while Roger’s array of percussion and found objects is exploited to the very bone, his timbral research and manual dexterity fills the two discs without having our ears replete, tenaciously gripping a strong hold over the unpredictability of Minton’s great expressiveness. Phil is incredible as never before, hardly comparable to anyone I can think about. A pot-pourri of trombone, Tuva singing, alley cats meowing and battling each other, a couple having an argument screaming from one room to another, lung illness used as a sound source, a harmonizer/pitch transposer having its last moments before the battery fails. To paraphrase Zappa: “The present day improvisers not only refuse to die…They’ll gladly kill YOU!”

PHIL MINTON QUARTET – Slur (Emanem)

Perhaps it might sound strange, but when “Almost there” – first track of the CD – began to introduce this jamboree of like-minded bastard virtuosos, the first term that came to my mind was “restriction”, given their total control of the dynamic processes of the piece. But this is a quartet whose components’ names would scare any superficial listener: Phil Minton (voice), John Butcher (soprano and tenor saxes), Veryan Weston (piano) and Roger Turner (percussion). Politeness is out of the question. We could associate this material to the image of someone trying to follow the fickle directions of a fly to swat it away, pursing lips, sweating because of nerves and heat, only to finally splatter the insect on the white wall with a grin. “Lower down” juxtaposes Minton’s polymorphous guttural emissions and contorted wailing with a splendid crossword between Weston and Butcher, who play convulsive staccatos and inhuman counterpoints in the most natural manner. In “Higher”, scintillating beams come from Turner as breaking-through admonitions not to forget the squealing element, Minton singing a deviated requiem in the meantime, while “A bit more” ranges from conversations between a Tuvan expatriate and a sociopathic chamber combo to additional idiosyncratic cultivations of fantasy, with a great Butcher on the tenor responding to the vocalist’s duckish spurts. “Far off” is characterized by the saxophonist’s dexterity in alternating saliva-fueled silent waves and multiphonic jams, Weston and Turner sustaining Minton at his most “hysterically restrained” level of absurd bravura. “Closer” looks for the rupture of conventional interplay by running amok between silence, full-steam crescendos and choked disarticulations by the ever-incredible Minton (if he’s not a damn genius, you tell me who the hell is one). “Back” is an obscure, crawling chant where Turner accompanies hums, wheezes and sparse piano notes with a sinister creaking background before Minton decides that his overtones must compete with bats and mice’s, the quartet fusing in a grand finale that recalls the disjointed voices and sounds heard when surfing through AM radio at late night, until the conclusive mini-mayhem. “Length” is a (not less interesting) short post scriptum that seals another Emanem must, a high-caliber release that gives the word “improvisation” its due lustre.

PHIL MINTON / YAGIHASHI TSUKASA / SATO YUKIE / HIGO HIROSHI – Nippara-Tokyo (Austin)

I happen to believe that three quarters of an hour or just less is the perfect duration for an album, as in the majority of our beloved old vinyl LPs. When the music is good, that’s the icing on the cake: a not-too-long program usually invites to repeated pleasures. That, one suspects, will occur with this fine CD, which Minton and all of his big band of vocal characters recorded in March 2004 in Japan together with Tsukasa (alto sax), Yukie (electric guitar) and Hiroshi (electric bass). Six improvisations, from little more than two minutes to about thirteen in length, running the whole gamut of dynamics with a certain degree of preference to situations that start very calmly, at times “quasi pianissimo”, then gradually lose composure and – in large part thanks to the Englishman’s absurd guttural and esophageal prowess – become a parade of tempers, outbursts and stomach-derived moods, with the participation of various kinds of walruses and other assorted entities. Still, don’t mark this as a “Phil Minton with accompaniment” kind of release: the sounds generated by the Japanese partnership possess a harmonic significance that appears even more noteworthy in those moments where everything stands ready to descend into mayhem. But it never does, almost like if the skeletal instrumental presences of Hiroshi and Yukie, intertwining with Tsukasa’s flurries and Minton’s carnival of blather, drew a frame of sorts to an otherwise too anarchic design. This balance of opposing contrasts is the winning card of a record which is – needless for me to say but I’m doing it anyway – unconditionally guaranteed against any irksomeness.

MIRAGE – Now you see it… (Vocalion)

For starters, let me thank Brian Godding for having introduced this listener to the world of forgotten gems that Vocalion symbolizes by sending the releases by this label reviewed here to date. That said, the left-handed slinger is one of the protagonists of this earnest album, originally released in 1977 by Mirage, a band formed by himself on guitar (acoustic, electric and tenor) plus George Khan (tenor, alto & soprano saxes, flute), Steve Cook (basses) and Dave Sheen (drums & percussion). The project developed around the Godding/Khan duo when they were together in Zagunga! (a “co-operative group of musicians and performing artists”, as per the liners’ description), the guitarist also a member of Mike Westbrook’s Solid Gold Cadillac band at the same time. “Now you see it…” was recorded in a converted pig farm who used to belong to Yes’ singer Jon Anderson, exploiting the then impressive capabilities of a 24-track system. Mirage were invited to use the studio by their friend engineer Mike Dunne while he was assembling it, therefore feeling delivered from economy-related pressures. The record reflects both this and the classic sense of creative freedom typical of the 70s – which, in case you didn’t realize, are thought as the last fertile decade as far as true artistic progress is concerned from this angle. This could be called jazz-rock for many aspects but indeed it’s just good music, a mixture of right attitude, sweaty virtuosity and elegant roughness. The playing is sturdy from all the participants, the Godding-penned tracks “Time less words” and “Underneath the arches and beyond” being personal favourites (consider my admitted partiality towards the man: I still believe that his “Slaughter on Shaftesbury Avenue” is an example of underappreciated desert island disc). Two long live outtakes, also featuring Geoff Castle (keyboards) and John Mitchell (percussion) constitute a nice addition to the original LP sequence. Great quality, no more blathering needed. Make it yours.

MIRIODOR – Parade + Live at Nearfest (Cuneiform)

Hazardous scores, plainspoken technical command and an effective sense of humour are three of the many great riches of this collective from Quebec, active since the eighties and now back with a vengeance. “Parade” is their most recent studio effort, showing their compositional attitude as sharp-cutting as never before; a cross of puzzling instrumental dexterity and inquisitive curiosity gives birth to sixteen tracks which easily find their place in the best avant-progressive music I’ve heard in the new millennium – and that includes sacred cows, supergroups and post R.I.O. incarnations I won’t name here. Lars Hollmer – a hero of mine – joins the band in three pieces, of which “Bonsai givré” is maybe the top of the whole package with its thematic twists and savoury components; indeed, all the pieces contribute to place Miriodor among the greats of the last two decades. The second CD “Live at Nearfest” is the document of a 2002 concert in Trenton, New Jersey where the typical atonal minimalism and multi-angle perspectives of these exquisite players is once again fiendishly alluring, as the difficulties of the respective parts doesn’t affect their ability at all; the audience reacts enthusiastically – so do I. Truly one of the Cuneiform classics, trust me.

MIRROR – Eye of the storm (Streamline)

I am happy to see Mirror’s rare vinyl albums beginning to be reissued on CD, for I think that’s the perfect medium to enjoy their fantastic long-droning compositions. “Eye of the storm” is the very first release of Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heemann working together and, needless to say, it’s an enormous bridge towards a new way of listening to the one and only “inner vibe”. A perfect cocktail of low frequencies, gong-like percussion, found sounds and environmental presences that elevate the spirit, causing the heartbeat to shift gears to a slower pace: I just forget what’s going on around the place, while I remain staring to a fixed spot. The perfect compliment to Mirror’s music is that its complex deep aura transforms even the most fervent anti-mystic, like yours truly, in a believer to a superior scheme of things.

MIRROR – Front row centre (Die Stadt)

This was released in 2000 and I do think it’s one of the most wonderful records that I’ve ever heard. Christoph Heemann and Andrew Chalk gave life to a slowly burning candle of immobile harmony, comparable to the best of Roland Kayn, Klaus Wiese, Phill Niblock, Michael J. Schumacher – you get the picture. The key word is once again “static”, the unrecognizable sources slowly building momentum without violence, generating ghosts of notes that are heard but haven’t actually been played. The music reaches a climax then abruptly goes back to a pregnant quiet, and more than once. But no hollow words of mine can explain what I define a celestial harmony. Peculiar phenomena occur during the listening: I went to my window once, to look for a motor airplane in the sky, and found out that the roar was coming from the record. An absolutely indispensable album, like all Mirror’s outings; it makes me resonate with emotion each time I give it a spin. Limited vinyl edition, worth of any price. POST SCRIPTUM, APRIL 2007. Feeling that “Front row centre” deserved a much deeper analysis, I wrote a feature about the record in Paris Transatlantic several years after this (later updated) 2001 review. Check it out.

MIRROR – Islands (Die Stadt)

A double vinyl album, plus a seven inch (in the limited edition only). Six parts of absolutely unrecognizable guitars, played by Christoph Heemann, Andrew Chalk and Andreas Martin live in Austin, Texas. Nebulous, grey and hypnotic material; static droning with rare notes appearing to “disturb” your favourite dream. Each side of the album gets suddenly interrupted, to start again in the next part and lull you – once again – in the amniotic liquid of this great sound. Mirror get better with each release and I can’t sufficiently tell how much we need projects like this to keep hoping in something different from the things you watch on television every day. Mirror’s records are rays of pure beauty that move the inner depths of my feelings when I listen to them. You must get them all. I really mean it.

MIRROR – Die Spiegelmanufaktur (Die Stadt)

This release by Mirror, previously out on a limited vinyl edition, adds the prestigious presence of Jim O’Rourke to the abitual work of the Heemann/Chalk duo. The CD version contains a splendid new 17-minute track that was absent in the LP; the overall sound quality is absolutely better and brings this music to even higher levels than before. Though the static soundscapes typical of this project are more or less the same we all know (and if you don’t, be damned!) “Der Spiegelmanufaktur” is a little more “gently noisy” than usual; it almost reminded me of Organum in some instances, particularly in the very first minutes. Mirror are not new to these explorations anyway, and they know what they’re doing; then, their famous droning charm starts and caresses the mind like nothing else, making us forget everything we did during the day until that moment. The new track, beginning and ending with a fixed chord of something like a harmonium or hurdy-gurdy with an aurora borealis of electric reverbs, is alone worth the purchase.

MIRROR – Solaris (Idea Records)

This is quite particular, as – maybe for the first time in Mirror’s history – there is practically no droning in the 41 minutes of the recording. “Solaris” is a silent, sparse landscape made of strange detuned piano notes, small percussive touches, long absences and natural reverberations. The cover presents Chalk and Heemann walking in the countryside, completely alone: this photo gives a good idea of what this music is. It’s Mirror in their spirit, though not via the usual sounds you’re accustomed to; their depth and sensitive humanity is just as strong and, at one and the same time, beautifully frail as always.

MIRROR – Nights (Three Poplars)

Previously issued in an ultra-limited CD edition, “Nights” is just as positively warming as you can imagine; it only has one defect: it’s too short at about 37 minutes! The first side (yes, this was reissued in vinyl…) presents a sad, grey morning music coming from a forgotten pond; not as static as Mirror have grown us used to, but with a slow piano melody repeating itself, bathed in ambient effects and wrapped in nebulous low frequencies. If Brian Eno listens to this, he’ll be back trying to write something serious again. The second part is – once more – astounding in its complex delicacy, being based on strings running after themselves, in a series of chords not far from Christoph Heemann’s solo works like “Aftersolstice” or “Days of the Eclipse”. All of these explorations are masterpieces of contemporary music and I strongly confirm Mirror – and Heemann, yes – among my favourite artistic entities in these years of blank hearts and brains.

MIRROR – Into the wood (Three Poplars)

I really can’t find a comparison with anything else when listening to Mirror. From 1999 until now, Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heemann have released one masterpiece after another, be it in vinyl or CD, always looking for that “something” existing between music, silence and natural surroundings. This last effort by the duo is sort of a summary of Mirror’s main temperaments; the record mixes classic slow droning, trembling chordal subterranean painting, airplane engines used like a touch of colour, ambient sounds, abandoned piano keyboard pluckings, rusty metals and strings screeching (but harmonically sublime). I don’t feel the passing of time when Mirror are spinning in my player, they just fantastically blend with the place, accompanying my life’s most thoughtful segments, reminding us that there’s always a good reason to be completely silent and absorbing. This is the best musical experience I’ve met in years: intelligent, sensitive and positively communicating, all this resulting in an exciting wait for each of their releases.

MIRROR – A pilgrim’s solace (Three Poplars)

Being an extremely limited edition and clocking at about 32 minutes, this artefact by Chalk and Heemann is a trembling candle light, an uncertain look to a dubious future. Contrarily to most of their records, where Mirror sooner or later take out their “big chord” after a while, “A pilgrim’s solace” is all built around a single static cluster, a never resolving timbral group made of strings, metals and vibrating parts, giving very few clues to find a way out of our hypnotic trance. It’s music permeated with the usual sense of depth, a distinct sound that separates Mirror from any other self-defined “shaman” in the current “isolationist” area; any release by this duo is a marvel, a storm of thoughts, a movement at the bottom of your consciousness. The customary beautiful hand-made cover contributes to another piece of art.

MIRROR – Live in Bern (Three Poplars)

Somehow Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heemann are always up to the task of giving me lots of emotional chilling. “Live in Bern” is centred upon major Mirror features: the distant drone, the slow tolling of bowls and metals, the out of tune piano notes. Everything comes and goes away before you can impress anything in your memory as one’s left with just a nebulous remembering working for the best. Mirror occupy the forgotten corners of life, puzzlers of a few brains, soothers of a thousand souls in search of an unprobable calming. Like two sonic geologists, Christoph and Andrew’s observations are always right on target: without an ounce of idyllic fakement, they importunate those bad presences each one of us absorbs daily, to the point of pushing them away. What’s left is an unrealistic, caressing, scary in a way, silent imposition of an invisible force: that very element keeping man aware of himself, if only he decided life is much more than a chain of humiliating compromises.

MIRROR – Under the sun (Three Poplars)

Maybe the best thing should be writing the record’s title, then leaving a blank space to be filled with your own sensation. Reviewing Heemann and Chalk’s magnificent albums is getting difficult without repeating, a task made worse by the extreme continuity of high-level emotional contents of their work. “Under the sun”‘s two sides are similar in their basic structure, beginning with environmental recordings that are pretty near to Darren Tate/Monos territories (the distant cars are always welcome for my own taste) later leaving room to familiar, ever changing subtle superimpositions of notes and harmonics forming a multiform plasma of slightly dissonant stability. The effect on my psyche is, as always, staggering and there’s more than a few moments where this album almost reaches the deep visions of “Front row centre”, their absolute top.

MIRROR – Shadows (Three Poplars)

I can see the reason why I already saw an autographed copy of this CD at about 180 USD in an online auction. Firstly, the beauty of Mirror’s creative flux speaks for itself; then again, each work is so unique (and in this case limited to 40 copies or so…) and lavishly packaged that it instantly becomes art of the highest calibre. This particular album opens with new mysterious vistas over the expiratory prowess of Chalk and Heemann, here in quartet with Vikki Jackman and Timo Van Luijk. Everything is generated by an unstable group of deep clusters, whose unsubstantiality is as good-looking as a celestial creature with a masked face. Slowly as usual, the music collects itself in junctures that cross drones, stringed-instrument-multi-chordal waves, static black holes, oscillations of ruins from unreachable galaxies and field recordings, mostly beautiful bird chants. The ruffled waters of this hypercharged mass of choirs from the centre of the earth conjoin and fragment into multiform rituals and unemphatic prophecies, radically changing our perceptions’ direction until finding a new way of listening to our conscience, without feeling delivered from our uselessness anyway. I really feel sorry for the ones who missed the Mirror bus.

MIRROR – Places of light (Three Poplars)

After several excursions into more abstract realms, via environmental recordings and a pronounced utilization of electronics, “Places of light” is a swift return by Mirror to their absolutely best music (which is difficult to decide, since everything they release is some kind of “best”) namely the kind of sacred stasis characterizing their earliest records. Sounds are born from the abandon of any kind of movement and word; infinite sustained harmonies hold their own against the evil attacks of a melodic impulse that would love to put some fingerprints on the translucent glass that Chalk and Heemann have fabricated right in front of our eyes. This filter shelters us from an excess of exposure to the light, creating a series of shadowy corners where the psyche stays, anxious to get out yet still too afraid to know what is expecting it outside. Time passes slowly but inexorably during these haunting suspensions; massaging our imagination and developing the best aspects of our inner comprehension, Mirror manage to transform the pain of another senseless day into the kind of concentrated serenity we all need to avoid giving up to the material desires of ill-minded entities.

MIRROR – Viking burial for a French car (Plinkity Plonk)

One of the most atypical Mirror releases, this beautifully ethereal composition is also among the best works by Heemann and Chalk, here with the help of David Keenan, Gavin Laird and Alex Neilson during live segments recorded in Scotland in 2003. After a long silent introduction, a gaseous matter formed by superimposed loops and sparse, distant clatterings by percussives and guitar establishes its presence to stay throughout the piece, its pleasing malady spreading all over the place in a deep-laid plan to take over our consciousness. The flutey chimes of these repeating circles assume an appearance of tranquil demeanour at first, but slowly and incessantly transport their recipients in a semi-controlled state of proportionate magnification of the deeper self, something that Mirror lovers know extremely well by now. This is not territory for ombrophobous creatures, but the luminescence of this infrasonic revelation constitutes another message that’s there to be comprehended.

MIRROR – Still valley (Die Stadt)

Following a tradition typical of many Die Stadt albums, the CD release of “Still valley” comes – with additional bonus material – after a first vinyl version. The music of Heemann, Chalk and O’Rourke reaches for the highest spheres of spiritual trance, being based on the cyclical layering of rotating sounds – presumably generated by synthesized waves and processed metals and strings plus other undecipherable sources – that move forwards and backwards in slow circles. The soothing effect of the three movements is astonishing: delicate mysteries and swelling hypnotic dances unfold before our very ears, measuring our heartbeat, calming down the flux of thoughts, finally preparing our essence to the acceptance of silence as delivery from pain. The beauty of these lullabies for the psyche makes even harder thinking that this marvellous team of artists does not exist anymore. We must treasure our rare LPs, yet the hope of a CD reissue of Mirror’s whole discography still burns.

MI3 – Free advice (Clean Feed)

Mi3 are Pandelis Karayorgis (piano), Nate McBride (bass) and Curt Newton (drums). A trio that works on a multitude of levels, with an evident influence: Thelonious Monk, despite the absence of Monk pieces in this album (instead, Duke Ellington and Sun Ra tunes are featured). The M-factor is especially explicit in the leader’s style, which privileges frequent tangential runs and semi-flourished chords in which minor second intervals are dropped like obvious consonances. But it’s not all there: Karayorgis is also very adept in polyrhythms, the composed meters that he displays throughout “Case in point” constituting a great example of fresh virtuosity over a freely swinging, liberal rhythm section. Speaking of which, McBride confirms himself as one of the most interesting bassists around, his timbre at once marauding and tradition-rooted, the interpretation always perfectly on cue with what the screenwriting of an improvisation calls for. On the opposite side, Newton is the third of a perfect pair, in that his fragmented percussive curiosity indemnifies those – such as this listener – whose capacity of bearing jazz’s “codified freedom” has sunk to an all-time low. This music is not literally unpredictable, mind you; yet the drift-anchor elements that it contains are more welcome than undesirable, providing a few points that, once linked, define an already well-developed sketch. A large-minded method of approaching one’s past while keeping both eyes on the future.

KIYOSHI MIZUTANI / DANIEL MENCHE – Song of Jike (Niko)

The second chapter in this gorgeous kinship between Mizutani and Menche is articulated in three different versions of their common vision. The quiet ambience of a country village characterizes the first part; Mizutani’s field recordings – water, birds, people chatting and working – alternate with the appearance of long darkish sounds created by Menche through instruments and an “antique phonograph player”, in an enchanting alignment of musique concrete and mystery. The second section is a more intense disposition of treated voices (both animal and human) and monstrous rumbles and hisses, gaining momentum minute by minute without hastening the respiratory functions of our perceptive systems. Mizutani’s bucolic soundscapes return in the final segment, bringing back limpid weather and acoustic linearity just slightly disturbed by additional reworking of source material. Two precious men ploughing our gradual detachment from cheap obsessions, two fantastic sonic visionaries unjustly neglected.

MJANE – Prayers from the underbelly (Pax Recordings)

This piece’s concept builds upon a close encounter with death during a birth, something that was experienced by Molly Jane Sturges, composer/improviser of these prayers along with mJane members DJ Ultraviolet (turntables) CK Barlow (sampling) Moustapha Stephan Dill (oud) Jefferson Voorhees (percussion) plus the additional voice of Julie West. We’re often into Diamanda Galas/Meredith Monk territories as far as sonority and influences are concerned; suffering voices and lulling lamentations dance with harmoniums and electronics, while the oud gives a touch of spicy poetry whenever entering the frame. Every once in a while the musicians take off in ritual flights where the rhythmical scansion nears the listener to a native indian kind of invocation. “Edie” is maybe the best part: a highly engrossing mantra whose hypnotic charm is broken only by the oud/voice final beauty which is “She”; but there are many beguiling moments in this exquisite act of remembrance.

MLHEST – Another cross to bear (The Locus of Assemblage)

In a word, Mlehst is good. This is music with a mixture of influences carefully fused into one distinct trait, roughly undetermined yet often impeccably hurting, present and concrete but also with nice home-made evanescence. There’s no mention of the sound sources, though I’d swear there are guitars and radio waves somewhere – but I could be wrong. Violent feedback studies and pastiches of singing birds and taped human voices are followed by static layers of electric white light and Kayn-like electroacoustic molasses; everything sounds right to these ears and it’s always fine discovering – even with years of delay – intelligent soundscapers carefully hidden somewhere, trafficking with interesting combinations.

MNORTHAM – Memoirs of four discarded objects (Edition)

Like many other people working on sound physics and installations, Mnortham’s sense of event documentation is enriched by the intrinsic musicality of many of his chosen sources. Adjusting levels, intensities and irregularities up to the point of a complex space reconfiguration, the man behind these “memoirs” gets metals, waters, thunders and various spare parts of everyday’s activities to intimately cohabit an imaginary world where mangled dreams and faint gutters benefit by that ample non-structural interconnection of textures that fits right between unconscious and self-guard. If you have an inclination towards emotionally charged electroacoustic wonders, this excellent music envisages a very bright future for the ones still believing in the centralization of mind power via different species of auditive perception.

MNORTHAM – Automnal 2003 (And/OAR)

Constantly working on the borders between nature and unconscious, Michael Northam is one of those artists who is almost impossible not to appreciate. “Automnal 2003″ consists of three long haunting tracks that, according to the composer, are “taken from three moments/locations” during the “re-collection of my life dispersed across North America and Europe” (Northam relocated 13 times between 2001 and 2003; and I thought that my own four moves in five years were a sort of record…). The album is full of magnificently sounding faint luminescences, carriers of barely defined frequencies which contribute to a state of perturbed serenity. Pseudo-aquatic emissions and environmental subtleties mesh with what sounds like misshapen aural documentaries of life in a termitarium; ghostly undulations and uncatchable harmonic constellations put your head into their huge, yet impalpable hands to caress it until acceptance becomes mandatory. At the end of the first movement I seemed to perceive joyously tolling bells, filtered and processed to sound like they were underwater, but maybe it was just an acoustic mirage. Yet, I felt such a warmth in my heart at that very moment that I wished it would never stop.

GUIDO MÖBIUS – Dishoek (Dekorder)

If you’re looking for little more than half a hour of pleasing distraction from the heaviness of too many difficult listenings, “Dishoek” could do well. Extremely linear in its basic structures, Möbius’ music comes forward without stretching the nerves; most tracks start from fragile melodies played by real instruments – kudos to Bettina Weber, whose violin graces many moments including the record’s best, “Zwölf” – which follow trajectories remaining within the borders of a slightly perturbed consonance identifying an accomplished “easy minimalism”. These nine miniatures never overstay their welcome, indicating useful traces to the listeners since the very beginning, maintaining a serene limpidness which remains consistently enjoyable until the very end. This delicate approach works much better than a frigid laptop galaxy of purrs and clicks – Guido knows best.

MOE!KESTRA! – Two forms of multitudes: conducted improvisations (DKM/Pax/Edgetone)

This is an orchestral “semi-improvisation” led by Moe! Staiano, a percussionist and composer based in California. Being active in an already ebullient area as far as free music is concerned, Staiano mostly works with large ensembles, alternating anarchy and sets of rules with the scope of finding the perfect combination of both worlds. This way of making music guarantees both some kind of elastic scheme and unexpected results, as this CD demonstrates: two long pieces where Moe!’s conduction has the musicians breaking through difficult intersections, percussive/metallic clangors and clustery harmonies, leaving the listener with a sense of desire for further developments as sounds fly around potently without caring too much about “elegance”, each instrument carrying a blood-red force. Certainly not easy to grasp at first listen, Moe! Staiano’s concepts will be better enjoyed by people with affinity to Elliott Sharp’s Carbon and improvising large settings in general.

MOGAMI – Mogami (Public Eyesore)

I love when an unexpected good CD comes in my hands; Public Eyesore often provides several of these finds. Jeff Arnal and Ryan Smith work with amplified percussion and computer to produce interesting and intelligent electroacoustic turbulences that are neither pretentiously snotty nor ear-disturbing – quite the opposite. Mogami show a certain degree of love for sound inquisition, developing a conspiracy of new timbres against the murky hollowness of academia; theirs is a world of acute integrity where sardonic looks and perilous discoveries are often more than casual appearances. In tracks like “Spiral scan”, Jeff and Ryan launch their attack to “regular” computer music, obtaining fresh stimuli and good-natured resonances; their most hypnotic work is perfectly opposed to cascades of metallic sparkling and rumbling from unknown holes, like in the grand finale “Minor rotation”.

MOLJEBKA PVLSE – Driftsond (Gears Of Sand)

Mathias Josefson, this time you got me: “Driftsond” is one of the best drone-based albums of the last five years. I had already received a couple of Moljebka Pvlse’s earlier records from other labels in the past but, despite Josefson’s appreciable effort to create something worthy to be remembered, I never managed to bring myself to like them completely, for various reasons. No such problem here; the four movements, named “Chinshu”, Shunryu”, “Genjo” and “Junpo” for a total of circa 55 minutes of engaging disturbed quietness, constitute – at least for this reviewer – the first occasion in which this Swedish sound artist captured the true kernel of this kind of music. Subtraction, restraint, absence rather than presence, unrecognizable sources – you name it. Here’s the secret: to concoct a good drone piece, leave the pseudo-spiritual/esoteric factor out of the door or, better still, your life. The “holier-than-thou” approach that brings button-pushers to add layers upon layers of indigestible ceremonials wetted by field recording-based dilettantism is indeed what kills the very stuff, even when it starts interestingly enough. How many singing nuns amidst moaning synthesizers can we tolerate again? When will cisterns, glaciers and deserts finally swallow the Johnnies-come-lately? Is anybody ever going to be found virtually strangled by a Lexicon loop? What is really needed is an attentive ear, an impregnable mind, the perfect balance between the physical functions; otherwise, it’s impossible to detect the instants in which “that” oscillation or “that” frequency juxtaposition deliver the magic. A solid technical preparation helps, too. Ignorant about harmonics? Then it’s doubtful that you’ll be able to use them, though someone has the luck of casually striking a few dashes of nicely sounding shit. But shit it does remain. To end this digression, and back to “Driftsond”, there’s no hesitation on my behalf in inviting the genre’s fans to get a copy of this disc pronto, hoping that future researches linked to the Moljebka Pvlse project forward this kind of outcome also in upcoming releases.

RAVISH MOMIN’S TRIO TARANA – Miren (A longing) (Clean Feed)

Drummer, percussionist and composer Ravish Momin, violinist Sam Bardfeld and oud player Brandon Terzic (with the addition of violist Tanya Kalmanovitch in “Fiza”) function together like breathing in “Miren”, a word that means “a deeply-felt sadness resulting from a longing for closure on something from the past” and a record that looks straight in the eye of a future hypothetical globalization of languages in music. Momin works on the pacific coexistence of uncommon patterns and pseudo-ancestral themes, mostly composed by him, with a couple of exceptions (a rearranged traditional tune and a Terzic solo). He creates exquisite combinations of polyrhythmic motion over which Bardfeld’s phrasing moves with inspired pan-cultural expertise – one immediately thinks about the best Shankar, but I detect more substance here – which brings him to scumble the edges of the brightest tonalities to adapt his voice to a context where the collective gravity is stronger than any tendency to soliloquy. This notwithstanding, Terzic’s brisk soloing likes to venture outside the lines, trying to apply a borderline improvisational fantasy that pushes the playing to a wider dissonance gap; yet, when he returns “into” the ensemble his contrapuntal acumen matches Momin’s odd metres with ease. The leader’s mix of influences – he studied North Indian classical music besides being a student with Andrew Cyrille and Bob Moses – aims to a very difficult target (that’s right, “fusion”, and I don’t mean Yellowjackets or UZEB). Let it be declared that, with “Miren”, many of the potential preys were actually put in the bag. Ain’t “What reward?”, fifth track of the CD, a blues after all? Sure it is, but you could also charm a snake with that one.

GORDON MONAHAN – Theremin in the rain (C3R)

You don’t know how much I like record covers that, like this one, synthesize the release’s content in a couple of lines. “Recordings from a theremin controlled sound installation consisting of amplified water drops and long piano strings vibrated by motors, solenoids and pneumatic cylinders”. Right, a bit of sci-fi, the usual environmental touch, what else? Hold your horses. First of all, when one looks at the complexity of the installation’s scheme (also to be admired on the digipack’s interior) suddenly feels like an utter ignorant. I couldn’t locate a lone wall socket to attach a cord to in that perfectly designed rational chaos. And of course this music is different from what we expected, despite the title track’s literal rendition of its sources, classic theremin sounds in dripping water. First of all, the piano strings’ contribution is indeed important, to the point of frequently igniting contradicting drones and unsettling inhuman modifications of an empty space. Certain segments (try “Flex strings”) might even recall Z’EV or Pholde – the latter another Canadian favorite – in their irreligious clangour. “When it rains” sounds like an army of kalimbas falling down a stairway, followed by the strange peg-legged alternance of wood’n’metal patterns and engrossing howls from the main instrument’s lower registers in “Aerial drop”. Monahan is one of those engineers of self-sufficient apparata who would perfectly fit those contexts – like, say, the Experimental Intermedia area – where the interactions between artist, electronic machinery and chance occurrences often produce results that are as hardly classifiable as a rare animal specimen. John Oswald’s role as a producer, mixer and editor had to be a revealing sign about the quality level of this fine outing.

GORDON MONAHAN – Speaker swinging / Piano mechanics (C3R)

This CD present two different facets of Gordon Monahan’s music, both related to the material aspects of the execution and the very physics of the dynamic forces at work. “Piano mechanics” is completely based on the excitation of the instrument’s strings in their extreme ranges, according to principles of vibration and perception of disguised notes and patterns that are extensively explained in the liners (although I’m sure that the majority of parrots who consume their “Chopin-for-dummies” transcription booklets would be unable to understand them, but you never know). The score makes good use of the properties of harmonic string theory (namely, multitudes of tones and pitches springing out at once from a single vibrating string – Glenn Branca knows something about this). The overall result is a variegated composition where percussion and resonance play a fundamental role in transforming the regular sounds of a piano into pseudo-synthetic exhalations and unholy roars. Impressive stuff, headphones warmly recommended. On the contrary, “Speaker swinging” for “three or more swinging loudspeakers and nine sine wave/sawtooth oscillators” necessitates of all the available space in your setting to affirm its simple beauty, laid upon the laws of Doppler modulation. The performers juxtapose minimal elements from the speakers – so that the “science experiment” character of the set is maintained – superimposing them to miscellaneous tones and oscillations in a progressive move towards hypnotic zones typified by evocative virtual calls. The final track is a remix, a diverse compositional means that nevertheless keeps the same traits of the basic piece in evidence, and it’s probably the most satisfying one of a gorgeous triptych. Monahan is a serious artist whose methods deserve to be more widely advertised.

MONOS – Window (Fungal)

There’s no equal to Monos, as it’s very difficult finding a project working more or less on the same coordinates (that means treated environmental sounds) but nevertheless able to please and surprise everyone who dares listening. This time, “Window” is a little more droning than usual and there is a bigger use of delays and reverbs to wet the concrete material used as a source; being myself a bird lover, I could appreciate very much the presence of wonderful singing blackbirds in the first track (“That dream”) mixed with low frequencies coming from everywhere, not to mention a splendid “spectral” section reminding of Stephen Scott, only just simpler but not less beautiful in its repeat. This is a record that bears many listenings and it’s beautifully usable for active or passive fruition: listen carefully and you’ll get drops of everything you can imagine, go to another room and you’ll hear your house resounding.

MONOS – Nightfall sunshine (Die Stadt)

Entirely made of environmental sounds and electronics, this offer by Tate and Potter is wonderfully presented by a grey and pink artwork but, above all, shows us the high grade of compositional/assembling prowess reached by Monos. More than in their previous work on Anomalous, they gave birth to a slightly deformed ambience, whose character remains placid and tranquil throughout the record’s duration. Sometimes we get more electrowaves than one would expect, perhaps right after a growth of low-frequency sounds; then, you gladly rediscover their always present engine roars morphing into nebulous dark clouds. Then again, somewhere else – like in the wonderful final “Sunrise” – you have birdcalls saluting a new day in a splendid mesh of colours. As always with Die Stadt, this is a must.

MONOS – Sunny day in Saginomiya (Edition)

In my personal grading I rate this CD among the best Monos releases. Darren Tate and Colin Potter’s knowledgeable work on electronics and guitar trace a perfect way for Daisuke Suzuki’s field recordings to shine all over the record without solution of continuity. For sure, “Sunny day” contains the most carefully detailed research on the deepest musicality of environmental sounds, as usual perfectly captured and placed by these gentlemen. Even heavy effect treatment on sheer acoustic sounds – or birds and dogs too, for that matter – results in a journey to those “faraway lands” that are actually present in most of our homes, be them metropolitan flats or country houses: all you have to do is keeping those ears always open. A record at least as valuable as the best Ora moments, it is absolutely needed for everyone who’s in a peaceful state of mind.

MONOS – Landscapes (ICR/Twenty Hertz)

Sometimes I ask myself how could I share the emotions, the heartbeat skips, the sensation of being alone in a lost place with the very same musicians that create these engrossing works; it would be great being able to understand how they feel when they listen to their music. Apart from this, in “Landscapes” Darren Tate and Colin Potter were joined by drone supremo Paul Bradley, whose presence adds a thick layer of obscurity to an already mysterious matter. The usual emphasis on sensitive juxtapositions of found/altered sounds and electronic underworlds is here more oriented towards the latter: “Entering”, also featuring Robin Barnes, literally saturates the air with menacing resonances that work even at sub-level volume and couple perfectly with dark clouds over which the naked branches of the tree in front of my window project their skeleton, making me utterly humble in front of all this sonic and visual beauty. “Surface form” mostly takes its strength from glissando sources, elevating the music to an inter-spacial no man’s land, while disbanding any residual earthly attachment with the calm force of a still unknown beauty. Could this be the best Monos record? I very much believe so – but just wait for upcoming chapters.

MONOS – Generators / Generating a black sea (Die Stadt)

This artifact, a triple CD enclosed in a wonderful artwork by Helen Potter and Darren Tate (also credited with “water heater, radio, electronics”) with Jonathan Coleclough’s design, is powerfully hallucinating. The penetrating drone of “Sleep” is so stimulating on the brain that I myself probably produced a series of waves while aghast on my couch; “Generators” presents a long exalation of alien circular breathing where Colin Potter’s flanging loops wrap you like a boa, eliminating any callosity from your auricular areas. “Slowly fading” is (a little) more caressing in its depth, yet the atmosphere remains “pre-rainstorm”, gradually evolving to a constant flow of primordial energy. The long “The black sea” constitutes the whole second disc, being a marvellous trip to the unknown realms of ponderous resonance: it works wonders as hypnotic isolation from the rest of the world if played at a “louder-than-ambient” volume and – incidentally – some of its drifting circles reminded me of Kit Watkins’ “Thought tones”, a forgotten treasure in the drone field. Those obsessive “wann-em-allers” like this reviewer will certainly crave this collector edition, as the third CD contains a long track made with the same basic sources (“Generating a black sea”) and – guess what – I believe it’s the most engrossing piece of the whole set, sort of an enormous organ pumping low-frequency essences into a dull body in an extreme try to awaken it from its sensual coma.

MONOTRACT – Pagu (Public eyesore)

Nancy Garcia, Carlos Giffoni and Roger Rimada are Monotract. Their music is as undescribable as you can get, nevertheless it perfectly fits in the Public Eyesore general coordinates of artistic anarchy. Using an enormous amount of sources, tapes, distorted vocals, fractured drum machines, white noise and so forth, “Pagu” (a vinyl release, by the way) is a pastiche that had me reminiscing about Elliott Sharp’s “In the land of the Yahoos” – only, in a more “home-made” style; also, it’s considerably akin to the best RRR situations, where harsh spastic beats and electronic pulses are the sonic choice in most of those recordings. In a word, Monotract put on a big show with pretty economic means; that’s a plus for me.

GEN KEN MONTGOMERY – Pondfloorsample (XI)

Montgomery’s work could be renamed “manipulation of everyday’s noise” but this would not make justice of his nicely crafted artifacts. Ken is a well known sound artist, his main feature being the systematic use of common materials and environmental manifestations which, properly treated and amplified, force us – the listeners – to give new value to something we’re grown accustomed to listen to carelessly for every day of our existence. Refrigerators becoming a heartbeat, metallic beatings mixing with outside tower bells (it really happened in this room during the playback), amplified bath drain gurgling us to oblivion. Even in the shorter fragments, there’s life in Montgomery’s flashes. Still, from a merely compositional point of view, the best tracks according to this writer are the suites “Father Demo Swears” and “Droneskipclickloop”: even if clocking at 31:27 and 52:02 minutes respectively – the latter being a live performance held at Experimental Intermedia’s headquarters – they never indulge in superfluous statements, calmly affirming their inventor’s peculiar artistic vision.

GEN KEN MONTGOMERY – Drilling holes in the wall (Monochrome Vision)

“Montgomery is absolutely genuine”, as written in the liners of this great collection. Not a truer word if we think that the man was never appropriately taught, neither in music nor other creative “schools”, an entity who went on and devised his own movement. This radical idealist has been doing it since the early 80s, alliances with names like Al Margolis, John Hudak, David Lee Myers and Conrad Schnitzler as the sign of an assiduous motivation: discovering revelations in the malleability of found sounds. Which is in fact what Montgomery does best: focusing his interest on an object, or pieces of equipment (or the exterior world’s rumpus), subsequently finding new ways of making music. The product may be galvanizing or just enticing, juicily harmonic or dreadfully dissonant, but it’s so damn truthful that we can almost savour it. The five tracks exemplify a fair share of this composer’s originality, three of them previously unreleased (including a segment recorded live in the DDR in 1986, way before the Berlin Wall – the inspiration for the record’s title – came down). Either by means of a customized cheap keyboard or an icebreaker, Montgomery creates out-of-the-ordinary shapes and picturesque amalgamations, the effect on the psyche one of dislocation at first, instantly followed by legitimate fulfilment. A big opportunity for the ones who are not familiar with this character’s vision to get acquainted with an unclassifiable body of work whose wholesomeness is incontestable.

ANDY MOOR / JOHN BUTCHER / THOMAS LEHN – Thermal (Unsounds)

When three great musicians meet there are always lots of “ifs”, because you never know if the chemistry will produce the expected result. In the case of “Thermal”, it looks like the trio was created by a computer, such is the perfect disposition of sounds, minds and absolute respect for one another that the three players brought to the table. Fourteen tracks, most of them pretty short; Andy Moor has his strings going from a rusty scrape to an ethereal drone of adjacent tones, going into territories near to”Branca/Chatham/Moore & Ranaldo” school, while Lehn gets incredibly various manifestations from his analogue EMS synthesizer, resulting maybe in the most creative synthetist in recent and not so recent years; Thomas literally puts to shame the ones who use Oberheims and Wavestations for a single low note (the so called “Dark Ambient Syndrome”). But something must be said for many sax players, because after they’ll experience John Butcher’s talent, his multiphonic control, his dynamics domination, the beauty of his “regular” (??) tone – well, they won’t be missed when they’ll finally put their instrument away, together with their dusty Real Books.

ADRIAN MOORE – Rêve de l’aube (Empreintes DIGITALes)

Adrian Moore, born in 1969, is an acousmatic composer from Nottingham who studied among others with Jonty Harrison and collaborated with Birmingham’s BEAST collective. His music values the role of the tape medium in a live performance very highly, and his interest in the diffusion of sound explains the variegated pigmentation of the tracks presented in this CD quite well. Like it often happens with this kind of music, whose level of unpredictability is directly proportional to the multi-shade tonalities utilized by the creators, a host of influences and sources is at the basis of a continuous mutation of atmospheres and climates. The title track, named after a poem by Emily Dickinson, mostly uses woodwind instruments but sounds rather like a meeting of modular serendipities on the edge between blinding light and mind-warping speed. “Power Tools” was influenced by the noise of sources such as lawn mowers, hedge trimmers and steel factories, the piece akin to a congregation of percussive polyphonies camouflaged under a sensitive juxtaposition of studio manipulations. “Piano piece (for Peter)” features Peter Hill in a piano-cum-tape half-romantic, half-atonal elucubration influenced in equal measure by Smalley and Scriabin. The six-movement suite “Sea of singularity”, lasting almost 32 minutes, closes the album with the most fascinating choices of colours, masterfully seaming environmental recordings from various European locations in which human presence is clearly audible, with otherworldly examinations of abstruse codes and expressive sonic entities, culminating in a fabulous implant of bleating sheep and lapping Venetian gondolas during the aptly titled “Third mint sauce (or sheep appoggiatura)”. Here, like throughout the rest of the disc, Moore reveals himself to be a talented aural painter, his fantasies showing all the positive signs of a luminous future in the electroacoustic community.

JOE MORRIS QUARTET – Beautiful existence (Clean Feed)

With this fine release, Joe Morris returns to electric guitar with a fluent vengeance, providing lines of crisp freestyle picking characterized by the same natural complexity of water gurgling in a mountain creek. But it’s the whole quartet, which also includes Jim Hobbs on alto sax, Timo Shanko on double bass and Luther Gray on drums, that approaches the music with clearly perceivable enthusiasm, their liberating freshness light years ahead of sterile virtuosity. Thematic statements are tackled with the same attitude and spontaneous calligraphy of a gathering of elegant heretics, with a sort of tendency to sing hymns to freedom whenever the chance is given, while soloism is just a means of showing what burns inside – traditional roles and predictable formulas be damned. Influenced by atonal blues yet verging on a reinvigorated free jazz, the whole album is a strong affirmation and a veritable, no-nonsense piece of deep musicianship.

JOE MORRIS / KEN VANDERMARK / LUTHER GRAY – Rebus (Clean Feed)

Recorded two days after having played at Tonic in 2006, “Rebus” consists of six improvisations where the relationships between the instrumental forces at play is exquisitely balanced, despite the well perceptible urge alimenting every single gesture of the involved artists. Joe Morris, whom in recent times we had also appreciated as a gifted, uniquely styled bassist, suggests loads of new directions to launch a guitar towards, his unmistakable tone – all high frequencies cut off in a rotund, meaty muscle of a voice – finely complementing Vandermark’s extracurricular tenor sax activities and, incredibly, often at the basis of a rhythmic skeleton that uses the axe as a percussive element (check the third part to have an idea of what I mean). Vandermark himself appears to be unable of limiting to sheer self-expression, coordinating furiously ripping combinations of linear nervousness and ecstatic instigations in a whole that calls Morris to a continuous game of exchanges and immediate reactions: one moment almost anarchic, an instant later seemingly thought out in advance. It takes years to function like that in a trio, and no one more than drummer Luther Gray – a longtime Morris partner – incarnates the correct attitude and technical ability that are necessary to sustain and propel soloists of this caliber, his expertise so distant from over-refinement yet still adorned with those minute particulars and attentive acquisitions that make a style comprehensible and personal. There is much to learn from “Rebus”, our engagement with the music’s significance growing with each listen, an incessant progress that – although not revolutionary in the truest sense – defines this release as an important contribution to better explain the advancement of modern jazz.

RAS MOSHE – Live spirits vol.3 (Utech)

One of the most satisfying jazz recordings that I’ve heard in years. I could summarize the beauty of this performance with just this sentence; but let me explain why “Live spirits vol.3″ sound so true and abundant in heart, soul and fabulous musicianship. Captured on tape at The Stone in NY at the beginning of 2006, this concert comprises a long suite, “Umkhonto we sizwe (Spear of the nation)”, dedicated to John Coltrane and Tyrone Washington. Music that’s scarily furious but also poignant, sad, romantic; we’re not talking “economy of means” here, as the players give literally all they have in order to assert their resistance to the temptation of traveling comfortable roads to nowhere. The interlocking of Moshe and Joe Rigby’s saxes yields a difficult-to-believe series of irresolvable phrases which follow an extraordinary contrapuntal logic, also when the reedists just seem to scream to each other, and then both to the sky. Matt Heyner and Todd Nicholson play their twin basses with composed attitude and serene inspiration even in the most dissonant stampedes, sustained by Jackson Krall’s truly unstoppable percussive propulsion. Pianist Walden Wimberley is a beautiful connection between a past made of sorrow and broken hopes and the belief in something bigger, which his magnificent chordal work seems to strengthen in what are the finest sections of the CD. Overall, a compelling tribute by a sextet whose artistry is carved in flesh and signed with blood.

MOSKITOO – Drape (12k)

Moskitoo is Sanae Yamasaki from Sapporo, Japan and “Drape” is her first release. The girl sings and puts her hands on various things – guitar, metallophone, organ, drum machine, synths and “nostalgic toy instruments” – but classifying her music does not come easy at all. You can find several characteristics of that particularly naive kind of expression that’s typical of many Japanese post-pop soundscapers, including whispered vocals (which, to be honest, is the only element that I don’t really like). But the arrangements are full of quirky turns and unexpected surprises, catching my attention several times over the course of the album. Imagine a mix of Eno, Residents and Art Of Noise played by a class of young computer freaks who find pleasure in adding beeps, chirps and tiny squelches to relatively simple rhythmical structures. Some of these juxtapositions work very well, creating a sense of dreamy suspension that just waits for a couple of ironic touches to be reduced into droplets of kitsch decadence, while at various points the adjacent lines behave like different individuals singing in proximity but without reciprocal hearing, so that everything becomes quite warped but never antagonistic to these ears. A nice outing, with a pinch of innocence that makes me appreciate it beyond its pretty appearance.

NORBERT MÖSLANG – Lat_nc (For 4 Ears)

Möslang is half Voice Crack and for sure the “cracked everyday objects” (or electronics, for that matter) aesthetic is firmly law also in “Lat_nc”, his first solo release. Norbert’s a sort of Dada visionary and it looks to me that his funny variegated abstract pieces are truly one of a kind, destined to live only in that very moment when they’re listened to. But – contrarily to the boring essays of most “literate” electronic composers – this record is like a living organism under microscopic observation, revealing strange behaviours under stimulation and bringing out reactions from apparently hidden corners of its structure. Refreshingly intelligent, this artefact is the proof of Möslang’s incessant curiosity and of his will to avoid refrains and repetition at any cost.

NORBERT MÖSLANG – Capture (Cut)

Audio portion of a light/sound installation, “Capture” describes exactly what these sounds do through its title. I tried to use it as background ambience while doing some archival work and – after only a few minutes of this ultra-charged, amplified buzzing going up and down in intensity – the music begged to be listened more carefully, because it’s not so immobile as one could determine at a first listen: instead, Möslang’s creature moans and rants, one moment preferring to shift towards high frequency domains, then muffling its own voice in hypnotic waves of brain-massaging succulence. The sound changes depending on where you move – and on your head’s position, too; all this was achieved just putting contact microphones on a fluorescent lamp and processing the sound via PC. Once again Norbert Möslang’s artistry shows its provocative face through basic elements, which demonstrate its multi-talented approach to unconventional sound creation, putting it under a new light (pun intended).

NORBERT MÖSLANG – Burst_log (For 4 Ears)

Sometimes innovation can be achieved through recycling. Norbert Möslang constructed “Burst_log” using the first three tracks – “extensively processed and reworked” as he puts it – of his excellent “Lat_nc” on this very same label. We’re still tempted to compare these new materials to Möslang’s work with Andy Guhl in Voice Crack, and are terribly wrong doing so; Norbert’s music has by now taken its own path. In this particular instance, he succeeds in rendering inhuman agglomerates of pervasive “cracked everyday electronics” as a beguiling landscape, in which the messages deriving by Möslang’s unusual sound placement are peculiar, to say the least. Even so, these merciless sources cause a manifestation of extreme interest by the brain, which gets aggressively solicited – attacked, maybe – by subsonic thumps, pluralities of synthetic waves that have no synthetic origin, crosswords of extraneous noises, unorthodox fluctuations. It’s a total domination of the surrounding space, affirmed through the sheer incisiveness of these ear-slapping sonic protuberances. “Burst_log” proves that self-complacence won’t do anything about our stress, but stressed flurries of irregular intuitions can give us a serious push towards a more interesting use of logic.

NORBERT MÖSLANG – Header_change (Cut)

Don’t expect any mercy from Norbert Möslang. His recordings look to the future but they do it without any hope for grace, appearing cold and detached to those who are afraid of the truth. Luckily he doesn’t seem to care, maintaining an active search for different nuances through the most unexpected means; and if they’re not his customary “cracked everyday electronics”, there are many more helpful sources to exploit. A previous CD on this very label (“Capture”) had already given us a serious report about Möslang’s ability in creating light-derived music, yet this time the inquisitive scientist went a step further, tampering with the headers of video stills by Swiss visual artist Silvie Defraoui and converting them to audio files, which he then proceeded to press to vinyl in order to mix them live during a performance in St.Gallen. The same were used as the basis for the seven tracks in “Header_change”, yet another record that will reveal its radical force via speakers; as a matter of fact, the distorted undulations and the ever-morphing cross-currents of dissonant resonances that move the sonic mass give birth to several imposing moments where our brain acts as a generator of virtual patterns and imaginary textures. At times we intuit a non-existent approaching helicopter, then we get a Wall-of-Jericho-crumbling-down outburst, then again it shifts to what’s perceived as a vibrator resonating in a casserole, while the surroundings get saturated with digital griminess that could become the pretext to close unwanted relationships. The frequency content mutates constantly, privileging subsonic activities one moment, giving room to hypothetical rhythms a minute later. Light has never sounded so threateningly obscure and, in a way, material.

MOSTLY OTHER PEOPLE DO THE KILLING – Shamokin!!! (Hot Cup)

This “New York’s terrorist be-bop über-jass quartet” can bang, and if you’re not alert enough a knockout is the pick. Consisting of Moppa Elliott (bass and main composer), Peter Evans (trumpet), Jon Irabagon (sax) and Kevin Shea (drums), MOPDTK tackle a large portion of many decades’ musical repertoire to stuff it in a 72-minute frame, often trying to achieve the same results in thirty seconds or so. Nine original tracks, plus a cover of Dizzy Gillespie’s “A night in Tunisia” where Shea, at one point, even quotes U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” pompous intro during an interminable drum solo. All of the above demonstrate a series of incontrovertible facts. The first, and instantly evident, is that these boys are nuts. Seriously. I’ve never heard a trumpeter calling to mind what Evans constantly vomits here, from the most lyrical line that a good-hearted man might desire to a collection of self-destroying deranged blasts that let us imagine eyeballs falling out of their sockets. This guy owns a bag of endless creative solutions and a fucking mean tone – and he was trained as a classical player, go figure (Wynton Marsalis, why are you trying to hide yourself?). The interaction with that other madcap who goes by the name of Irabagon is spectacular to say the least, both artists’ lungs probably filing a pre-retirement form after the emission of hundreds of cubic meters of air, building paradoxical suffering amidst devastating irony. Shea plays like if his body contained a dozen lemmings desperately running to opposite seas; can he follow a pattern without transforming it into the physical reproduction of an algebraic equation? I dare not to think so. Unbelievable, although I should have known better after listening to that “style” in the Talibam! trio. The most “regular” guy on duty seems to be leader Moppa Elliott, who heroically tries to articulate a scheme or two at the beginning of each piece, but instantly gets catapulted into the vortex of his roommates’ whirlwind of follies. He protects himself at all times, though, his bass timbre a fat beauty. Jeez, these people sweep Dixieland, cool and samba while transiting through AlbertAylerLand in a couple of blinks. After the record was over, I had finally seen the light, Belushi-style. They were laughing instead, they always do at the end of the pieces. Yes, yes, just crazy. Four stars and a half, minimum. Gimme some more.

MANUEL MOTA – For your protection why don’t you just paint yourself real good like an indian (Headlights)

Using a clean tone and abandoning any kind of stereotyped guitar technique seems to be the only purpose of guitarist Manuel Mota during the almost 40 minutes of this lovely timbral exploration. In certain instances Mota improvises in duo with the beautifully toned electric upright bass of Margarida Garcia. There’s no big difference anyway: the whole record is a pleasure to listen to, expecially at low volume. I couldn’t say anything about Manuel’s influences as his playing is utterly free of cliches, quite often bordering on a primal approach. It’s absolutely pure music and, on this basis, you have to accept the results without thinking about aesthetics, only appreciating the seriousness of the artist’s intents.

MANUEL MOTA – Quartets (Headlights)

It could be assumed that “Quartets” is the most mature and accomplished work by Manuel Mota, whose multipurpose fingers run after myriads of wrecked chords and whirlwind fragments; he does it without catching any of those strolling notes which would love transforming themselves into the ghost of whitebread “jazz”. Fala Mariam’s trombone gabbling enables the musicians to follow shadows, revealing a tendence to disobey conventions while bending air and natural reverberation to will. Fabulous punches and enigmatic caresses come from the upright bass of Margarida Garcia, one of the most interesting explorers of the lower range area in today’s improvisation; finally, the carillon touches by Cesar Burago find their due place all around the pieces, creating their own graft of terminology and contributing to the release of some accumulated introversion. Together, these four players have conceived a most interesting conversation, sustaining 40 minutes brilliantly without any pyrotechnics.

MANUEL MOTA – Outubro (Headlights)

One of those releases that risk splitting the audience in the classic love/hate dichotomy, “Outubro” is a double CD recorded at home by Manuel Mota, who plays electric guitar in the first disc and acoustic in the second. If you’re looking for dazzling technical firecrackers you’d better turn your attention to someone else, as Mota’s playing – despite his enormous digital creativity – is as timbrally straightforward as one could desire if tired of loops, drones, effects and treatments of any kind, but also of Berklee-meets-GIT virtuosistic dexterity. His clean timbre on the electric is nevertheless the basis of a pretty congested style, mostly determined by the introverted nature of the phraseology, which tends to translate the guitarist’s flow of thought more through sudden spikes, outbursts of clusters and nail-on-wood spastic articulations than open-sounding chords and arpeggios. Mota’s tone tends to closure, as he seems to prefer a high-frequency cutoff in many of his improvisations, so that the low strings resound and hum quite noisily in the mix (like the earth loop wasn’t enough…). The acoustic set is slightly more limpid, the absence of electricity making for less gibberish, cleaner textures which don’t aspire to beatitude anyway – indeed, the second CD is probably the most dynamically charged of the set and also the better treat for my own ears, working well in different mental attitudes – concentrated or less, even while reading – as a testimony to the total openness of this music, which does not require too many attentions to start with, yet remunerates careful listening with large doses of sincere, untainted honesty.

PHIL MOULDYCLIFF – Written on water (ICR)

Mostly known for having worked with Colin Potter and Keith Rowe, Phil Mouldycliff has been treading the path of multidisciplinary art for over thirty years. Yet this is his first solo CD, and a good one for that matter. Six aural snapshots that flow towards our receptive organs without forcing their efficacy on the audience’s disposition. “The stillness of Chinese jars” features chiming percussion and a background urban (?) presence in a delicate juxtaposition. “Nocturne” – self explanatorily titled – is all based on an engrossing under-surface mass of low frequencies – half drones from hell, half distant highway two octaves lower – rumbling in a majestic, breathtaking way; radio voices creep in to add to the mystery in a fabulous composition, reminiscent of Thomas Köner’s best outings. “Kettleblack” utilizes sparse tolls (a piano? A bell? Both?) over a peculiarly filtered voice and field recordings full of different sources, from garden birds to metal rustle; very installation-oriented, and also beautiful. “A speculative atlas (for David Mitchell)” is a MIDI-fied piece, longer and more unquiet, rather angular, not really on the same level of the remaining materials (especially because of the preset sounds that were used). Sub-bass movements, children at play and an in(de)finite reiteration appear later on, but this doesn’t help too much; maybe, if played by a real ensemble, everything would work better, yet in this case the “sample v location recording” match functions only in tracts. “The groaner”, whose main elements consist of a strong wind and a prepared autoharp, returns to a welcome elemental paucity for a deeper overall meaning, while the conclusive “Spirit of place” starts with a gorgeous undulating drone that made me think about a cross of Jonathan Coleclough and Mirror, with rare glimpses of a scarcely defined choral wash (initially recalling the “Amen” recently utilized by Organum). Then it shifts to even more suspended, see-saw atmospheres, the almost imperceptible, slow oscillation of the basic moan stopping this writer in his tracks. Difficult to write anything when one is struck by the sound of transcendence. A masterful ending to an excellent debut, if this definition makes sense given Mouldycliff’s experience.

PHIL MOULDYCLIFF / COLIN POTTER – Shellfish in Kettleblack (ICR)

Created with just “audio debris” – to quote the scarce CD cover notes – plus processing and mixing by Potter, “Shellfish in Kettleblack” is a decisive push into the most intricate, yet extremely comprehensible realms of soundscaping. Based upon storms of distant noise and voices, concrete buzzing and droning, pulsations obtained through electricity and/or human breath, plus a lot of undiscovered sources, this release stands among the best in the luckily well-flowing proliferation of creatures by these “isolationist monks” and their magnificent comrades; it’s like a cross-pollination of influences and ideas absolutely enjoyable by lovers of Nurse With Wound, Organum, Alan Lamb, etc: in a word, music revolving around unquiet stasis and growth of tension – but as always, everything’s filtered through a distinct “school” of sound carving that only belongs to these very participants.

PHIL MOULDYCLIFF / COLIN POTTER – Droneworks no.3 (Twenty Hertz)

The third instalment in the 20-minute-per CD “droneworks” series is another extremely satisfying joint effort. The drones – based on electronic/synthesized waves mixed with treated/pitch transposed sounds of water gurgling down a drain – move sinuously like a coral snake yet reflect longshore winter imagery while loitering near their own perfect centre. Though the music has the semblance of an otherwordly divagation to uneasy realms, it also carries a precise ingeniousness that strips it of any useless gimmick, confirming these English gentlemen as pre-eminent “real things” in this difficult to renew virtual territory of soundscaping.

MOU, LIPS! – Untree (mOAR)

There’s a lot to enjoy in “Untree”, the latest outing by Mou, Lips! (Andrea Gabriele), despite that impossible-to-delete tendency – typical of the large majority of today’s Italian “avant-garde artists” (…) – to identify a little bit too much with their inspirations, that grey area between partial originality and copycat-ism that, voluntarily or less, makes an attentive listener quite surprised at first, then – after having removed the glossy patina and the bell-and-whistle factor – introduces the process of “This sounds like…This was already made by…” and so forth. Although the same happened in part to this writer following the third listen to this CD (especially in relation to tracks that distinctly recall the work of Musci & Venosta some 20+ years earlier), my opinion is positive. Gabriele knows how to deal with sampling, juxtaposing the most disparate materials with excellent aesthetic facility without exaggerating one way or another. Also to be appreciated is the exquisite sense of humour demonstrated in certain sections: “Cosa Buena” is definitely a masterpiece of light-heartedness with its engaging patterns and stuttering baby voices. Finally, the metastatic electronic auras symbolized by a piece such as “Bora” (Stephen Vitiello is here featured on guitar) are enough for me to swipe imperfections and small superficialities under a carpet of temporary forgetfulness and get pleasure from the scattered remains of what once were charming whispers of luminescence.

MOUNT WASHINGTON – Mount Washington (Reify)

An occasional meeting of eight improvising artists: Martin Blume, Jeremy Drake, Tucker Dulin, Wolfgang Fuchs, Chris Heenan, Anne LeBaron, Torsten Müller and Philipp Wachsmann, recorded in a single day in Los Angeles. Everything’s paced according the spur of the moment, producing some serious tightrope walking among more “orchestral” conversations. The high recording quality helps catching every single tonal complexion; apparent clashes disclose instead non-stop mingling of radical research for unconventional timbres and an interplay that quite often gets almost swinging. The complete lack of thematic/harmonic staying power is paradoxically a major propulsive force of the project: this is the perfect picture of a combination destined to be considered and remembered as unique – and therefore beautiful, like a one-of-a-kind creature.

MOUTHS / HAPTIC – 1V2E / Danjon scale (Entr’acte)

Mouths is a duo formed by Jon Mueller and Jim Schoenecker; they play percussion, analogue synth, shortwave, voices. I hear hypertensive rumbles, halfway through an overcharged heartbeat pumping in the auricular membranes and a mountain of pitch-transposed electric razors working at the very same moment, while dampened echoes of pneumatic drills come from the outside. The voices from the radio creep under this mass of distorted radiation, the essence of a rhythm revealing its incessant breath as more and more convulsive, until the overwhelming power of the percussive sources becomes the dominant rule in an Organum-meets-tornado bellowing paranoia. As far as the voices are concerned, I didn’t manage to detect them…Haptic (Steven Hess, Joseph Mills, Adam Sonderberg) conceived a combination of materials recorded both in their rehearsal space and in concert, featuring a commanding mixture of looping sub-basses and metallic caress, slowly evolving into an isolationist riverside from which one can observe dispersed detritus floating over dark currents. The sonic maze remains impregnable all over the piece, hoards of bowed metals and cymbals determining the ruin of the commonplace in harmonic design, which is replaced by a riveting wash of resonance that’s threatening but also peerlessly reinvigorating.

MATTHIAS MUCHE / PHILIP ZOUBEK / ACHIM TANG – Sator-Rotas (Creative Sources)

“Sator-Rotas” is an electronic composition by Marcus Schmickler, from which the trio of Muche, Zoubek and Tang took inspiration for a total reworking of the concept. The new “score”, or interpretation if you prefer, is for trombone, piano and double bass played by the artists according to the order in which they’re quoted above. Lasting about 37 minutes, this is an excellent, concise work that exploits dynamics and colours beautifully, to the point of finding its niche both in the realms of the most advanced new music and in the kind of contemporary jazz explorations of which Creative Sources has presented several examples in recent times. The musicians show composure, self-reliance and inquisitive minds in abundant doses, their reciprocal attentiveness commendable since the very beginning. Mental fixedness and feverish states alternate in a succession of scenarios, the attention to the sonic details reaching points of tension at the drop of a needle, such is the responsiveness of the players to the single event. In the final section of the piece a hellish clangour is progressively raised, our ears completely invaded by the thunderous power of the instruments nearing breakup. But, all of a sudden, everything ceases – the menace rapidly becomes vapour, the venom is dispersed, the noise mutated into near-silence. The music returns to the initial state of ambivalent quietness from where it started and, when the CD is over, a strange mix of satisfaction and unexpressed rage permeates the surrounding air. Is this version better than the original? Maybe so. It sure sounds like an original itself.

MUCK – Roc (Pax Recordings)

The definition “surreal, slow motion rock” used on the cover is a good one, but don’t you ever think about Tortoise or anything similar. “Roc” is a like an old audio cassette falling apart under the sun, played in an old magnetophone; it’s hypnotic, distorted, low-key, often sounding like a drunk astral voice coming out of dark rumbling clouds. Albert T. Carmichael’s monotone laments actually “sing” about many peculiar situations – take a look at those great lyrics – fitting magnificently in a constant flow of out-of-tune oscillations and about-to-die sequences. It’s like if you turn the dial on a radio and find the same warped-mind station forever: at the end you get used to these manifestations of ironic narcosis, to the point of a complete appreciation of this methodical absurdity.

JON MUELLER – What’s lost is something important, what’s found is something not revealed (Crouton)

This is a record entirely made through pieces of a drum set, yet it sounds like a well oiled, fine tuned precision mechanism which allows entering the music in the same frame of mind that one has while listening to a Balinese ensemble – or to Organum, for that matter. Mueller goes straight to the core of drums’ pneumonic organism, avoiding easy edulcoration to privilege spacing systems and sustained transmutations, where snare drums become turbocharged in an itinerant mass of resonant charms and the deep rumble of a sapiently treated (?) bass drum (???) skin transforms itself into a hoarse monster of droning majesty reigning in deafening volume. Fastening every part with crafty compositional skill, the American percussionist offsets any expectancy of a typical “solo drum” release, garnering utmost respect through solid concepts and appreciable concision in this grainy reproduction of a sunless mural picture, which – contrarily to the composer’s suggestion of loud playing – works well at pre-explosion volume, too.

JON MUELLER – Metals (Table Of The Elements)

Being famous for the vibrational qualities of his skins and the total exploration of the bowels of a drum set, Jon Mueller has decided this time to add a little “rock dope” to the music. Apart from the first track “Trace essential”- a progressive growth of rolls and friction that could be linked to the Milwaukee percussionist’s most experimental output – the remainder of “Metals” is a helping of heavy, thunderous rhythms that, in essence, design a minimalism of sorts in their constant tendency to a centre (of what, it remains to be seen). The spiral of bedlam that characterizes “Homeostatic” is interrupted halfway through by a splendid section of superimposed gong vibrations, only to return to an earthquake of snares and crashes that won’t help your new acquaintance to relax, had you planned to do something serious after the last drink. “Mineral balance” is a 4/4 fixation that uselessly waits for an electric guitar to enter the scene; but that guitarist is over the hills and far away, and Mueller is left alone to flex the muscles of his drumming power, all the while putting the roof of my house in deep trouble. Just a little more than half an hour, yet better than a vitamin juice. File under “troublesome listening in presence of relatives”.

JON MUELLER / JIM SCHOENECKER – The interview (Longbox)

We – musicians, writers and listeners active in these fields – should be always grateful for being able to experience lots of incredible sounds, which could be deleterious for the musically retarded but constitute instead a proper excitement of many brain cells that no prayer, drug or sport will ever be able to even tickle. “The interview” is just a little more than half-hour long, yet it contains a multitude of stimulations which could scare the unprepared, even if they are serious evolutional messages; all percussives, including singing bowls and vibrating drums, are handled by Mueller, at times recalling his great “What’s lost is something important, what’s found is something not revealed” on Crouton, while Schoenecker knifes our sensitive apparata with synthesized stilettos ranging from test tone-like sounds to more filling fixed small clusters. Utterly unclassifiable – but I’ll just call it “sociopathic minimalism”.

JON MUELLER / JASON KAHN – Supershells (Formed)

This music was recorded in concert yet it sounds more like a seismic analysis by two scientists who specialize in dynamics of vibration. Except for some cassette background and Kahn’s synthesizer, all you hear in “Supershells” was generated by percussion, two long tracks whose complexion is made of a continuous alternance of boiling calmness and growing intensity, a large-scale chiaroscuro where the mental exercise of collected, imperturbable playing (Mueller privileging his snare’s skin, Kahn lightly striking a cymbal, both blessed with acute awareness in a succession of enticing auroras and approaching roars) becomes a training for accepting the consequence – severe, but never violent – of having summoned up the spirit of repressed vehemence. But these guys know what they’re doing: what would like to come out and scare the psyche gets instead conveyed to a protective legibility, a representation of the strength that we can acquire with a process of gradual isolation from pointless surmise and absurd rules. The control of these energies is at the basis of an album which is too deeply humble for its own good, as a superficial listen to “Supershells” will never reveal its very high value. It is certainly one of the best efforts in both artists’ discography.

JON MUELLER / JASON KAHN – Topography (Crouton/Xeric)

Not the first collaboration between Mueller and Kahn, their 2007 tour was based on adapting the sounds of the instruments (percussion, cassette tapes and analog synthesizer) to the various places they touched in those days. An itinerant installation in a way, the sonic perspectives changing from night to night, the physical reaction of both room and occupiers depending on how the performance developed. That said, the CD documenting these evenings is made of five tracks where the variations on a basic theme are reduced to a minimum. The instantly recognizable nervous roar of the snare characterizing many of Mueller’s recent works is always there, its presence felt in proportion to the synthetic corpulence that Kahn brings out together with his customary percussive subtleties, here often overwhelmed by a thick crust of interference and grittiness (tapes are still very useful when one wants to apply layers of blurry lacquer to a composition). There are neither concessions to typical aesthetic levigations nor equivocal winks to easy affordability, this being symbolized by my incapability of decoding the small print in this record prior to finally sitting down – headphones on – and giving full attention to the subplots that each selection presents. That’s right, it took several listens to realize what really happens in the dark corners of this stuff which – if used as wallpaper audio – only amounts to five pieces of burly noise without apparent finesse. The diamonds are to be found in the mud, though, and the hands must get real dirty to retrieve them. Uncompromising material, perfectly coherent with the seriousness of these artists’ incessant research on the disguised aspects of seemingly normal things.

MUFFINS – Bandwidth (Cuneiform)

Quite simply, this is a masterpiece, possibly the best Muffins record of all time… Am I exaggerating? I don’t think so. I’ve been following these guys since more than 20 years and I can tell you it’s about time to recognize the Rockville band as one of the best groups to come out of the United States, “pound for pound”. Dave Newhouse is the main head behind the charts, his writing touching any single genre or influence you could name; Paul Sears, Tom Scott and Billy Swann are, just like the former, musicians with the capital “M”, enforcing rhythms and melodies like breathing in fresh air. “Bandwidth” is a collection of milestones, with particular regard to “World maps” and the tryptich “Dear Mona”, “People in the snow” and “Essay R”, likely to knock you out right away. When I think that I was involved in moving to another house in the summer of 2000, when they came to Rome (thus I had to miss the concert), I’m still in tears. Please, come back.

NICO MUHLY – Speaks volumes (Bedroom Community)

This is my first encounter with an American artist who I didn’t have the pleasure to know before listening to this dazzling album. Nico Muhly is only 25, a classic Juilliard-graduate enfant prodige who has already collaborated with Philip Glass – one of his several influences, all of them filtered by a brilliant stylistic uniqueness – and Antony (yes, THAT Antony) who lends his voice in “Keep in touch”, probably the best track of the CD, mixing dissonant viola/trombone counterpoint with Hegarty’s unpredictable vocal lines, the whole flowing in a moment into a Michael Nyman-like passionate vamp; but Muhly’s harmonies are five times more intriguing. The Vermont-born composer is also a refined pianist: check his beautiful chordal rainbows in “A Hudson cycle” (written as a wedding present for two friends) which reminds of Charlemagne Palestine’s resonances in “Four manifestations on six elements”. Instead “Pillaging music”, with Muhly on piano and celeste and Samuel Solomon on percussion, fuses echoes of Steve Reich and Harry Partch with the young man’s distinguished personality. We must not forget Valgeir Sigurdsson, best known for his previous work with Bjork and Bonnie “Prince” Billy, a fundamental element in the overall sound of “Speaks volumes” both as a producer and as an active participant through his studio treatments, which deliver the pieces from any potential academic lacquer while nearing them to a much appreciated tactile modernism. Finally, a special mention goes to the string players, whose bravura highlights the most fascinating facets of Muhly’s arrangements: indeed, everyone did a fantastic job but, deep in my heart, Lisa Liu’s violin on the goosebump-raising “Honest music” and Nadia Sirota’s viola in the above mentioned “Keep in touch” have a special place. “Speaks volumes” is a precious record which will open many doors to its originator.

NICO MUHLY – Mothertongue (Bedroom Community)

After the brilliant “Speaks volumes”, Nico Muhly returns with another offering that mixes distinct influences and the visible stamp of his own personality. The majority of the themes analyzed in “Mothertongue” deals with the expressive nuances of language, presented by different singers in combination with various kinds of orchestration and field recordings (which include fried eggs, toast-eating and noises from a shower). The title track sees mezzo-soprano Abigail Fischer singing a series of postal codes, telephone numbers and old addresses fragmented in snippets, crumbles and canons often hinting to Steve Reich. “The Only Tune” is the “explosion”, to quote the composer, of a folk song that his parents used to sing him in his childhood and from which he was somehow both mesmerized and shocked, the whole interestingly interpreted by Sam Amidon’s characteristically monotone voice working wonders on an arrangement that amalgamates popular melody, native Indian-like vocal expressions and theatrically spectacular harmonic modulations – Muhly writes bass lines that should be silently revered. “Wonders” is slightly more cryptic but equally efficient: sung by Helgi Hrafn Jónsson, it develops its multi-faceted intelligence starting from a madrigal, subsequently utilizing fragments of obscure literary works (the man owns a degree in English literature, and it shows). Throughout the album – and despite the obvious references to the glorious times of minimalism – Muhly repeats the trick already performed in the previous record, finding a way to enter our consciousness effortlessly through the affirmation of what can basically be defined a unique style. Not a bad feature in consideration of the still young age of the artist.

MUJICIAN – There’s no going back now (Cuneiform)

The most recent effort by this pulsating free jazz organism is not easy to describe, as every album by artists of such calibre and purposefulness should always be. An unquestionable attribute of “There’s no going back now” is its absolute lack of friendliness for too-used-to-velvet ears. Contrarily to the vast majority of instrumental music delving in improvisation, Paul Dunmall, Keith Tippett, Paul Rogers and Tony Levin truly feel their responsibilities: futile bebop doodads and long-legged escapes from the core of truth are banished from Mujician’s expressive methods. Fabulous, pensive interplay and accomplished solos flow into a collective vision that could be described as “dramatically idyllic”, rage and sadness finding relief in a memorable lyricism (listen to Dunmall in the last third of the piece), at times rooted in a healthy economy of means, otherwise living off these artists’ ragged ecstasy. These 45+ minutes are a difficult mechanism to fathom; memorizing even only one of its parts is next to impossible. It’s a scintillating war declaration against the slinky clothing of those jazz diplomats who travel first class but whose music’s evolution reminds a never-changing railway for rusty freight trains.

TISHA MUKARJI – D is for Din (Creative Sources)

“All sounds are acoustic” writes Mukarji, who plays a 1850 square piano frame, of all things. Not that I had any doubts: this music sounds like a mixture of Organum, Z’EV and Alfred Hitchcock’s birds doing seesaw exercises dangerously near to a rusty chainsaw. Tisha uses wood and strings like nuclear weapons, eliciting powerful contrasts of harmonics with often unbearable intensity, nails-on-the-chalkboard style, but she’s also capable of some finesse: listen to “Brush piece (jagged)” or “Whispers” to get more acquainted to her ghosts of pseudo-calmness. For sure, “D is for Din” is quite atypical in reference to the operational formications and the scratching of silence that Creative Sources usually presents; this album sails through the perilous waters of uneducated sound with efficient belligerency, demounting our suspicion through its sheer, raw resonant power, finally leaving us enabled to appreciate this unsettling jargon made of glass splinters and swashing metallic waves.

GÜNTER MÜLLER – Reframed (Cut)

“Reframed” is a five-piece collection which was entirely created by processing the sounds of bowed cymbals. It is quite a different outing for Müller, whose mastery in modificating sources and rendering them unrecognizable is here exalted at the maximum level. The record starts with a quasi-consonant introduction of sorts, characterized by an immediately alluring undercurrent of muffled frequencies and foggy overtones that made me think to everything but cymbals; picture instead a condensed version of Niblockian beatings caressed by a not-too-powerful desert wind. The second part is also the longest at over 20 minutes, and its influence is even more perceivable in terms of irregular waves dampened by projections of uneven percussive shadows. The game of contraction and expansion that belongs to these kinds of frequency closeness results in the typical “wowowo” oscillation that a naked room cuddles in every corner for the ears to bath in, the perennial reason for which this kind of music finds its raison d’etre in the very air where it propagates. On pure sensual gratification, my favourite track is the fourth, a fantastic comparison of analogous magnitudes where the decontextualization of the cymbal sound, made easier by Müller’s choice of completely eliminating the attack, stimulates our brain up to an increased capacity of managing the control of the energetic fluxes, the sounds halfway through the softened rumble of a yacht engine and distant urban traffic heard with earplugs on. Also, the usual ticking/clicking recurrence of many of Müller’s compositions is heard in various spots throughout the disc. What should be considered is the overall high quality of the project; while “Reframed” is certainly not something overly new in terms of sound, as many other artists have entered these realms by now, its effects are certainly highly beneficial to our being, for we’re subjected to a continuous state of “semi-relaxation” that at one and the same time elicits reactions and somnolence. This blissful navigation through our cerebral structures is what determines the success of this release together with its accessibility, even for those who are more familiar with the “mystical” aspects of this game. In conclusion, this is a cryptically seducing album that calls for the “repeat” button.

GÜNTER MÜLLER / JASON KAHN / CHRISTIAN WOLFARTH – Drumming (Creative Sources)

As one could imagine looking at the instrumentation (iPod, electronics, laptop and percussion) these electroacoustic elucubrations sound like a relentless quest for knotholes in a barely levigated subsonic tissue. A pavement of unauspicious propension to fermenting unquietness is walked by three men using their appliances in such peculiar methods that everything appears frostbitten more than displaced; would you ever believe that the pairing of an iPod and percussion could sound like traffic as listened from a dark alley? Hopes of a brighter guide light get choked by a metastatic liquid full of condensed polluted plancton as Günter, Jason and Christian hide their faces behind the veil of reluctance. The music flows in a continuous competition with silence, which itself seems to be the real objective of everything we manage to capture and scrutinize. Apparently there’s nothing more one can do but listen to these messages, finally learning to communicate through signals instead of words.

GÜNTER MÜLLER / NORBERT MÖSLANG – Boom_box (Grob)

The fascinating sound world of these two Swiss artists now features another admirable specimen. Undergoing the truthful meanderings of Möslang and Müller’s electronic microfauna equals the pursuit of less than limpid meltwaters: once you drink from them, contaminations of insidious organic travesties will capture attention through a bunch of decomposing random quarrels between perception and mirage. Trawling unknown patterns and hypnotic realignments through their usual array of uncommon “everyday” materials, the odd couple once again packages an intriguing non-format set of viscous traps, revealing an acute sense of continuity with a body of work that never abandons strict rules – those ones needing to be constantly broken, at least when advancing to the next stage of experimentation becomes a necessity.

GÜNTER MÜLLER / STEINBRÜCHEL – Perspectives (List)

The mitigating aura of Müller and Steinbrüchel’s sonic Roentgens is yet another demonstration of their value as modern-day composers. There is not a single instant of so called “melody” in this reworked compilation of different live performances; just layers upon layers of timbral induction – through electronics and computer – which have the magical feature of depicting life processes even through their cold façade, as powerful frequencies wrap you in glowing REM states, nailing your persona to seat in maze. But if one just flows with the sound, following one, or many, of the not-so-secret patterns generated by Günter and Ralph, then it will be like watching a flower opening slowly in the early morning hours: its blossom and the chill of the breeze will explain the well determined mechanics that are necessary to remain aware about our own existence and its unscrutinizable mysteries. “Perspectives” is the ultimate crossroads between artificial procedures and the will to communicate via new languages, which these artists are among the best transcriptors of.

MATTHIAS MÜLLER / CHRISTIAN MARIEN – Superimpose (Creative Sources)

Again, new names for Touching Extremes – and, given my immediate liking of “Superimpose”, very welcome on these shores. Nothing found on Müller – a trombonist gifted with a style full of humour, fantasy and, in a way, delicacy; instead, Marien is described as a frequent collaborator in various projects (among the many, the wonderfully named Olaf Ton), an explorer of the “intersection of music and urban calligraphy” in Ritsche&Zast and “Hip Hop and Turkish folklore” in Triple Destan. Pretty mysterious stuff really, awaking my curiousity. Two instruments only; this could make us think about a certain timbral uniformity, and indeed the overall palette of this CD is quite delineated. Yet the constant change of rhythms and accents upon which the duo relies is sufficient to cause an explicit statement of scarce controllability. These guys can play while looking for holes to fill, and they do fill them with large doses of almost tangible inventiveness. Improbable dances and bizarre turns of events ruffle normality until the music becomes a slippery pavement where falling provokes laughter, not harm. There’s a joyful feeling at work in most of the tracks, perceivable at a first try. That positive energy is exactly what propels these six improvisations, flirtatious winks to well-disposed people able to understand when a player puts technique at the service of fun. A lively, solid effort – and not for a moment heavy on the ears.

THAM KAR MUN / YANDSEN / YEOH YIN PIN – Shang (Xing Wu)

A very interesting album, presenting three composers from Malaysia’s Mejelis scene, each one gifted with a distinct trait and all of them showing quite complex introspective refractions. Tham Kar Mun’s “Confining abstract in zero” alternates whispering, frail breathing, gesture and silence with sudden outbursts of filtered urban noise, which ironically works in a contrary process as a cushion against the hard impact of almost total hush on the listeners’ psyche. “Lines” by Yandsen is entirely performed on acoustic guitar and is described as a sonic “careful translation of Klangite Witticism”; the concept may be unknown to this reviewer but the music is akin to a slightly speedier version of a Taku Sugimoto solo set, very sparse and sober indeed. Yeoh Yin Pin closes the CD with “Funeral”, taking its name from the primary sound source, a Chinese-Taoist ceremony in Klang, whose hallucinogenic effects become quite evident after long moments of theatrical voices, resonant overtones and percussive clashes hammering your concentration in the disc’s most cathartic track, which finally ends with a fabulous reed melody from heaven-knows-where.

MURMER – We share a shadow (The Helen Scarsdale Agency)

Utilizing “sounds collected in the UK, Portugal, France, Estonia and Germany” Murmer (alias Patrick McGinley, an American-born sound artist currently living in the French town of Perruel and who has recently collaborated with Jonathan Coleclough) gave birth to a typical example of droning release that results unsophisticated enough to escape from the jaws of commonplace. Divided into two long tracks, the record is not substantially variegated; still, its insight results as unequivocally deep since the very incipit, characterized by torrential rain as a relieving background. The pieces build their significance upon scarce, if fundamental elements: in the first it amounts to a looped metallic resonance, similarly to a ball rolling around a metal plate enhanced by ever-growing tensions, while in the second grittier frequencies accompany the static massiveness of a not better defined thrumming omen. Both segments are underlined by a characteristically degraded environment, only imaginable by the receiver yet acoustically evident all over the record’s duration. After the end, my ears are still ringing despite the short natural postlude that seals the whole. A perfect addition in the gallery of rotten beauties which this label has steadily offered over the course of the last years.

BRENDAN MURRAY – Wonders never cease (Intransitive)

Born from “reassembled and embellished” tapes of concerts in New York and New England, “Wonders never cease” is an absorbing album of sick idleness, abrasive drones and field recording-based sonic dirt. Murray makes good use of the noisier aspects of life, often surprising us with hoards of uncontrolled spurts that mix engines and birds, then juggling with various sources only to let everything flow into a kind of violence that morphs and develops continuously, first sounding like a furious sea, then like a dozen harmonicas in a forlorn furnace. Elsewhere, scorching saturations blemish an otherwise pretty regular electronic buzz, then we get something like the sound of water pressure from the tube during your weekend car wash, the whole perennially disturbed by some sort of deformed growth right behind our ears that renders the atmosphere unstable, to say the least. At various levels, this is truly excellent and highly unique music that manages to be both blissful and disturbing – and consequently more interesting than your average release in the genre. That’s why I found the label’s quotes of William Basinski and Andrew Chalk as reference points for the listeners totally misleading (and I didn’t hear “cinematic drone anthems”, either) as Brendan Murray possesses an individual voice that doesn’t need honourable comparisons to be appreciated. Listen to the splendid “Seas” and judge for yourselves.

MUTA – Yesterday night you were sleeping at my place (Sofa)

Dedicated to Mazen Kerbaj (whose artwork graces the digipack) and all the Lebanese people, this record comprises seven improvisations by the trio of Alessandra Rombolà, Rhodri Davies and Ingar Zach, the latter’s “structures” constituting the basis of all but one of the pieces. The way Rombolà utilizes her flutes, both conventionally and with preparations, is nothing short of unexpected if one believes to find just another excursion through the resonant aspects of air in a conduit. She mixes the pops and the hisses of her instrument with Zach’s percussive arsenal and electronic devices in a very effective manner, Davies joining the party with the nasty version of his amplified harp eliciting harsh drones (the torrid first track “Hamida” is a spectacular introduction) or adding unique colors to a palette that allows the trio to incinerate conventional wisdom. The splendidly titled “Birds wake up, we go to sleep” abandons the initial violence to focus on the “interplay from within” of Rombolà’s multiphonics and Zach’s clattering devices, the whole surrounded by an intermittent pseudo marine wind that overwhelms and allures at one and the same time. “Dead time” is probably the most intensely profound track, less than three minutes that sound like a ceremony for the invocation of a liberating silence, while “Passing time” is based on an introspective call and response between the parts, with many open spaces for extraneous interference to join in. The piece flows into “Vertical time”, in which Rombolà layers her unelaborate timbre in what sounds like a composite of everyday sources and carpentry tools, with Davies’ malignant wails and thuds reciting the role of silent observers ready to raise hell if necessary. “Coffee and brain” is another overtone-based highlight, music whose essence crawls under the skin rather than materialize, intuitions and illuminations coming out of an inward-looking muteness that should choke the ignorance of noisy people. The album ends with “Daylight black”, a three-part contextualization of a hidden reality that can either be made of concrete experiences and gut feelings, or suspended over the absence of a real significance, which is quite often the main asset of the best improvisational visions. Muta seem to base their own upon a sort of “irrational knowledge”, while remaining perfectly aware of the music’s direction.

MUTE SOCIALITE – More popular than presidents and generals (Dephine Knormal Musik)

Debut album for Mute Socialite, currently a quintet also including trumpeter Liz Allbee but, at the moment of this recording, a quartet featuring Moe! Staiano (drums, percussion, percussion guitar, guitar), Ava Mendoza (guitar), Alee Karim (bass) and Shayna Dunkleman (drums, percussion). Consider that Mendoza has studied with Fred Frith – there is a quite chaotic version of Massacre’s “Killing time” to be enjoyed – and that the group is scheduled to release a split record with Cuneiform’s Upsilon Acrux, and you’ve got a vague-but-not-too-much idea of what these people do for a living. In essence, a fusion of nuclear powered dissonant rock containing both parts that sound as if they were written in advance and furious exchanges of freeform blows; think “Doctor Nerve meets Dick Dale in a butchery”. The double-drum lineup is clearly an advantage for repeated outbursts of rage dressed with great quantities of tightness, and the interconnection between Mendoza’s tangential arpeggios, angular lines and knife-edge saturation with the puissant vigor of Karim’s bass constitutes a vital discharge of positive energy, particularly welcome in my routine morning trip towards extremely boring situations and persons. Not only lucid wreckage, though: a track like “Matt Ingalls is in the house” is a sinister reminder of the dangers of a pre-explosive state, and the subsequent “Cheap clocks” – perhaps the personal favorite – could be the soundtrack for a movie directed the dwarf cousin of Quentin Tarantino. The perfect CD to spoil a saccharine party where Barry Manilow and Whitney Houston are the logical background for artificial conversations enforced by doomed-to-failure idiots.

DAVID LEE MYERS / MARCO OPPEDISANO – Tesla at Coney Island (OKSRNA)

A somewhat nonconforming release for David Lee Myers (aka Arcane Device), this time leaving his frightening-yet-celestial machines just a little aside to give quite a lot of room to the multiform digressions of guitarist and composer Marco Oppedisano (who, despite an unquestionably Italian name, was born in Brooklyn), Glenn Branca and Thomas Buckner among the collaborations in his résumé and a line of business that encompasses an assortment of styles, including hip-hop and dance music. “Tesla at Coney Island” is one of those records for which the adjective “cinematic” (well worn out, I know) still comes handy; the miscellaneous environments showcased by the duo range in fact from the ominous perspective of an alien incursion to elusive clouds of electric residue and unremittingly pulsating sequences of electronic rhythms, reminiscent of certain projects in the early 80s which, in all sincerity, today appear dated enough to be filed under “unmemorable”. But what may be partially missing in compositional profoundness is replaced by a brilliant sense of sound assignment and several bamboozling timbres: Myers’ artificial discharges are adequately motivating to educe friendly grimaces from this grunting bear in several occasions, and Oppedisano’s masterful management of the axe’s many-sided voice – mercilessly equalized and modified by intensive processing – warrants a handful of untested circumstances where I found myself thinking “good job”.

MY FUN – The quality of something audible (The Land Of)

There is much to like in this album by Justin Hardison, a London based musician who works under various pseudonyms, My Fun being one of them. We enjoy the irregular yet familiar patterns of everyday sounds, the evocative quality of field recordings that Hardison expands and chews through a beautiful use of looping and layering, the use of instruments with a knowledgeable naiveté which renders the music a cross of emotional reminiscences and pure amusement. The sea, children at play, a phone conversation – everything is perfectly assembled in a series of powerful images enhanced by a complete dynamic control and an excellent panoramic placement of every source. Beautiful things all over the record, with a human touch rarely found in most of today’s extracool-super-glitch collections of laptop fragments; “The quality of something audible” is a self explanatory title in a palatable pot-pourri of big, even bigger, fresh-sounding pleasures.

MY FUN – Idyll (Test Tube)

Picture a more modest version of Philip Jeck crossed with the polaroid of Peter Wright’s little brother and you’ll have a (still distant) idea of My Fun. I think this music is just lovely. The CD-EP contains four tracks – less than 25 minutes total – confirming Justin Hardison as a fascinating specimen of obscure sound artist unassumingly working with ear-pleasing multisource collage techniques. In the originator’s words, the pieces were “inspired by themes of nostalgia, finding beauty in the ordinary and pleasure in slowness”; that’s exactly what one feels during these simple yet engaging constructions of loops and found sounds. Percussive calls, like the wind chimes hanging from the ceiling in many people’s rooms, create irregular repetitions that show no bad intentions. As the record goes on, we’re treated to unpretentious aural pastels where children’s voices and gentle electronics create immaculate visions of ingenuity. In the second half of the disc, “Black sky” and “Slowness” take us into more intimidating territories, taped voices (Pink Floyd-style) and darker drones encysting our predisposition with a sense of uneasiness which is left to rot within our thoughts by the abrupt end of the soundscape.

MY FUN – Sonorine (The Land Of)

First things first: the name of the artist behind My Fun is JUSTIN HARDISON, not “Jason Hardiman” as many readers of serious magazines will now believe. But you know, a deadline and a few bucks are more important than taking thirty seconds to actually check what one’s pretending to listen to and give the musicians their due. Anyway, “Sonorine” is – at least until the end of 2007 – the best that I have heard from My Fun, affirming his compositional maturity through a sapient choice of sonorities that can finally be compared to what’s usually called a “style”. Influenced by the concept of an ancient “talking postcard” upon which one could record messages, greetings and other kinds of sound, this album – just perfect at 36 minutes divided into eight tracks – gathers emotions whose depth is inversely proportional to the small doses in which they’re gradually released. Hardison didn’t leave anything out to elicit memories and recollections: chirping birds, old vinyl albums and hissing tapes, distant trains, sea waves and seagulls, carillons and found instruments. Did I hear “obvious”? Wrong. These soundscapes don’t remain in the same area for long. The slide is soon changed and another reminiscence comes in, even more touching and, at times, sorrowful than the previous ones. There are evocative loops whose complexion has nothing to envy to the specialists of the genre, yet the record’s strength is mostly based on the surprising juxtapositions between pre-conceived elements and retrieved materials, which gift the music with an attractive charm smelling of childhood’s scents and summer vacations, if you get my point. The unpolished collages that this man brings to our attention manage to render defensive mechanisms completely useless, for “Sonorine” suggests the password to the revival of a regretful vibe that nowadays is considered practically extinct by hip hominids.

NAD SPIRO – Tinta invisible (Geometrik)

After five years from “Fightclubbing”, Basque artist Rosa Arruti (aka Nad Spiro) comes back armed of her “limbo guitar”, software and treated voice to leave us, once again, positively perplexed. As a matter of fact, there’s not too much in “Tinta invisible” that one could associate to guitar: the brew in question is a peculiar, mysterious amalgam of hazy electronic panoramas, ghostly vocal manifestations and (rare) Muslimgauze-like rhythms which contains absolutely nothing that can be memorized or catalogued. A continuous process of appearing and disappearing of scarcely visible colours, that’s all. Arruti defines this approach “sound camouflage”; indeed we have no chance of attributing an even vague scheme to what she plays. The record functions quite well as a stimulating kind of “pulse-based ambient”- a valid proposition for an alternative system of eliciting involuntary reactions while we’re engaged in different activities – and, strangely enough, works better that way, more as a perceivable “presence” than as an object of attentive listening. This doesn’t mean that the music is not good per se; it’s just that there’s something that I feel as uncatchable, and I’m not the least surprised to read about Arruti’s “deliberate elusiveness” in the press release. Her sounds are characterized by the same intangibility.

NAFTA – Lines as lines (Ten Pounds To The Sound)

Non-idiomatic free music is mostly based on acumen and perception, as those are the qualities that allow capable players to surf the flow of ideas without restricting themselves to technical expertise and regressive behaviours. The trio of Kurt Newman (acoustic guitar), Chris Cogburn (percussion) and Juan Garcia (double bass), Nafta are good at catching timbral sparks and use them to ignite the “here and now” fuel of their impromptu instrumental happenings, which include a few moments of meditative tranquillity amidst many measures of controlled chafing between Newman’s guitar, whose sound can be raw and refined depending on the occasion, and the punctilious-but-absolutely-free methods of Cogburn, while Garcia’s bass represents a sort of catalyzer for the music to stand on pretty firm ground, despite the systematic absence of a preconceived “style”. No wonder that these artists have played with top-drawer members of the improvisation and Deep Listening communities (from Pauline Oliveros herself to John Oswald, Henry Kaiser, John Butcher, Mats Gustafsson and many many others). In “Lines as lines”, which comes in a 100-copy hand-stitched limited edition, the musicians’ versatility and the alignment of their self-contained virtuosities make for three segments of ever-interesting spontaneous composition, full of alterations and peculiarly-working mechanisms which highlight traces of sheer purity, surrounded by the aura of the wonderfully subdued cricket choir heard at the beginning and end of this live recording.

NAGAOAG – Yama Labam A (Eh?)

OK, I bet that only a few rarity kidnappers have heard improvisations where the principal character is a “singer” who seems to be trying to deliver himself from a straitjacket, accompanying the “absolutely free” music (with a slight tendency to electric fusion projects featuring Henry Kaiser – think Crazy Backwards Alphabet) with all kinds of vocal spasms, pants, hiss, growls, moans, lamentations and what else can be figured out – maybe. “Yama Labam A” (played and sung by Bryan Day and Luke Polipnick) is exactly that, an album that might be dedicated to those non-autonomous, prefabricated minds who pretend to enforce the rules according to which we should behave, although they’ve developed more complexes than an industrial area. “Good professionals” that theorize the norms of sexuality while suffering of eiaculatio precox or frigidity; “gentle souls” who blackmail feeble-brained beings by threatening to reveal hidden secrets to friends and relatives, rendering them addicted to pills and idiotic concepts; desperation-struck human failures who presume to be entitled to offer “advice” to couples, just because their marital life has been crap since wedding’s day, as they’re both ugly as hell and no one else would ever accept to share a bed with either. If you know specimens like the above mentioned ones, give this CD as a present, telling that a previously unreleased Mozart sonata lies in there, and don’t be scared when they come back to teach some manners. These people talk about detachment, yet become hysteric when one tells the truth. Their eyes will escape yours: right-left-down, right-left-down. There’s always an overlord to whom mental slaves must obey, in a pyramid of perennially expanding stupidity. No chance for this record to save the “elected” from that destiny, but surely this stuff is damn funny for a handful of bad-behaving thugs.

IAN NAGOSKI – Violets for your furs (Edition)

Another vinyl release by Edition, this is a picture disc where the B side is a gorgeous graphic “rotating illusion” by Daniel Conrad. Speaking of music, it’s a substantial work composed through a scarce, almost non existent movement of timbral amass, with sources apparently going from electric humming to treated environmental sounds (this is my imagination at work; indeed, the means are not specified). “Violets” works well as a mental anaesthetic, yet it growls from a power that I consider pulverizing if completely released; no extravagances here, just solid electrostatics and affecting vibrational force. It’s the depiction of a descent to impervious grottos armed just with instruments to measure the intensity of still unknown phenomena. Nagoski wades into sonic reverence, thrashing it to pieces, going into waist-deep muddy waters of dissonance, looking for no one’s company in this difficult trip.

TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA / LUCIO CAPECE – ij (Formed)

Let me admit that I sort of knew in advance about the “gifts” that this album would bring along as soon as the names of the protagonists were read. Nonetheless, “ij”- Nakamura on his customary no-input mixing board, Capece on soprano sax, bass clarinet and preparations – represents both a decisive step forward against fossilization and an incisive example of how the choice of limiting the dynamic palette (well, not really…) can still yield intriguing outcomes in 2007, year in which many critics have stated that the lowercase factor has been steadily diminishing its relevance, in the circles where it represented a dogma as well. The music, recorded at Amsterdam’s Steim, does possess the seismic qualities expected from the duo, on a softer basis. Seldom we’re attacked, more frequently stimulated; during a section around the 17th minute of the first track the artists lull us into veritable trance for a couple of minutes, Nakamura’s medium-range purr working wonders as brain recharger, Capece bringing out a single tone so full of dirty harmonics that one wouldn’t believe that its provenience is a breath instrument. The beginning of the second segment sees a nice counterbalance between the Argentine’s saliva-in-the-tubes gurgle and repeated feedback indiscretions by Nakamura, but halfway through we seem to hear a Christmas carol performed by bats and crickets from Tuva and, towards the end, the whole sounds like a modified didjeridoo. Just glimpses in a sea of different memorabilia, whose tentative description is frankly pathetic; it is in such cases that it all comes down to being able to penetrate the sound’s essence or just sleep, indifferent in front of “noise”. Needless to say, there’s also a big difference in approaching this CD via headphones or speakers, both methods effective each in its own special way: naturally, the subtleties and tiny details need to be entirely heard to better appreciate the “compositional” sense of the improvisations, but when we mix these apparently innocuous, often venomous interferences with a silence punctured by those ever-present, if scarcely visible ultrasonic stings, the ears realize that not all frequencies are actually known, even to EAI’s most ardent inquirers. There’s room for improvement, but “ij” remains a fascinating listening experience.

TATSUYA NAKATANI – Primal communication (H&H)

Tatsuya Nakatani is a Japanese percussionist currently residing in Easton, Pennsylvania. He’s been living in the US for almost fourteen years now, and has played in over 50 albums, having collaborated with no less than 163 artists worldwide (at least until the end of 2007). An extremely detailed description of his approach to the recording of this album is contained by the CD booklet, where the performer explains why he privileges playing alone as it brings a deeper “sense of satisfaction and meaning”. One of his preferred techniques is bowing gongs and Buddhist singing bowls on the top of the drumhead, thus producing a peculiarly resonating tremolo, among the most intriguing colours heard in this long improvisation. Nakatani does many things, and does them well; his music sounds more like an on-the-spot composition rather than a free-swinging ode to structural liberation. Skins and metals possess the same importance, a single hue never prevailing in overwhelming fashion. The general feel is one of balance: sweet and harsh, movement and stasis, clearness and friction. There’s nothing that could be described as truly memorable, but sustaining a full hour of attention with a solo percussion outing is under no circumstance an easy task; yet, this musician manages to execute it effortlessly, leaving in the audience the necessary curiosity to return for further unmasking of this set’s various sonic faces.

NAM – Song of time (Clean Feed)

A quartet assembled by trumpet player Ahmed Abdullah, also consisting of Alex Harding (baritone sax) Masa Kamaguchi (double bass) and Jimmy Weinstein (drums), NAM play everything straight from the heart, mixing “traditional” jazz colours and deep-rooted research in a record that’s not easy to cathegorize but certainly has a very good value. The quartet develops themes and rhythms without huffiness, their collective effort so homogeneous there’s actually almost no place for virtuosity or solo showcase, even if technique is abundant all over the place. This music affirms concise statements without howling, looks for intimate conversation but doesn’t get overly “religious”; NAM plough their own fields, remembering their predecessors while trying to define a still unknown format they surely have the will to explore carefully.

CHANDAN NARAYAN – Eight vignettes for solo autoharp (Self release)

The 23 minutes of this set of autoharp improvisations by Narayan should be enough to raise the interest level of many people. Those of you who love the sound of wood and strings closely miked in order to bring out the most minuscule fragments of their inner life will surely enjoy the irregular plucking and scraping applied to the autoharp by this resident of Ann Arbor, Michigan, who wants to change the perspectives of what people should expect from this typical American instrument. Chandan elicits visionary resonances (never too consonant anyway) and “zinging” harmonics with a tangible “harsh delicacy” which reminded me of Rhodri Davies’ harp playing. You have to listen to these restrained reflections several times to be rewarded by a surprisingly fresh music which is not adulterated by studio treatments of any sort. The disc comes in a fine limited 100-copy edition with beautiful artwork.

NEBRIS – Bleak angels (Dystonia EK)

In between kindergarten esoterism and slimy packages of luxurious voids, every once in a while a record that makes me think “maybe everything is not lost” appears. I’m referring of course to releases where obscurity is a dogma – call it ritual, dark, post industrial – but the excess of references to the arcane aspects of the being quite often become a laughing matter, all the more when coming from people whose only reason to release an album is the nourishment of the self. James Hamilton, a Canadian artist who’s been dealing with “abstract sound/noise/whatever” for two decades, starts with the right foot when he writes “I prefer not to comment on the conceptual element – I would prefer that the sounds speak for themselves”. Unbelievable, isn’t it, how many records that could be nice enough to be considered worthy of a good try are instead ruined by pathetic liners and improbable thanks to some kind of “inspiration” – a guru, a wife, a god, you name it. On the contrary, this CD – which is a masterful example of static soundscape with a solid backbone – counts simply on an almost black cover photo that looks like taken from the eye of a tornado in a desolated area, and on the sonic content itself, which Hamilton carved from “acoustic instruments made from organic materials (Tibetan thighbones, kora) and mineral elements (stones, fossils, meteorite fragments)”. Three movements mostly based on hissing acridness and distant lamentations which, although similar to ghost voices, are maybe achieved via processed exotic flutes; in the final segment, ill-disposed frequencies near territories where buzz, crackle and scratch decided long ago that smooth-tempered ambient music must die. A very rewarding listen without pauses or weak points, “Bleak angels” is vaguely associable to Lilith and Tarab (with some Asher-ish digital background disturbances in several sections) in terms of sonority yet owns a well distinct, personal trait that seams technical prowess and visionary talent into a satisfying outing.

NEGATIVE ENTROPY – M.S.Stubnitz – Stockholm 9.07.1998 (Absurd)

Geert Feytons and Michael Prime practice a solemnization of noise, using their self-built instrumentation and an ever changing mass of electronics and effects to raise these dada cathedrals of immensurable mystery. The bulk of this music shifts around scary grinding noises and menacing echoes from sinister rooms, only to deform reality through visuals that our brain accepts not without difficulty, due to the inherent dissonant power of these polymorphic bastard symphonies. The sense of occlusion brought by this imperious sound painting is easily defeated by listening to it with the same attitude used when we’re surprised by a violent storm: observing the majestic beauty of the lightning in the blackened sky, feeling the electricity around like if it’s instrumental to that moment, smelling the damp herbal aromas permeating the air when it’s over. Don’t even think to use these stirring emissions as a background: they will sneer for your attention, destroying your concentration on anything else.

SETH NEHIL – Umbra (Edition)

Maybe I’m influenced by this morning’s copious hail fall, but the whole listening experience of “Umbra” sounded like a mystical saturation. There is no mention of how this music was made on the CD cover; that’s better for the ones who like some measure of unknown while being seduced. Nehil moves his pawns slowly, first starting with timbres verging on the “blowing in a bottle” species, then introducing a vocal element during a suggestive superimposition of catatonic tides. The piece seems to be planned according to an alternance of human and mechanical but even the coldest sections are graced by the light pain of organisms being exposed to active stimulation. Inexorably, the not-so-static mass manages to take total control of my body and mind functions; I’m cut out of any rational thought in between droney massages and the hopeless waiting for something I still can’t figure out.

SETH NEHIL / JGRZINICH – Gyre (Cut)

Seth Nehil and John Grzinich are two respected multimedia artist who specialize in sound installations, often developed in environmental settings. The source materials for these three enticing examples of their assembling expertise were captured in studio and on location in New York, Mooste and Saaropera (the latter are Estonian cities; Grzinich is currently coordinator of that country’s MoKS – Center for Art and Social Practice). “Gyre” is an extended comparison between a certain event, or a series of aural occurrences, and its placement in a context of subliminal sounds and frequencies which function as a weightless catalyzer in a naturally tuned sonic mixture. As the composers write, “material origins of wood, glass, air and metal are transformed into abstraction”; yet, that very abstraction gives back its familiar character as the foundation of this music, which resonates spontaneously according to simple principles of contraction and expansion, urban murmurs and metallic rolls raising an enthralling involuntary harmony that is best highlighted in the final track “Furl” but, on a “drone-for-pleasure” scale, probably offers the most engrossing result in the greyish mist of “Cast”. Either way, a must-have for lovers of the genre.

PAUL NEIDHARDT / JACK WRIGHT / ANDY HAYLECK – Whoosh (Spring Garden Music)

The lineup consisting of percussion (Neidhardt) saxes (Wright) and saw (Hayleck) conjures up suffering animals and eager doodling at the border between noise and pneumogastric activities but, on top of everything, this trio brings on a “fair and square” attitude and a sound which can be either impenetrable or suspenseful. “Whoosh” is sustained tension liquating over four movements; the total cohesion among the players allows them to renounce to any form of timbral ego, often rendering instruments virtually unrecognizable, the music always enwrapping us with more doubts than certainties. The three men seem to squat amidst the dangers of a conventional idiom, picking up a call here, a response there just to make sure they’re still alive in this jungle of obliqueness. It’s the vituperation of elegance in favour of a substantial juice that gives back some strength to our ears, saturated by a gazillion pedestrian licks, something that Neidhardt, Wright and Hayleck avoid like plague.

ALIPIO C NETO QUARTET – The perfume comes before the flower (Clean Feed)

Brazilian reedist Neto, here on tenor sax and flute, leads a quartet featuring Herb Robertson (trumpet, cornet, flutes), Ken Filiano (double bass) and Michael T.A. Thompson (soundrhythium percussionist – don’t ask) plus Ben Stapp, who plays tuba in three pieces. They present music that appears well constructed, not too complicated yet, in spurts, designed in reference to uncommon methods. Exactly in the moment when the mind gets used to the complex interrelations occurring in some of the parts, here’s a sudden opening which addresses the attention towards something that sounds more comprehensible – a squared-out theme, a graceful line. The leader possesses distinct instrumental voice and keen compositional intelligence to inform his material with, preventing the group to fall into the traps of musty jazz. Despite the often very intense swaps between him and Robertson, there are many and one moment in which we clearly perceive the indigenous root of the music; expectedly, one would say but it’s not so, as Neto declares postcard elements completely extraneous to his writing, furnishing us instead with a vivid reminder about the strong coalescence of hard times and happiness that spell “Brazil” in essence. The level of communication – both among the players and with the audience – remains high throughout the five tracks. Filiano, Thompson and the cleverly talented Stapp are all active contributors to a lingo that doesn’t cease to tickle interest, not even after repeated listens.

NEUBAU – Rymdmyr (Nonine)

The press release is written in German, an untried language to yours truly who had to trust his loyal auricular protuberances almost exclusively for this writeup. Still, I managed to comprehend that Neubau is the venture of Arno Steinacher, who began playing when he was 12 and, as well as guitar, set himself to learn to make music on self-built instruments. The other few words recognized in the blurb were enough to confirm what on a preliminary couple of listens appeared as an assortment of rebellious electronica, found sounds and absurd juxtapositions, certainly not world-shattering but meticulously pulled together and repeatedly satisfying to these ears. In the opening “Isregn”, at one point, there’s a magnificently sloping glissando that alone is worth the whole CD, while “Den inre solvaenda” combines female and male voices with echoes from the street of a city that could be Turkish or Moroccan in a Kasbah-like atmosphere of sorts. Yet the large part of the disc deals with abrupt changes, loops, compulsive cut’n’paste and, in general, neurotic sequences of divergent revisions of reality: “Nyans”, with its degradation of drones and warped-in-time vocals, is an ideal symbol in that sense. Palatable, nonetheless incomparable material whose composer deserves praise, principally for not wanting to sound similar to anything else – and, more often than not, succeeding.

MARY LOU NEWMARK – Music from Street Angel Diaries (Green Angel)

This is a brief miscellany (25 minutes) of the music born from a multimedia performance about living rough – “Street Angel Diaries” – crafted by composer, poet and electric violinist Newmark, whose academic background is quite remarkable. Understandably, one gets a better overall impression of the effort by attending the show (video excerpts exist on YouTube and the label’s website), but what emerges from this taster is notable enough for an optimistic idea. On a purely superficial first listen, someone might have a propensity to think of “another Laurie Anderson”; this would be unjust. MLN’s compositional flair is rendered evident by a singular way of pulling together field recordings, Pro Tools-concocted sequences of erratic twists and turns – including ironic hints to techno and electronic time warps – and vocal elements (the texts derive from stories told by homeless people, the essential issues underlying this matter too many to sum up in a review: check www.streetangeldiaries.com to expand your ultimate interest). Newmark’s neon-lit violin is not necessarily a stable presence, which is just fine in this great scheme. Above all, she demonstrates – both through the writings and the sounds produced – to be a sensitive individual, an exceptional quality these days. If only for that, her work deserves encouragement.

NEW GENERATION QUARTET – Dances (Ayler)

It’s a nice work that made by the good people at Ayler, keeping publishing documents of contemporary jazz that tend to avoid worn out etiquette while presenting obscure talents worthy of recommendation. This particular quartet is formed by Vladimir Timofeev (tenor sax), Roman Stolyar (piano, flutes, harmonica), Dimitri Averchenkov (bass) and Sergei Belichenko (drums). The material was recorded in Novosibirsk in 2000. The album features three rather brisk pieces, comprising different moments of impulsive playing characterized by detailed exposition. This circumstantial impetus doesn’t put the clarity of the music out of business, as everything remains illuminated by the invisible will of leaving a door open to the audience also during the most intense crescendos. There is no fashionable attitude, no patchy reference to ascensions or silent ways; it all starts from a melody, often something that might even be memorized if we tried. Then, the group adds cell upon cell of linear development where still comprehensible dissonance and more accessible thematic sketches find a way to coexist. When a climax is reached it doesn’t last for too long, the escalation going back to the rest position with a cycle of dreaming piano chords (it happens in “Two-Step Blues”) or a clever drum solo. Only in “No Strauss” the musicians leave their energies be heard a little friskier, clapping hands and giving voice to inside eruptions. The 51-plus minutes run away without a single moment of tiredness in this noticeably bright release, which could teach a thing or two to the manikins who infest those clubs where snorting cocaine and shaking heads like idiots while hearing “So what” for the 1000th time is the rule of thumb.

PHILL NIBLOCK – Touch Food (Touch)

For those unfortunate ones who still haven’t approached the music of Phill Niblock, this could be the perfect entrance door as “Touch food”, a double CD set, represents a nice selection of facets of the Indiana composer’s vision, all the while adding new perspectives and several fresh perceptions of his (by now famous) wall of droning soundscapes. The first disc begins with maybe the best piece of this collection, namely “Sea jelly yellow” where the masterful Ulrich Krieger’s baritone sax is the basic source. The power of this music is actively working on every single brain cell, producing a mixture of hypnosis and ear(th)quake depending on the level you listen to it. Even if centered around pretty low frequencies, the track shows a multitude of changing aural colours and it’s surely one of Niblock’s overall tops. “Yam almost May”, built upon Kasper T.Toeplitz’s electric bass vibration, sounds apparently a little softer than usual ; the bass is matter of factly played with the e-Bow resonating device. Nevertheless, it trades the force of the previous track with an accurate analysis of instrumental nuances, its beauty and complexity appearing under the surface and manifesting themselves through repeated playing. “Sweet potato”, born from Carol Robinson’s clarinets and basset horn, transforms the basic material in something unrecognizably near to a harmonium-cum-string section, with the usual ever-so-subtly shifting, long droning sea; Phill advises to lower the volume just a little during listening, in order to fully reproduce the track’s character. The real news comes from the second disc, completely filled with Reinhold Friedl’s piano string bowing in the continuum of “Pan Fried 70″. The Bösendorfer is the best resounding acoustic piano you can put your hands on; its large cathedral-like reverb helps Niblock establishing a moving, growing undercurrent springing to more powerful emanations in the middle-to-final parts; the composer recommends to take care of our woofers for the “enormous” bass mass charging out of the piece. Imagine a high-density fusion between Stephen Scott’s bowed piano pieces and the final chord of Beatles’ “A day in the life” strummed by Glenn Branca’s ensemble on the very same strings – only melted, stretched and bathed in more rumbling lows to drone your own self into a real-time oblivion. A definitive affirmation, so full of meaning yet perfectly synthetic as only this man can be, “Pan Fried 70″ is the exclamation point to a work which Phill (and Touch) should be proud of.

PHILL NIBLOCK – Disseminate (Mode)

Though Phill Niblock’s music could sound like an immobile granite block to ignorant ears, it’s instead one of the best representations of the incessantness of vital tides: its sound flowing like blood in veins, its dissonant beating frequencies pumping like constant heartbeats bringing ear pressure in some cases; its final result, at least in my own perception system, is that I breathe deep and slow, my muscles losing any tension. In an exceptionally prolific moment of his career, Niblock establishes here a partnership with musicians approaching materials with passion and competence, seaming together drone upon drone of elongated acoustic – and sampled – textures. “Disseminate Ostrava” and “Disseminate Q-O2″, two different versions of the same piece (the first recorded live with Petr Kotik conducting) show how the human element can bring out the most hidden sprinkles in the score, resulting in a holomorphic wall of contradicting pitches showing the only way to an infinite bliss. “Kontradictionaires”, written for contrabass flute, sax and tuba – all three instruments – and masterfully played by the Kontra-Trio, is classical Niblock wrapping the listener in a cocoon of low ranging notes that, under the guise of menace, create instead the most protective barrier against anything not desirable, being them sounds, thoughts or else. It’s good knowing that this man exists and it’s even better thinking about an artistic vision that at 70-plus years is still inquisitive and purely interested in basic forms, like if he were a little kid. “Disseminate” is meant to be played often and it’s as a beautiful release as you can hope for.

NICKENDES PERLGRAS – Meat hat (Konnex)

Michael Thieke (clarinets and sax), Michael Anderson (trumpet) and Eric Schaefer (drums) operate a cool elaboration of (mostly) jazz-derived compositions where playing themes and weaving countrapuntal goodies is not considered shameful. After pretty linear expositions where each of the members is allowed space and time to clarify his position within the sonic map, we’re treated to a kind of improvisation that sounds extremely educated and is also rooted in a handful of excellent influences, for example the Zappa of “Burnt weeny sandwich”. This music – contrarily to many clandestine explorations of useless eccentricities – fortifies my conviction that trend-reversing is always the way to go when looking for new paths and ideas: the elucubrations that Nickendes Perlgras lay in front of us are brisk and candid, which I appreciate very much in contrast to mental contortion; instead, these guys are undoubtedly very lucid.

NIELLERADE FALLIBILISTHORSTAR – Skrankverk (Dystonia EK)

This is a premiere for yours truly, although NF have already published a handful of releases in various guises. Basically, this project consists of the duo of Swedish Petter Sundlöf and Daniel Engberg working with those materials that car cemeteries and deserted factories own in abundant doses. Metals, above all. Then again, sometimes the onomatopoeic character of a title immediately gives the right idea of a certain kind of music and “Skrankverk” is one of these instances. The very first comparison that sprang to my mind was Z’EV, and there’s no doubt that supporters of that artists will also find something to love here. Rumbling and whistling, whooshing and clanging. Whams. How many people do this today? Maybe too many (I’m not exactly checking, though). Yet these guys have a knack for rendering things more appreciable aesthetically, as opposed to the mass of bangers and scrapers who think of themselves as esoteric but can’t tune a string when handed an instrument. One of the methods applied by NF is the choice of the surrounding ambience. In fact, most of this stuff sounds like recorded in a natural setting, not in some desolated large room, and there are moments in which we figure that the wrecked walls and the high ceilings are placed near an extended country area or a wide urban periphery. At least, so it seems. In a word, the noise made by Sundlöf and Engberg is “beautifully menacing”, sounding ecologic enough to these ears. It is in tune with something deep, surely deserving better than a single distracted listen.

NIGHTSHIFT – Nightshift (Antifrost)

The split personality of this Greek duo, formed by As11 and Thodoris Zioutos, is rather evident all over the duration of their debut CD, an alternance of rarefied landscapes and extremely harsh distortions. Lunar silences and small noises from an abysmal hollow forest contain enough electric movement to charge a giant battery alimenting complex machineries. Although we can observe – often from a distance – high furnace flames lighting up a fragmented sky, the almost intimate, carefully detailed microsonic life characterizing the quietest sections are Nightshift’s signature stamp; they look for a way to recycle what could sound like discarded junk into geometries of nothingness and underground boiling liquids, bringing relief to the sense of coldness our body experiences during listening. It’s just like finding a frozen corpse and seeing fresh blood coming out of a knife cut.

NIHIL COMMUNICATION – We are violent (Edgetone)

One of the things that the world wouldn’t ever expect: a dark ambient CD on Edgetone, whose habitual aesthetic surely does not privilege static views and explorations of black holes. Yet here we are with an obscure creation by Andre Custodio, deus ex machina behind Nihil Communication, who released six tracks deriving from synths, percussion and digital effects (extremely long reverberations are at the basis of the whole) and, as a “soloist”, a T-Rodimba invented by instrument builder Tom Nunn (check my review of his “Identity” on this same label to understand what we’re on about). Depending on how you listen to this music, the outcome is different: via headphones, the huge wall of low frequencies and distant calls will squeeze the skull and put the auricular membranes in a state of complete saturation, the T-Rodimba crying from faraway galaxies like a lost astronaut. The best results came with an “installation” setting in the early hours of the day: moderate volume, silence broken only by the morning birds outside the windows, the shadow game begins. And it’s often quite satisfying. Don’t be surprised if you’re a Lustmord fan and happen to enjoy this, too – very much.

BJ NILSEN – The short night (Touch)

There are records that ensure instant gratification to the senses and “The short night” happens to belong to that area. Sound artist BJ Nilsen found a way to organize and deploy his materials with a methodological rationality which nevertheless hides large quantities of aural pleasure. He mixed in fact field recordings from Sweden, England, Italy and Iceland to quietly unfolding electronic backgrounds – at times reminiscent of the best Eno – and harsher manifestations of saturated, oppressive static music, the whole obtained through an array of machines (minutely detailed by Nilsen on the cover) of prevalently analogue derivation, yielding sonorities whose embracing, but at the same time dangerous warmth is at the basis of several moments of sluggish torpor. The distant voices perceived amidst the underlying drone at the beginning of “Finisterre” let us think to the cross of marine rumble and human presence typical of our childhood’s days at the seaside, but it’s soon taken apart by an outgrowth of semi-distorted pale resonance, while “Viking, Cromarty…” is based on one of the most emotion-eliciting mumbles heard lately, upon which granular movements of uncertain origin build repetitive patterns and oscillations until we reach Rapoon-ish lands, then everything gets mangled by acrid discharges of electricity. There’s actually nothing here that I didn’t hear before in a form or another, yet Nilsen seems to have a knack for nailing the exact moment in which depth and charm should be exchanged, thus erasing the predictability factor from his creations.

BJ NILSEN & STILLUPPSTEYPA – Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna (The Helen Scarsdale Agency)

There is something about this record that activated my anguish-detecting alert in such a way that I was forced to go back and listen to it again and again, searching for those entrapments of being in which vital forces fall, only to remain forgotten in total obscurity. BJ Nilsen, Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson and Helgi Thorsson created five magnificent darkscapes in response to the “drunken thoughts” deriving from “their collective lust for alcohol” (apparently a huge problem all over Scandinavia). The foundations of “Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna” are muffled-sounding loops, a series of relapses into a world where everything moves in spirals towards a never ending regret, usually wrapped by a hazy stupor. Slow parabolas of disembodied voices and perennial descents to hellish quarters are reminiscent of the most mesmerizing pages from the Nurse With Wound book – once again “Salt Marie Celeste” could be a good term of comparison – but, bizarrely enough, there are a few passages where the suspensions and the unsettling surroundings are not too far away from Roland Kayn’s majestic self-regulated procedures. Elsewhere, an acrid distortion gradually morphs into a once-celestial-now-damned constellation of revengeful low frequencies and warped funereal choirs dragging our struggle in a quagmire of disillusion. The more I listen to this album, the better it sounds to my ears; as far as this genre is concerned, I’d call it a milestone without hesitation.

BJ NILSEN & STILLUPPSTEYPA – Passing out (The Helen Scarsdale Agency)

Third and final episode in a trilogy dedicated to the psychotropic effects of alcohol, “Passing out” is a 67-minute secluded mantra holding all the fine factors that a listener might crave for in a drone album. It is also a record that reveals its features only by constant inspection, opposite listening settings eliciting a semi-clandestine disposition. Might be a comforting experience or a disheartening one, the common denominator being the tremendous value of the music. Nilsen, Sigmarsson and Thorsson describe the result of their work as signifying “the occurrence of a state that is incompatible with active behaviour”; to elicit such a psychological condition, they used guitars, radio, voices and field recordings, everything surrounded by a broad mantle of multi-textured low frequencies. This is not your archetypal thrum’n’gurgle artefact, there’s substance to share throughout, its consequence on the surrounding space nothing short of inspiring. From an opening static mumble, the piece evolves through different stages of emotional alteration and sonic complexion, at times just going on by itself in an ominous, incessant flow of pulse, elsewhere slightly scarred by presences that appear like wraithlike emanations from some unseen celebration, most impressive when obscure chorales of sampled vocal oms interfere. Dark charm with a solid skeleton, sizeable emotion moved by intimidating invocations to supreme nothingness.

PAAL NILSSEN-LOVE QUARTET – Townorchestrahouse (Clean Feed)

Music on the fringes of jazz, showing a way through its dichotomies with a pained disfigurement of genres and appearances. Without hesitancy, endlessly flowing in the “carpe diem” attitude brought to the table by these magnificent players, the music by this quartet belongs to the endangered species of decontaminated artistry – just listen to the unbelievable soprano sax solo by Evan Parker in “Orchestra” to understand the level we’re talking about. Paal Nilssen-Love – one of the best European drummers in activity – and bassist Ingebrigt Haker Flaten play together in various contexts and it shows, as their communication is total, a groundbreaking divination eliciting rumbling convolutions and psychical torridness. Sten Sandell, a highly distinguished style in his hands and mind, reflects shortly then acts in hard-hitting fashion, his chords shimmering like rainbows after the storms of his mercurial piano improvisations. This album is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the Clean Feed collection.

99 HOOKER – Generica (Pax Recordings)

A requisite for appreciating this crazed bulletin by 99 Hooker is – of course – a good command of the English language, but even the ones who don’t speak it cannot fail to be entertained by this exciting explosion of styles, where rapping goes over tracks that are filthy rich with instrumental bravado and sampling from hell. Crossing a low-voice ironic sensuality a la Zappa’s “I’m the slime” and ranting utterances similar in spirit to the unjustly forgotten Zoogz Rift, the protagonist kicks America’s favorite commonplaces and behaviors right in the balls, offering altered bluegrass, fake disco patterns and lambasting homespun grooves in a cauldron that’s bound to become a muddy jewel in the always undisciplinable Californian new music polymorphism.

NINTH DESERT – Zone (Mystery Sea)

One of my favourite expressions when analyzing the work of people dealing with sound construction is “some folks got it, some folks don’t”. This is especially true in the field which Mystery Sea specializes on, and I’m happy to report about yet another project from the Belgian label that certainly “got it”, at least for its large part. It’s not that this album proposes something truly new, but the care that Cyril Herry – the mind after Ninth Desert – put in this music to have it sound like an overbearing, suffocating soundtrack is almost tangible. So, what does “Zone” sound like? Picture a deserted urban landscape, no human presence in sight, only a slight breeze that moves fallen leaves and disposed objects for short distances. Try to make that coincide with a mixture of hissing steam and acute stridencies, accompanied by metallic echoes and a few distant rumbles, similar to an approaching storm. Add long moments of hush, in close proximity with silence, where the external sounds try to distract attention only to return to their background status when the menacing vultures of Ninth Desert’s hallucinating images come over our head again. Although not easily recognizable – due to their heavy treatment – guitars, percussion and tapes seem to be among the basic origins of the recordings. Don’t take it for granted, though. No wonder that Herry is a collaborator of the excellent Cédric Peyronnet (aka Toy.Bizarre); this stuff sounds pretty serious, its cinematic nuances notwithstanding.

NMM – No more music at the service of capital (Why Not Ltd)

“No more music at the service of capital” fits in the definition of “Touching Extremes” very well, as Mattin (computer feedback) and Lucio Capece (sax, mixing board) first launch a torrid attack on your speakers, whose cones are shaken, rattled and rolled by the harshest distortion you can get this side of Borbetomagus; then, exactly halfway through the disc’s length, suddenly stop their terrorism leaving us in company of an almost surreal quasi-silence, which is broken only by the small sounds of life at first, then by short appearances of concrete tampering and more feedback – this time controlled, in order to make it barely audible in pretty short glimpses of crystalline limpidness; but distortion still lurks behind, just content of knowing that the hush is scared by its presence. As usual, the access password to this kind of material is “no compromise”, in a typical love/hate situation for many listeners.

NOERTKER’S MOXIE – Sketches of Catalonia vol. 2: Suite for Miró (Edgetone)

Contrabassist and composer Bill Noertker is a prolific writer, having scored more than 150 pieces for jazz ensemble only in the last decade. SOC is a three-part suite of which the first volume was inspired by Salvador Dalì, while the third will be dedicated to Antoni Gaudì. All three, in case you didn’t notice, from Catalonia, where the leader went twice to experience the direct view of these masters’ paintings, visits that instigated the preparation of this opus. The involved players are Annelise Zamula (tenor sax, flute), Jason Lewis and Niels Myrner (drums), Jenny Maybee (piano), Jim Peterson (alto & baritone sax, flute), Yehudit (5-string electric violin), Hugh Schick (trumpet), the lot unknown to me but definitely formed by remarkable instrumentalists. Music calling back atmospheres from the past, swing, beguines and dainty ballads often making us think to an old-fashioned but still extremely fascinating dance hall. The arrangements are definitely on the “austerely linear” side while maintaining the necessary technical finesse, not privileging egotism (although solo spots are featured), rather looking for a delicate textural balance. Intriguing contrapuntal combinations and disguised virtuosity help to find the way to an instant comprehension of Noertker’s intention. It’s difficult to name a favourite track, although the double whammy of “The red sun” and the subsequent “Harlequin’s carnival” deserves a place in the light – truly great music, independent from genres. In essence, a recording that sounds pleasantly out of time and, as such, a welcome divergence from the customary productions coming from the always-at-the-forefront Californian label.

NOISEGARDEN – Persona (Sqrt)

In that desolated, peripheral, unwelcoming area where improvisation, post-rock, feedback-nourished frustration and Sonic Youth-like jangling dissonance meet we find Polish trio Noisegarden (Michal Chojecki on guitar, Andrzej Ruszkowski on drums, Antek Sobiecki on guitar and electronics). Over the course of seven pieces – the first and last actually being a short introduction and postlude – these guys present a bunch of often very interesting ideas; half-raw, half-refined vibrations and mind-numbing buzzes and hums catch the attention quite easily, especially if the reproduction level is medium to high. Guitars and basses are properly manipulated, at times raped, so that their components exhale rusty whispers and desperate howls before succumbing to a pretty disturbing total lack of serenity. Elsewhere the music is a little more scented with psychedelia, oneiric guitar arpeggios gently hovering amidst harmonic haze. The percussive presence is mostly just that, another shade rather than a real driving force. Neither ambient nor industrial, “Persona” establishes a general sense of gloom that capsules Noisegarden’s individual approach, confirming the good quality of the products released by Sqrt.

NOISE-MAKER’S FIFES – Radiatio acoustica (NMT)

For this particular performance, recorded in Brussels in December 2005, Noise-Maker’s Fifes were Daniel Denis, Marc Wroblewski, Michael Prime, Timo Van Luyck and deus ex machina Geert Feytons. “Radiatio acoustica”, initially released in a limited edition CDR but soon to be reissued with additional audio and video material, is a disquieting trip through mysterious misshapen imaginations and concrete modifications of presumed tranquillity, perennially jeopardized by invasive subsonics and obfuscated environmental sounds. In their first albums, NMF tended more to trance and looping, being often (to me, inexplicably) compared to Zoviet France; now the Belgian collective has developed a totally unique style where the successions of electroacoustic events are organized according to a logic which fuses a highly skilled compositional ability and the exploration of psychic dimensions where anguish and fear dominate.

NOKALYPSE / NOVASAK – Nokalypse / Novasak (Swamp Of Pus)

Got to love these labels’ names. Seriously, the split-CD format is becoming increasingly diffused in the world of independent electronic activity, which is a little puzzling to me, as there is the risk of a certain unbalance in the values. I myself would be annoyed if a valued piece of mine were to be paired with a lesser artist’s one in a release. On the other hand, this is a nice method of spreading the work of different composers at once – and if they’re friendly, who cares about who’s the album’s boss? In this particular case, though, homogeneity rules: Themis Pantelopoulos (Nokalypse) presents a long exploration of the blackest galaxies between educated noise and space music, starting calmly enough but soon developing into a concentrate of near-burst forces. There’s a bit of everything for everybody (limiting ourselves to this area, of course): Xenakis – as an influence, not in terms of sonic similarity – Lustmord and Kirchenkampf are three possible, if distant comparisons. Todd Novosad (Novasak), the man behind Swamp Of Pus, is slightly lo-fi oriented, his track featuring a lot more of flanged-out, guitar-derived ambiences that push the material towards the harshest fringes of industrial. This o-pus (sorry I couldn’t resist) is also definitely enjoyable yet my preference goes, by a hair, to Nokalypse who assembled his half with an appreciable higher degree of compositional care. Overall, a good disc.

NOM TOM – Nom Tom (Spring Garden Music)

Carol Genetti’s voice patches splintered memories of ancient times without forcing your attention on her subdued creativity, necessary like oxygen in such a context. Tiny harmonics, uncertain hissing and amicable Tuvan revolutions are gently sustained by Jon Mueller’s minimal intrusions, as the Milwaukee percussionist – one of the shrewdest snare drum microscopist on the free music scene – blocks unwanted irregularities by keeping intensity levels equal to the beating of wings of a scared butterfly, his timbral palette constantly updated by more than adequate experiences and fine ears. Jack Wright’s saxes (alto and soprano) give us the impression of being the regulating valve in a complex breathing apparatus, the immediacy and the pulse discarded in favour of a more controlled ideology which, in this live recording, allows Wright’s just presumed phrasing to assume a monitoring role for an extremely frail, yet still functioning body of sound.

NON CREDO – Impropera (Gazul)

There are several reasons that justify my instant liking of Non Credo, arrived at their third album in 18 years (why don’t you learn, dysentery-struck self-releasers?) and – mea maxima culpa – for the first time to my attention with “Impropera”. One of them is their very name, which in my idiom means “I don’t believe” or “I don’t think so”, thus involuntarily representing my way of reacting to most anything that happens. Then again, their titles mix various languages in absurdly funny meanings, an illustrious example being “Faux Cazzo” which I’ll gladly leave you to translate. On top of all this, their music reveals so many facets and layers that every listening session adds peculiar pleasures and improbable ingredients to an already satisfactory recipe. Joe Berardi is a percussionist who uses samples – make that “composes” with samples – on the spot, during improvised anti-structures or preconceived architectures; Kira Vollman is a portentous vocalist, also playing bass clarinet in a way that could make many respected instrumentalists green with envy. “Impropera” (which is a fusion of Improvised Opera but it also could mean “Insults” in Latin) contains nineteen tracks that were originally played by ear, yet the duo was so well practiced in their rendition that they decided to record them as a sort of “impromptu compositional documentation”. I won’t be annoying you with the dozens of (often unlikely) comparisons that I found on the press release; in that sense, all I found is a slight contact with the Shelley Hirsch/David Weinstein duo every once in a long while. But it ends there, as Non Credo have their own distinct axioms and postulates – and a great sense of humour bathed in cinematic sauce. Noirish atmospheres, implausible songs and hilarious hurly-burly are interpreted by Vollman with Teutonic power, munchkin edginess and needlepoint accuracy; some of her lines are technically frightening and, at one particular moment, her vibrato in the high range had me thinking about Gizmo singing the main theme of “Gremlins”, if you’re familiar with that one. Berardi eviscerates his samples, raising car-horn hells and pulsating mental hop-scotches at the flick of a couple of switches, transposing a contrabass until it sounds like a jew’s harp and having a dozen of non-existent march bands clash in state-of-the-hiss, 8-bit wonderful sonic miasmas; yet, it all sounds like a well-refined score. I could add another thousand words but I’d probably still fail to convincingly describe this fantastic album. Add it to your daily necessities at least for a couple of months and enjoy its brutally caressing, delicately sandblasting, strong-minded aesthetic. Am I exaggerating? Non Credo (sorry, I couldn’t resist).

NORTHERN MACHINE – Dark to dark/Dark too (HC3)

Pat Gillis and Bill Warford – from Alexandria, Virginia – sent me this double CD accompanied by a funny letter, silver ink on black paper. They quote influences as diverse as Klaus Schulze and Robert Fripp (there are many others to check, together with a nicely rambling description of their sound, on the duo’s MySpace). Yet the music doesn’t resemble anything that one could immediately stamp with a comparison to something “famous”. The instrumentation is mostly electronic but guitars and, possibly, camouflaged voices and tapes are present too; there’s a whole lot of abstraction, but also good quantities of pulse/rhythm-based material. Exclude headphones: I had started to listen that way, soon realizing that this stuff needs a room to better express its potential, particularly because Northern Machine utilize loads of superimposed chords and swarms of drones, thus eliciting dissonant refraction and beating frequencies as pouring rain. The introductive “Moonrise” does recall Frippertronics, just a tip of the hat to a recognized inspiration; the rest is much better and more interesting, especially on the “throbbing shadows” front (“Nocturnal Capacitance II: Perigee” being a fulgid example). A significant portion of these tracks sounds like poisoned yet tasty butter, a blessed relief from the once-a-month, second hand rituals of fakes such as (CENSORED) or (CENSORED). Elsewhere, we’re thrown back to Krautrock-meet-Roedelius territories, but always with that dose of intelligence that separates the deserving ones from the copycats. The most intriguing aspect of these guys’ work is an absolute non-dependence from clichés, a rarity in this field today. Pretence-less and genuine, this album is almost perfect at comfortable volume, a mysterious background soundtrack to whatever you’re doing with life at that moment. You’ll be forced to interrupt your activity and pay attention several times, though. Can you spell “active hypnosis”?

KEVIN NORTON – Quark Bercuse – Solo percussion vol.1 (FMR)

Listening to almost 65 minutes of compositions/improvisations exclusively written for percussive instruments can be hard for everyone; still, one can’t help but admiring the deep vision and the extraordinary passion put by Kevin Norton – drummer for Anthony Braxton and Fred Frith, to name just two – in this compilation of solos on drums, marimba, vibraphone and additional percussion. “Specifically inspired” by Steve Lacy, Braxton himself and Korean pianist Haewon Min, this music explores themes usually beginning with an oblique dissonant pattern, then evolving into more complex structures where augmentations, rests, changes of accent are just means to introduce the listener into the core of the improvised section. Norton works wonders with dynamics and intelligent junctions, making us feel the very “note” that’s found in the vibration of the drum skin, letting us see every single gesture while avoiding technical razzmatazz, finally inducing us in a sort of forced trance whose strict grammar is quite difficult to escape from. Yet, the most beautiful pieces are two meditations for vibraphone and percussion, “Cold Day in May” and “At the Hands of Charlotte Corday”: here Norton lets the natural resonance of his instruments do the talking, allowing more room for thought while illuminating our listening session with fascinating chiaroscuro strokes that reveal once more his subtle sapience, even more intriguing when coupled with a sense of immutable abstraction.

KEVIN NORTON ENSEMBLE / ANTHONY BRAXTON – For Guy Debord (Barking Hoop)

Sometimes it’s hard trying to find words to describe music, so you just use adjectives and do your best with them. “For Guy Debord” is a vivid example of the maturity and the preciousness of Kevin Norton’s ensemble, paired with a magnificent Anthony Braxton at the very top of his reed lecturing. Norton’s score calls everyone to activity according to precise schemes mixing with a high degree of spontaneous eruption; each moment of the suite is fuelled by an ongoing collective feeling – sometimes an effective “free counterpoint”, in other moments gathering together under the umbrella of a tribal rhythm. The nominal leader’s solo sections are played with lucid intelligence and perfect choice of timbres; Bob DeBellis and David Bindman on flutes and sax are maybe the most important characters in this play’s course. No need to tell you what Braxton does; he remains an elevated master whatever he spits out from his head and lungs. Guy Debord – who committed suicide after a life “against” most everything – will surely be smiling upon these boys’ heads, up there somewhere, rolling with the Norton Ensemble and its positive energy.

KEVIN NORTON CONTEXT TRIO – In context/Out of context (Barking Hoop)

Two are the things I like best in Kevin Norton’s records: he never loses the complete clarity of his primary concept, and never stretches the length of a composition more than the strictly necessary. This one is a wonderful, difficult yet linear proposition where the evolved drumming of Kevin is accompanied and exalted by a great performance from Bob DeBellis and David Bindman (both on flute and sax). The three men take their turns in exposing complex and articulate ideas, represented with angular phrasing, active interplay and a mastery of counterpoint that’s just awesome; even the most dissonant sections are perfectly comprehensible and that’s usually a good sign about the structure of a piece. Deriving from a lot of sources, this is an excellent brand of no-nonsense, rigorous music that just needs to be heard to understand what kind of level can be reached when artistic views are perfectly focused.

KEVIN NORTON QUINTET – Change Dance (Barking Hoop)

Kevin Norton is one of the main drummers/percussionists on the new music scene and his skills are very well documented in this excellent release. Dedicated to Kathy Change, a psychically disturbed theatre protest activist whose dramatic history is well reported in the CD liner notes, “Change Dance” is a free-form composition in which one rarely can determine what’s written and what’s not. Pretty concise at about 45 minutes and very directed to the point, Norton’s quintet plays a kind of contemporary jazz that’s among the very best one can listen today, being more oriented towards the exploration of timbres, colours and polyrhythms rather than just a series of schematic “theme/improvisation” sequences. A great protagonist here is Mark Dresser, whose bass is just perfect among the several characters of the piece; I was also struck by the rasping baritone solos by Rachel Telesmanick. This is not an easy record to listen to and you should avoid doing anything else while it’s spinning; rest assured your attention will be abundantly rewarded. High-level technique not always brings the goods: here it does.

KEVIN NORTON / HAEWON MIN – Play the music of Anthony Braxton (Barking Hoop)

The astonishing logic contained in Anthony Braxton’s scores is accurately studied and reported by the duo of Kevin Norton (who plays regularly with the great composer) on marimba, vibraphone and percussion and pianist Haewon Min, a classically trained South Korean who’s willing to undertake the toughest aspects of instrumental execution at its very best. What you get is five sparkling duos, at times nearing a mix between Frank Zappa’s complicated pages (maybe it’s that wonderful marimba helping my mind) and the best “chamber jazz”, altogether characterized by a prodigious attention to the interpretation’s nuance but also careful to maintaining a general sense of “open air” even in the tightest parts. Needless to say, Braxton himself highly praised the two after hearing this record and I’ll do the same, as this is another gem by the excellent Barking Hoop label.

KEVIN NORTON’S METAPHOR QUARTET – Not only in that golden tree… (Clean Feed)

It’s quite hard to find a Kevin Norton’s project not permeated with absolute seriousness and stylistic rigour, to the point that I often feel his music as composed even in its improvised sections. That said, this is another example of Norton’s approach to the jazz-oriented areas, where there’s that floating sensation dividing brain from soul and bringing out the best parts of the two elements. In “Not only in that golden tree”, Kevin is leading a quartet composed of bassist Wilber Morris (sadly deceased in 2002), trombonist Masahiko Kono and vibraphonist Hitomi Tono’oka. As in the case of other Clean Feed recordings, the spirit of the music is burning of vivid light coming out from a fusion of all the four personalities involved; their artistic chemistry is just perfect, as there’s never something out of place. Everything seems to be architectonically well-placed, but with a slight opening to the unexpected. Not an easy session at a first glance, but these guys are here for those who know.

KEVIN NORTON / JOELLE LEANDRE / TOMAS ULRICH – Ocean of Earth (Barking Hoop)

The double bass/cello/percussion formula reveals its full potential in this series of short improvisations by three of the most talked-about entities in the new music scene. Even if Norton is the nominal recording leader, everywhere the music flourishes naturally and without any kind of timbral predominance, like musk growing on a wet stonewall. The constant exchanges among the three musicians yield a continuous springing of micro-cells of highly personal ideas, which meshed together result in high-pressure ebullience. There’s not a moment in which I am not forced to raise my head and listen very carefully: Leandre’s double bass is a call to duty in this sense, while Ulrich’s playing sounds natural like using a daily tool; all the while, Kevin Norton’s oddly “elastic” drumming – not to mention his beautiful marimba – is the active propeller that these three forces need to spread all around the field, filling several of the remaining voids in your quest of no-bullshit musicians.

NOS PHILLIPÉ – Shh… Camille (Confront)

A surprising release on the Confront Collectors series, this short set by the duo of Jonathan Webb (turntable, electronics) and Robert Hopps (prepared guitar, electronics) is probably the very first time in which the English label releases music that, more than the usual EAI canons, follows the coordinates of an excellent brand of quasi-static improvisation that amalgamates dark ambient scenarios and instantaneous performance. Looking at the instrumentation, it is quite natural thinking to certain names; but if you were expecting a cross of Keith Rowe and Philip Jeck, wrong turn. “Shh…Camille” is in fact built upon haze and distance, metallic resonance and faraway echoes scarcely mobile in the dim light of a cold suburban winter evening. The record maintains the original intentions in its total length, with a few exceptions – the extra long distorted guitar cries starting halfway through the piece shed a modicum of clearing on the scene in the second half. A picture of thick grey where only lonely adventurous wanderers are seen walking around, without a clue about their destination. The whole sounds stirringly anguishing and rather intense. An interesting change from the interminable silences we’re accustomed to when visiting these lands.

YANN NOVAK – In residence (Dragon’s Eye)

Having been granted three artist residences in 2007, sound manipulator and label chief Novak wanted to reproduce the feel of isolation that’s born from “working in solitary conditions for long stretches of time”. In this album he renders sonic materials completely unrecognizable, subjecting them to infinite reverberations and inserting the resulting sounds in spirals of blissful grey resonance. The outcome is a gorgeous drone record, where no possibility of commonplace exploitation is left alive. Avoiding obstreperous affirmations and drastic measures, Novak manages to create music that is deeply evoking and ear-seducing at once, adapting it to the occasional event but also underlining its very beauty through repeated calls to our sub-consciousness. To be able to do so in an ambit where the company is definitely more superficial than useful, namely where not many composers are in the condition of maintaining a musical sense in their rumbling jumbles, is a noteworthy achievement. The conclusive section is highlighted by a series of impressive subsonic throbs that put the loose parts of my room in rattle-and-hum mode. Excellent stuff, worthy of the “repeat” function: a mature reminder of how a few well placed elements will always surpass bell-and-whistle soups.

YANN NOVAK / JAMIE DROUIN – Auditorium (Dragon’s Eye)

The collaboration between sound artists Novak and Drouin dates from 2006 when they met at Seattle’s Decibel Festival, immediately realizing that they shared common views on how to use space for the propagation and the diffusion of sounds, and also how space itself has a sound of its own. “Auditorium” is a testimony of their performance at the Henry Art Gallery, in which Novak recorded the “content of silence” of the site at first, then proceeded to superimpose different layers of that hushing “something” which, opportunely treated, became the gradual evolution of a natural-flowing drone that initially rubs the ears with low-frequency components, then starts to raise doubts while becoming slightly aggressive, only to finally placate in a mesmerizing continuum. On his side, Drouin applied slight interferences to the basic current, inserting sharp events, regular pulses, concrete clatter and powerful heartbeats, thus better delineating a soundscape in which the balance between form and non-form is a very strong asset, its effects on the psyche definitely helpful. We find ourselves immersed in a fluid made of electricity, gas and vibration, a protective mantle that’s not in danger of being ripped by Drouin’s more defined sonic entities. Names that came to mind during the trip were Nurse With Wound, Eliane Radigue, Paul Schütze. There’s actually no symbolic value to be discovered in “Auditorium”, and it would have been an error looking for one: it’s indeed a rather fine piece of sound art, existing only for its sheer scope, with no pretence of transmitting mystic messages or revelations. Its stimuli are caught by our senses and elaborated without too much difficulty, making for one of the most pleasing “installation at home” experiences that I had in recent times.

ARTUR NOWAK – Guitar Granulizer (emd.pl)

The first thing that I wondered is “How come that this release dates from 2004 but is circulating just now?” In any case, no problem here. “Guitar Granulizer” is a collection of 50 pieces, each lasting one minute, for guitar and computer with no treatment whatsoever. Nowak recorded the material, kept it as it came and improvised with the samples, which were “granulized” into small particles without overdubs or sequencing. He suggests playing the CD in random mode; I tried both ways, always with nice results. In such a gathering of glimpses on the possibilities of guitar alteration, it’s obvious that there are strengths and weaknesses; in my opinion there is a prevalence of the former – and not by a little margin. Especially in the most menacingly static tracks, Nowak creates timbral combinations and aural undertow on the same standards of the masters of the game (I’m thinking James Plotkin here). Ominous shades of low-frequency radiation aren’t allowed the necessary time to develop due to the short lengths, but nevertheless let us have an idea of an underworld that we’d like to visit. Quite often the hypnosis is disturbed by crackling noise with even better effect (check track #33). My preference goes to the parts in which the origin of the sound is rendered totally unrecognizable, while in the circumstances where the guitar is detectable (usually in the most fragmented pieces) a tad of “been there” creeps up but doesn’t do damage because of Nowak’s bottom honesty, felt by this reviewer throughout the disc. Forget the references of the press release (Braxton, Frith, Bailey, Merzbow, Ives, Roads) and enjoy the personal effort of a musician who possesses enough talent to entertain our ears without recurring to bells and whistles.

KK NULL / DANIEL MENCHE – Raijin (Asphodel)

The fluctuation of violence and the bliss of electronics. The absolute lability of a preconceived system, but then that very system becomes a dominant presence. One believes that a hundred thousands basketballs are bouncing at the same moment, their sound filtered by a special kind of anger transmutating it into a crumbling wall of hopeless stress; the tumult grows until it’s finally accepted as almost depurative. Five nameless tracks, their duration ranging from 5’44″ to 15’11″, show two of the most exciting noisemongers at their very best, Null on electronics, electro-percussion and an unrecognizable trumpet, Menche – as usual – on “percussion and concussion”. It’s not only noise, though; Null’s strange electronic designs add an increasing dose of “nuthouse” feeling bordering on the visceral trance. But quite often the result is just sublime – especially in the fourth movement, when the music unfolds with more differentiated reiterations to gradually reach its maximum potential in an extraordinary finale, lamentations of desperate creatures materializing amidst a rumbling mantra that inexorably develops into the most purely beautiful moment of the whole work. Enjoyed by headphones, “Raijin” will make your head resonate like a bass drum; played through the speakers, it could cause a divorce in case you’re married. Listened during a thunderstorm could find you willing to die right then and there.

NURSE WITH WOUND – Shipwreck Radio vol.2 / Gulls just wanna have fun (ICR)

More “enigmatic episodes from Utvaer”, courtesy of Steven Stapleton and Colin Potter, whose field recordings translated into unstructured desolation are the skeleton of the whole “Shipwreck Radio” project. In this second instalment, the duo seems even less physically present than before, choosing to remain completely camouflaged in the contrasting sonic images they create; the overall sound of “Vol.2″ is centred around metallic (and often pitch-transposed) resonances and distant drones, each track introduced by the voice of various participants, the whole accurately deformed, digested and thrown up by an “abstractly rigorous” effect processing. Stapleton and Potter manipulate human activity, cars, voices and animals to generate their unique paintings in which straight lines and angles are totally absent – everything sounds sinuous or parabolic. Apparently psychotic yet absolutely descriptive, these wrecking balls for mental balance find their way to our appreciation with every additional listening; furthermore, the special edition – whose price is already skyrocketing in the online auctions – contains a third CD (the above mentioned “Gulls”) made of residual recordings and oddities which contribute to give NWW additional rights to be considered a cult icon on today’s scene. In my opinion, this triple set – paired with the first volume which is even better – counts much more than several of their earlier over-quoted albums to define this status.

TOM NUNN – Identity (Edgetone)

Remember Hal Rammel’s “palettes”? Looking for sound explorers that don’t want to use regular instruments to noodle our balls off? Edgetone presents another eccentric character from their roster: enter Tom Nunn, a master instrument builder that, since 1976, has been performing with his original creations, bearing fabulous names like “Hybrid Mothics”, “Crustacean” and “Octatonic T-Rodimba”. Don’t ask me to explain in detail how they’re made, because Nunn himself does it – very carefully – in the liners. Be content enough of knowing that the sounds are obtained via an awful lot of different means, among them picks, combs, mallets, springs and bows. The ten improvisations of “Identity” are a comprehensive showcase of these wonderful electro-acoustic machines (Nunn applies contact microphones when necessary) whose sonic character ranges from “atonal marimba” to “celestial shriek”. A nail is a nail, whatever the human playing it. The funniest, but also most fascinating materials come from the two longest tracks: “Voices”, in which the Mothics played with t-rods, a spring and a knitting needle gives life to an incredible cauldron of munchkin discussions, and “Dreaminator”, a ravishing improvisation for bowed Crustacean (it’s difficult remaining serious after writing such a thing, but the result is truly something: try to believe). A homeopathic cure against the excesses of studio production, “Identity” is also a justification for anyone still dreaming to change the world with an invention. It’s already a success if they can be happy by just trying, and I’ll always appreciate and encourage this kind of uncontaminated creativity, provided that the consequences near at least this CD’s nicety.

TOM NUNN / DAVID MICHALAK / KYLE BRUCKMANN / KAREN STACKPOLE – Ghost in the house (Edgetone)

“Ghost in the house” is described as a “soundtrack for the subconscious”, but actually there’s nothing in the disc reminding me of that. The music reflects a series of descriptions by its creators, who picture hypothetical images and dreams while trying to represent them through the strangest sounds they can obtain from their instruments. The protagonist in that sense is Nunn who, armed with an assortment of self-built sonic emitters (“crustacean, water phone & other original inventions”, go figure) characterizes the album with pseudo-voices, oscillations of pitches and harmonious noises mingling fabulously with Stackpole’s gongs and percussion, played with typical restraint and awareness by one of the lead figures of the Californian scene. Another immediately recognizable factor is the evocative timbre of Bruckmann’s oboe and English horn furnishing these instant creations with a neoclassic aura whenever his phrasing comes to the forefront in the mix (it happens since the very first seconds indeed). Michalak, who’s also half of the Doctor Bob duo with Bob Marsh, seems to act as the soul behind the sceneries, both via textural contribution (buffalo drum and a gorgeous wailing-and-sliding lap steel guitar) and as the deus ex machina behind the instrumental concoctions, not a surprise given his experience in the movie field since 1971. The whole is very abstract-sounding, not a hint of stable harmony in sight – picture a cross between a B-movie and the REM phase of someone who has lots of strange fantasies even when not sleeping. What’s more, the record is truly beautiful and I’ll just leave it at that: something that doesn’t require too many explanations, as it’s simply made of great sounds.

UWE OBERG / GEORG WOLF / JORG FISCHER + FRANK GRATKOWSKI – After all (Konnex)

Uwe Oberg is a talented pianist with a limpid, comprehensible phrasing that puts him at ease in the most different settings. The rhythm section mixes youth and experience, as drummer Fischer and bassist Wolf – two refined instrumentalists with class to spare – have worked both in more “mainstream” situations (including rock) and in company of high calibers such as Cecil Taylor and John Butcher. The trio is helped in three tracks by the inquisitive clarinet of Frank Gratkowski, who adds spice and a whole set of alternative directions to the music. Eight segments (plus a short ghost track) that show a lot: brilliant technique, maturity and an absolute respect of jazz roots are put at the service of a bright-minded improvisation, characterized by a sensitive interplay which exalts the inspired counterpoint generated by these fascinating combinations. We can also enjoy several segments where the single instrumental voices are left alone or barely surrounded by a “presence”, like if ancient spirits oversaw the activities of their worshippers while they prepare a ceremony; “Falling” is a good example in that sense. This CD is a pleasing introduction to the best of what contemporary European jazz has to offer these days.

ODD JOB – Macro made in a room (Sqrt)

Formed by Sebastien Chou (electronics) and Ambroise Yon (sampler, synthesizer), Odd Job are a French duo whose music is scented by various flavours of electronica, industrial and musique concrete which, as it often happens with minor and truly independent entities, fuse into an individual personality and a very pleasing “style”, which in this case sustains almost one hour of attention quite comfortably. The CD is divided into two long tracks. “Macro-made session” is an obscure cauldron of underwater percussion, mucky frequencies and rumbling murmurs disturbed by “interferences” which sound perfectly disposed in the malleable matter of which the piece is made. Think of a cross between a Müller/Möslang hybrid and the perception of a distant earthquake, the whole bathed in a bubbling liquid, and you’ll have a faint picture of what I mean. “Live akt in a room” is a little more bitter and variegated, shifting the overall balance towards the higher frequencies (something like a sampled harpsichord is featured throughout, in different kinds of pitch-transposed variations) even if, after a while, we’re again immersed in a sulphuric smog that forces our concentration to lower its defenses, every buzz and hum accepted in stressless fashion despite the absolute non-tranquillity of the surroundings. A low-budget production whose artistic value exceeds many luxurious ones’, thanks to a series of well-placed good ideas.

OLD BOMBS / WOLF EYES – Old Bombs/Wolf Eyes (Public Eyesore)

Two extremely convulse manifestations of noise collages, tape music and extremely harsh electronics (particularly in Wolf Eyes’ case) are the core of this Public Eyesore release. Apparently, Old Bombs are a trio but they sound like a hundred radios all tuned to a different stations, being their music absolutely unpredictable and ear-stinging; think a punk version of Negativland or a bad trip of some famous plunderphonics operator. Wolf Eyes are also a trio but their sound is slightly more oriented towards the lo-fi industrial scene, RRR releases for example: a lot of distortion, voices of men screaming their lungs out, percussive clanks all over; a little less inventive than Old Bombs, but powerful.

MASAHIKO OKURA / UTAH KAWASAKI / TETUZI AKIYAMA – Bject (Hibari)

An interesting improvisation by three bare souls, recorded in 2002 at the Off Site in Tokyo. The grey wind brought by radio frequencies, turntable and electronics (by Akiyama) recalls quiet, lonely thoughts in a closed room, while laying a carpet on which the synthesized sounds of Kawasaki and the breathing efforts by Okura on sax and bass tube (sounding like a didjeridoo to me…) evolve their intertwining discourse and politely take their turn in letting the others speak, exchange ideas and weave a tapestry of electroacoustics, just rarely augmented by a little more inflammable materials. Like in most of these settings, a great importance is in the general low-key approach, leaving lots of options to the ears to catch all the minute details – in a general sense of waiting that is broken by electronic noises at the end.

MASAHIKO OKURA / GUNTER MULLER / AMI YOSHIDA – Tanker (For 4 Ears)

Ami Yoshida is a graceful carrier of distress; her guttering inward articulations – easy to be confused with some kind of instrument – are the logical consequence of herself listening to an invisible underworld of invented significances, pregnant cavities and barely expressed tensions. The opening track “Shibuya”, a live improvisation, introduces us to a hidden expressiveness which would like to be recognized as beauty, yet it is too shy to approach. Through the use of iPod and electronics, Müller wraps cocoons of instability while generating unsettling visions, the spinning loops and quivering etceteras of his armaments in a constant shift between a rumbling subterranean menace and the artist’s will of opening small windows in those unwelcoming cellars. Okura’s sax and tubes are unobtrusive and effective, dialoguing with Yoshida’s bird-like frequencies while trying to entertain the variegated suggestions thrown by Müller. The remaining tracks were constructed by Müller himself, as he assembled different materials sent by his companions while adding new studio soundfiles. If possible, the results are even more impressive. Yoshida’s unbelievable throat-splitting harmonics find a comfortable nest, so to speak, in the rational randomness of Müller and Okura’s undercurrents; overall, these studio creations figure as a chain of collective rituals made of scattered reflections and sudden decencies, the musicians nurturing a gradual sameness which is the thermometer of an increasing compaction between their three outstanding personalities; all the more incredible, considering how these improvisations never happened in reality. This coherence of intents is the best ingredient in the well-dressed electroacoustic plate which is “Tanker”, certainly one of the best For 4 Ears releases so far.

MARK O’LEARY – On the shore (Clean Feed)

The name of Irish guitarist O’Leary is popping up rather frequently these days, and it does it in very different contexts involving artists as diverse as Paul Bley, Mat Maneri and Günter Müller. His guitar style changes mask quite often too, depending on the occasion. This album, recorded in 2003 and which we have no problem in linking with a “near ECM” aesthetic, sees him on electric and 12-string acoustic flanked by drummer and percussionist Alex Cline and the trumpet duo of Jeff Kaiser – boss of the pfMENTUM label – and John Fumo. The titles – of the CD and the tracks – are pretty much self-explanatory about the kind of vistas evoked by the quartet, the players even imitating the voices of seagulls at one point. Everything is channelled into a relaxed enough vibe despite the absence of typical turnarounds and hooks; this is favoured by the leader’s choice of alternating a graciously clogged clean tone (reminiscent of one of the references quoted in the press release, John Abercrombie) in the most linear playing with sudden shifts of gear under the guise of semi-overdriven nervousness, modifying the music’s pulse in several instances. Cline performs brightly, also utilizing sticks, stones and shells collected by O’Leary around the Cork Harbour (the place that basically inspired this music), refined accompaniment and virtuoso interplay highlighting his presence. The timbral pairing of Kaiser and Fumo is both a complementary colour and a premier creative partnership for the successful realization of the guitarist’s concepts, their instruments at times nearly invisible, elsewhere purposefully focused in maintaining an atmosphere of utter suspension amidst fading memories.

MARK O’LEARY / GÜNTER MÜLLER – Skyshifter (Creative Sources)

After listening to the first movement of “Skyshifter” I was surprised to hear something that (admittedly superficially) could recall a dark ambient soundscape, a gorgeous one for that matter. Black and grey, slow movements, dim lights. With the following segments, the single personalities of O’Leary and Müller start to appear more precisely delineated, in particular the latter’s customary lattice made of recurring samples and cyclic ticks and whirrs deriving by the iPod (does anybody remember that Mr. Müller has been using the damn thing WAY before it became one of my most hated gadgets in the hands of people?). This does not mean that the album sounds like a For 4 Ears release, and that’s exactly where O’Leary’s contribution is better noticeable: his eBowed guitars with electronic and “implements” are widely responsible for the obscure meanders through which we’re forced to move while enjoying the CD, which doesn’t really stand out for pure innovation but remains excellently conceived and executed. Music that may not “shine” from the point of view of luminousness, yet allows the functional mechanisms of your receptive mode to be lubricated and reactivated. “Skyshifter” might turn out to be appealing to a largely vaster audience than the usual Creative Sources bunch of aficionados, still without a milligram of compromise in terms of artistic seriousness.

MARK O’LEARY & HAN BENNINK – Television (Ayler)

“Television” is an apt title for this unusual guitar/drums duo, in that it makes us think about channel zapping, both in terms of atmospheres – there’s an appreciable blending of short and long, slow and speedy – and especially for what concerns rhythmic subdivision, which is severely tested by two artists who have made a living out of unpredictability. In fact, the last record I had heard from O’Leary (“Skyshifter” with Günter Müller on Creative Sources) travelled near the obscurities of ambient lands; now, here he is (…actually, this music was recorded in 2001) with mercurial fretboard blitzkriegs, corroborated by a tone where the highs are pretty much cut off, very “elegant jazz” but with fingers that literally leave a wake behind in the most agitated tracks, a seriously scorching phraseology applied even in the so-called subdued pieces. For what it’s worth repeating, Bennink knows any single screw of a drum set like his own life, reading the skins and the wooden parts inside and out, brushing cymbals as if caressing a woman’s hair, a delicate roll here, a rackety tumble there so that the history of modern drumming is, as always, revisited in less than one hour. An exciting collaboration whose attention-catching feel is definitely welcome.

TIM OLIVE / NISIKAWA BUHNSHO – Supernatural hot rug and not used (Gule Disk)

The first release by this Japanese label pairs Olive and Buhnsho, who have collaborated in the past with the likes of Fritz Welch, Annette Krebs, Oren Ambarchi, Ruth Barberan, Bertrand Denzler. Armed with a 1-string bass, an electric guitar and a broken record player, this couple assembles an uncouth guerilla of electric debris, broken silences and caustic affirmations coming right out of a raw instrumental nucleus whose sonic elasticity must be heard to be believed. These four improvisations, recorded in 2003 in Osaka, behave like a cat that has just been put into a transporter to be brought to the veterinary: they circle around themselves, putting the head against the bars to find a way out but finally succumbing to the evidence that nothing can be done. String rust meshes with humming noises and clicking leftovers of what once was a “technique”, alternating with short interruptions where only through headphones one can hear the presence of something occurring under the crust of silence. Nevertheless, this music never exceeds its irregular shapes, remaining coherent in its autistic landscapes of lo-fi interference and constituting an awkward document of something that’s not lowercase, but stands well clear off noise terror too. In its pretty frail structure, Supernatural Hot Rug could be interpreted as a signal from unconnected artistic entities working at the margins of uneasy listening.

ON – Second souffle (Brocoli)

On was originally the duo of Steven Hess and Sylvain Chauveau, who first met in 2003 to record a CD named “Your naked ghost comes back at night” (Les Disques du Soleil et de l’Acier). From the same sessions comes this new work, where Pierre-Yves Macé contributed, with remix and additional editing, to the pre-existing sonic palette of prepared piano, prepared guitar, vibes and percussion. Elaborating the information contained by the five tracks is not a difficult task, as their structures are very simple – in some instances, almost basic – with warm radiations, glowing rays, silence and percussive interaction, all parts of an intriguing casket of electroacoustic experimentations that sound nice and easy even in their most intimately introverse sections. On seem to be interested more in the essential components of sound than the construction of a real piece, yet their music hypothesizes something that underlies its inherent restraint. At times, repetitive piano figures establish a connection with something nearing Eno circa “Before and after science”; take this as a peripheral reference, though. Indeed, the record stands halfway through a concentrated instrumental detachment and the most accessible kind of acousmatics. A continuum of particular impressions, never disturbed by anguish, listeners always in full control of their faculties. A graceful surprise in an autumnal dress, worth of careful attention and repeated tries.

1/3 OCTAVE BAND – Sub Lumina (Humbug)

New Zealand confirms itself to be the cradle of an artistic movement which sees many different soundscapers exploring various areas of sensorial displacement while maintaining their feet on a fertile ground made of saturated guitars and elegiac harmonies. 1/3 Octave Band presents four rather long tracks in which I could abandon myself in total oblivion, my brain massaged by hypnotic drones and sinuous reiterations complemented by fine clangours and ear-piercing juxtapositions of overdriven harmonics. One could find common traces in the music of Stars Of The Lid and fellow New Zealander Peter Wright, but I was also reminded of Pink Floyd circa “More” and Californian trance/progressive band Djam Karet, especially in the conclusive “Luminous”. These reminiscences do not detract from the enormously evocative power of this record which – together with the ARC CD reviewed above – represents one of the best collective efforts that I had the pleasure of listening in this first quarter of 2006.

ONID + ISIL – Onid + Isil (Public Eyesore)

All I know about Onid and Isil is what’s indicated on the CD sleeve, namely that they are “Dino and Lisi”. Gosh, I’m not the kind of guy who runs Googling to find out more – except in case of urgency – therefore I’ll remain perfectly content with the music: eleven “jams” numbered from 0 to 10, recorded on what sounds like a four-track cassette machine left under the sun on a beach, the sound as grainy and sandy as you can get. The music, yes. Great fun, absurdities a go-go, warped munchkin vocals at breakneck speed, distortion and drum machines that skip more beats than a chronically diseased heart, seemingly from low-budget electric organs. Hiss, bumps, sudden interruptions and discharges. In a word it’s sonic shit but it sounds great, truly humorous for its large part. At times it reminds of Residents, but also of the crazy recordings that me and my friends made in our room as kids, each time causing my mum’s preoccupied apparition while we were wailing, jamming, laughing and burping all over the place. There are people today releasing CDs full of similar stuff who get the cover of the collest magazines; having persisted, we’d be rich today. Back to Onid and Isil, this is one of those CDs that you’ll need when you’re willing to spoil a party, or just smile for a while. Don’t ask me why, but I like it.

ONJO – Live Vol.1 Series Circuit (Doubt Music)

Keeping track of the continuous changes and evolution in Otomo Yoshihide’s last decade’s creative activities is like watching a seismic indicator’s needle at work. His Otomo New Jazz Orchestra perfectly explicates this perennial instability, both through constant personnel modifications, despite a few elements regularly present throughout its life (Alfred Harth being one of them, with rare exceptions) and the variety of the repertoire. A main feature of this supergroup – “currently the best band in the world”, someone said – is the leader’s will of subjecting the same pieces to different kinds of arrangement depending on the ensemble’s form and geographic connotations. As a matter of fact, starting around 2005 – when touring in Japan – the leader began to include Japanese and Korean musicians, and developed experiments with string sections and unusual combinations of instrumentalists (the pairing of Sachiko M’s sine waves and Ishikawa Ko’s sho in the initial “Lost in the rain” works exceptionally fine), all the while fine-tuning what he calls “double-command”, namely simultaneous orchestral playing led in parallel by separate conductors. Two examples of such a technique are found in this 2-CD set, the first of a series documenting live concerts in Tokyo and Berlin in 2006, where ONJO tackled a book including Eric Dolphy’s tunes, originals by Mr. O and two compositions by Yamashita Takeo, a relevant figure in the mind and ears of Japanese population over 40, as he scored numerous animation and special-effects-for-children programs in the 60s and the 70s, a recognized subliminal influence for Otomo (who has also recorded an album dedicated to his themes). This is as a nice introduction to ONJO’s eclecticism as any, given the consistency and the high-quality level of the music, which showcases the blend of modern jazz and onkyo that the principal had envisioned one day in bizarre circumstances (he was in fact washing dishes in a restaurant after a dinner, and observing the different behaviours of the attendants – the quiet discussion, the happiness, the laughter, the noise – got illuminated with the idea of a similarly conceived instrumental gathering). Extraordinary dynamic contiguities define the abolishment of borders between genres: raging blowouts and night-club melodies by the reeds, delicate orchestrations and Stravinskian violence by the strings, distinct typologies of female voice (besides Kahimi Karie there’s the pleasant surprise of Margareth Kammerer’s presence in a couple of tracks from the Berlin gigs). Accelerations and sudden silences. Coherent riffage and virtual absence of indications (Otomo would disagree with this, though). The worn out concept of “total music”could be applied in this case, because these people constitute a brand of genuine non-belonging, where joyfulness and enthusiasm – but also reflectiveness – aliment the same eruptive energy of those who eat and chat in public. As the boss says, “good food is all it takes to stop people from fighting”. I don’t really agree, but this release offers lots of food for thought without risking mental indigestion.

ONJO – Live Vol.2 Parallel Circuit (Doubt Music)

The origins of ONJO – and of this pair of live albums – have been dealt with in my review of “Live Vol.1 Series Circuit” (same label), to which readers should refer for further information. This is the second 2-CD set derived from the same tour, offering additional merchandising baits for those who never have enough of powerful crosses of derringer jazz and – yes, let’s use it – “punk” attitude alimented by scary musicianship. It only remains to analyze the contents so let’s go to work, starting from the first disc. “Shichinin no Keiji” could very well be a Mediterranean song, opening with rather cantabile lines upon which the ensemble launches repeated calls to serenity, although of a slightly disturbed kind. The explosive surcharge characterizing Eric Dolphy’s “Gazzelloni” – a fabulous version if there was ever one – incinerates any potential proposition of overindulgence with a mixture of ferocious drive and Zappa-esque irony, the whole making me want to dance like a drunken bear (I managed to contain myself, though). The final fusion of nuclear-powered sax squeals must be heard to understand. “Te recuerdo Amanda/Song for Ché/Reducing agent” starts with choral lyricism that will cause the most nostalgic ones to reach for the handkerchief, then switches to a demonstration of brute force that makes the originals almost sound outmoded. Great drum solo by Yoshigaki Yasuhiro, by the way. “Super Jetter” begins mysteriously to become an entrancing disjointed lullaby made of bits and pieces, while “ANODEONJO” features an outraging fusillade that would bring existential doubts to Lou Reed’s “Metal Machine Music”, a veritable attack on the listener’s auricular membranes, saluted with the instrumental reproduction of a clash between a dozen trains. Disc two: “Lupin the third – Theme of Walther” will find many Italians happy, as this cartoon was (and still is) a sort of cult around these lands. Not for this writer, though – give me Gusztav and Professor Balthazar any moment. But this rendition is dazzling, energizing at the maximum level, swinging as hell – with a great guitar solo by the chief for good measure. “Double command O” lasts nearly half an hour, yet another specimen of Otomo’s experiments with multiple orchestral intersections co-led by himself and, in this case, Itoken. Now, you already guessed that reticence is not one of the principal aspects of this orchestra. Well, the “double commands” can be used as a kind of introduction to ONJO’s overall artistic conception, presenting continuous successions of interactive playing and genre-abolishing freedom which I won’t even try to describe; suffice to say that this is significant music played by artists whose virtuosity is genuine, not iron-pumping for their egos. Anyway, it must be told that the reed/string cooperation in this track is next to radio-therapeutic treatment, delivering us from any residual cell of Mozart baloney and Vivaldi saccharine. Two classics end the adventure: Dolphy’s “Something sweet, something tender”, a black-mood interpretation of this piece that the band executes with increasing heartbeat speed in emotional suspension, and Jim O’Rourke’s “Eureka” – first whispered by Kahimi Karie, then the conclusive liberation, a hymn to sing until becoming hoarse, deaf, and definitively delighted. One can see Alfred Harth’s lenses getting damp while blasting out in this extraordinary finale. And, since seeing is believing, why not taking advantage of Guillaume Dero’s movie about Otomo, recently published by La Huit in France? Those who are interested can find it here. Irresistible marketing strategies, especially when the products are this desirable.

YUI ONODERA – Suisei (And/OAR)

Sometimes I feel in dire trouble, cornered in the condition of finding words to describe what is a relatively simple record that nevertheless touches certain depths, which not many artists can manage to, their display of technical prowess notwithstanding. In the case of Yui Onodera, a clue was reading the “special thanks” to Mystery Sea’s boss Daniel Crokaert on the sleeve: where this man is found, the presence of water is all but assured (and the Japanese artist has releases out on that label, too – stay tuned). Indeed this album is strongly based on different aquatic hues in various kinds of sonic gradations and dripping intensity. Not only that, Onodera also made good use of uncertainly definable “environmental sounds” – apparently slightly treated, at least in well (in)determinate foggier sections – and splendid ghostly emergences of his pump organ, whose static chords enter the picture in sparse appearances, like a detached narrator would in a minimal theatre performance where the audience understands what happens but somehow still appreciates to be led amidst the subplots. The composer succeeds in chipping the commonplace off the utilization of water as a compositional means, an austere processing the key factor in creating a natural path through which the piece slowly walks, delivered from useless glittering clothes, extremely profound in its almost religious concoction of deep-breath silent prayer and severe concentration. Elemental innocence that doesn’t promise an easy penetrability.

YUI ONODERA – Substrate (Mystery Sea)

We recently reviewed Yui Onodera’s “Suisei” (on the And/OAR label), whose basic character derived from different treatments of recordings of water. One supposes that there’s water in “Substrate” too, given the by now famous aesthetic foundations of Mystery Sea. Yet that, and all the rest of the sources that Onodera decided to exploit, are here decidedly unrecognizable – probably for the better. What this writer didn’t know before is that the Japanese artist is also a composer of soundtracks for experimental films, contemporary dance and Butoh. It makes sense, as the succession of the eight parts of this CD lets us think about the gradual development of a choreography, one that starts with movement and nearly ends in total standstill. At first there is a degree of slight interference amidst the droning calmness: parallel nuances, rippled complicacies and deviations attempting to barely blemish an otherwise almost too perfect beatitude. But as the music keeps flowing, the intense beauty of these undistinguished radiations comes in rivulets, creeks and small rivers to finally be channelled in a static suspension of such grace that I had to associate it to Klaus Wiese (precisely, his singing bowl trilogy “Space”, “Neptun” and “Uranus”). Sounds that hold us to ransom until the piece – a masterful one, if you ask me – completes its cycle, looking like a sentiment-less microcosm travelling towards the unknown with absolute tranquillity. Splendid release, among the Belgian enterprise’s very best.

YUI ONODERA – Rhizome (Gears Of Sand)

The third Onodera release that I listen to in a few months, and also the “easiest” to assimilate. This should not detract from its unpretentious loveliness, a polite elegance brought to light by consonant loops of sources such as guitar, voice and electronics, sparse piano phrases and discreet field recordings underlying a series of tunes whose web of melancholy and moderation renders the music ideal for a contemplative kind of listening, evaporation of the self all but guaranteed. Indeed all the seven tracks of “Rhizome” are easily reached, yet they seem to promise something more to the listener, an appealing veil of hypnosis at the basis of several moments of enticing gratification. We may assemble a few comparisons (one hesitates in calling them “influences”) here and there – Tim Story, Eno, Roedelius – yet the album is not a pale replication. It shimmers by a rarefied light, a study in luminosity developed upon sketched patterns of faint memories and timid smiles. Identifiable, familiar, somehow easy to be categorized, still containing very good music for the whole duration of the program, the sixth movement being the most paralyzing flash of transcendence. For the well-versed in the genre an absolute must, and you know I’m not soft with my judgements in this area.

OPERATING THEATRE – The early years (Incunabulum)

Operating Theatre was an Irish music-theatre company whose founders were Roger Doyle (of “Babel” and “Oizzo No” fame) and Olwen Fouéré. This splendid 2-CD set mostly analyzes the “first phase” of the group’s activities (from 1981 to 1988), a period in which OT were active on many fronts, including issuing records containing their own pieces. The peculiarity of the ensemble was the unconventional character of the performances, which took place either in “regular” settings or in “non-theatrical environments” such as abandoned warehouses and the likes. But the music itself is more than worthy of being carefully listened, this collection featuring a range of situations going from the demo-sounding self-made soundtrack (tape distortion included) to fantastic harmonic progressions enhanced by the use of sampling and electronica. The CDs seem to represent two different approaches to autonomous expression; in the first, Doyle’s multi-instrumentalist bravura shines throughout, complex-yet-accessible chordal textures often alimenting a state of uneasiness also in (just superficially) relaxed sonic environments. On the other hand, we might even think of RIO influences (like in the opener “Sir Geoffrey”, which could have been conceived by Art Bears). One can instantly recognize the roots of a style that will completely flourish in future works, yet being able to observe talents, hopes and delusions of a composer in his early stages remains a valuable event. On the opposite side, the most striking performance by Fouéré is to be found in “Johhny’s Body at 002” at the end of the second and more “histrionic” disc: a bloodcurdling fiendish delirium built upon an obsessive cadenza that will result in a problematic listen for those following the “medito ergo sum” credo. It feels great to see lots of obscure gems from the past retrieved: once they called it “revival” but, in all probability, people are just realizing that the best fruits of creativity are the ones coming from the tree of juvenile enthusiasm. This release should not be missed in that sense, a fascinating chapter in the history of a one-of-a-kind venture.

ORA – Final (ICR) – After rainfall (Fungal/ICR)

The two titles are reviewed together because they’re actually a single double CD set; only, “After rainfall”‘s tapes went missing for a while, then were luckily retrieved, this accident causing a separate release of the two records. First of all, I love the artwork of any Ora record (usually by Darren Tate and Andrew Chalk, with contribution from various participants). When I insert one of their CDs in my player, I never have exact expectations: Ora’s projects keep their own distinct aura in a sort of a “sacred ritual” made with sound treatment and vapours of field recordings. For instance, I just LOVE “Darkness”, a piece starting with water drops and a cat meowing, then leaving place to creaking, squealing and percussives, the whole bathed in long reverberation. Silence and drone remain the basic source at the core of Tate and Potter’s imagination, although the couple employs more than a “distraction” to capture your relaxing senses: could be a storm of electronic bleeping pulses, like in the wonderful “The slope” in “After rainfall”, or real crickets sampled and hold in a loop. Then, a few surprises get you by the throat; case in point, you’d never expect the free blowing by Lol Coxhill in “Things shall fall” (on “Final”), nevertheless one instantly gets used to it, wondering what will come next. Needless to say, the “lux/umbrae” game that Ora play with their low, long-held drones and subterranean moans are always the cream in the overall mix. Just listen to the “After rainfall” track and be washed away in a blissful nirvana. You can bet your house that, whatever they choose to put out, Darren and Colin will never give the listener nothing less than high artistic values.

ORA – Morgendämmerung (Die Stadt)

This beautiful EP reissues two rare tracks from Ora’s “New movements in G” CDR release. “The sun sheds a golden tear” sees Darren Tate and Colin Potter (with Daisuke Suzuki and Lol Coxhill) preparing an atmospheric celebration of time suspension, where rainfalls and thunder are backed up by single percussive touches and the uncomprehensible chattering of what sounds like a dolphin conversation in a radio broadcast. “The impregnable” – by Tate and Potter only – is a more introverted soundscape, nearer to Monos’ territories, where even in solitude one can foresee those kinds of luminescences that are the very environmental isolation most people are afraid of, but that would certainly preserve their sanity of mind. These two compositions confirm the high degree of respectability of these electroacoustic painters; the overall quality of the release is also enhanced by a gorgeous cover artwork by Tate himself and Helen Potter.

ORCHESTRAMAXFIELDPARRISH – The silent breath of emptiness (Faith Strange)

One realizes that things have to be hurried up when opening a packet and reading “Merry Christmas, Massimo” on the accompanying card – in June. But it’s not too late to invite you to discover another participant to the “celestial guitars” contest: Mike Fazio from New York, whose work has been quietly progressing since the 80s under various monikers and through a lot of situations (including the “college/indie dark folk outfit” Life With The Lions). This is my first encounter with his ideas, most definitely a pleasurable occasion. Orchestramaxfieldparrish is a solo project dating from 1999, this music originally conceived for “an exhibition of local area artists that never came to be”. A soundscape of solitary improvised guitar captured in a single take yet, on record, divided in four parts plus a fifth containing a “reconstruction” of the others. Those who are interested in Robert Fripp’s most recent outings or in Aidan Baker’s stratified trips – and also people who remember “Hypnotics” by Suso Saiz well – will surely appreciate this CD very much, especially because Fazio doesn’t allow the effects to be too overtly recognizable. The sound waves remain suspended mid-air, at times menacing, elsewhere with a higher degree of serenity, the effect on the psyche always interesting. The game of superimposed resonances and vibrating frequencies is played with experience, sudden openings and layered hues at the basis of a sonic palette that for once won’t make us drown in “been there done that” syrups. The cover design is certainly notable. A nice Christmas present for the summer.

ORGANUM – Flak/Wietzendorf (Die Stadt)

David Jackman’s love for peculiar record formats is well known and this 10-inch vinyl contains two of his best recent pieces. “Flak” is a powerful explosion of droning metals wrapped by an electric mantra, continuing – in a sense – on the same coordinates of “Birds’ wings were glued to their bodies” on the same label. “Wietzendorf” is an urban audio polaroid complete with motors and birds, a cross between “Vacant lights” (minus the metals) and Monos. Unmissable stuff for the ones who know.

ORGANUM – Vacant lights/Rara avis (Die Stadt)

At long last, one of the best albums by David Jackman gets a proper reissue. “Vacant lights”, 32 minutes of metallic sounds and flutes recorded in a backyard with a gorgeous, almost consonant traffic background, is THE record that probably elevated these kinds of aural documents to a new form of art; the new version is magnificently remastered and – if you listen to it at a good level – all your house will resonate with this powerful urban landscape: instead of hurting tranquillity, this noise cycle enhances it. Even if it was recorded in 1986, this is ageless stuff and can’t be missed, especially because it comes with an additional CD containing five old Organum tracks, previously reeased in limited 7 inches – or never released at all. “Iuel” and “Wolf”, great pieces on their own merit, have been enriched by Jim O’Rourke and Christoph Heemann; “Obon” is a flute/drone marvel engineered by O’Rourke and Robert Hampson. “Hibakusha” is classic Organum, where metal rubbing and flutes again bear the stygmates of Father Time. Finally, “Rara avis” is another O’Rourke mix of recordings made in 1990/91 and may well be the best moment of the whole set: a menacing growl rumbles down under, metals scrape all around; body and sound become one.

ORGANUM – Sanctus (Robot)

The return of David Jackman is a concise, static four-movement invocation dedicated to the memory of Luise Viktoria Erwine Monica Long. “Sanctus” comprises four repetitions of the same drone with slight variations in the mix, with about a minute of complete silence separating each track, like a preparation to crescent states of illumination for the spirit. Building everything on a motionless suspended church organ chord strengthened by an impressive regular pulse of a sub-low frequency, Organum places sparse touches of piano and bells seemingly representing short awakenings from the silent torment of sorrow. We are surrounded by an almost immobile mass of sound, a little less intense and harsh when matched with Jackman’s famous cathedrals of “consonant noise” but equally riveting and nerve-pleasing. It’s an opus that sustains comparisons with Charlemagne Palestine’s studies of resonating oscillators even if sounding unquestionably “Organum” and, as such, it’s an absolutely indispensable addition.

ORGANUM – Amen (Die Stadt)

Many people find extreme difficulty in accepting a change in style when they’ve grown used to some kind of “pleasure”; therefore, reading assorted idiocies about Organum’s new course didn’t surprise me at all. Yet, evolution claims its casualties and, luckily, David Jackman takes no prisoners. If the resulting music stays at this emotional level, I wonder why I should complain. “Amen” is the second chapter in Jackman’s recent history, in which he turned his attention to structures and orchestrations that go a long way from the fiery abrasions and monstrous drones of his well known masterpieces. Like in the previous “Sanctus”, the score of “Amen” is pretty minimal – I think I spotted church organ, piano, bells, gong and voices in there – but nevertheless we’re in presence of a step forward. Jackman deploys the elements one after another, setting the stage for different chords that, in their adjacence, create a mesmerizing sense of displacement. In particular, the “Amen” chant against the powerful sub-bass resonance and the medium register of the organ is the piece’s most striking feature, especially when this state of trance is ruptured by huge hammerings of the piano’s low notes in unison with bells. This acts as an indicator of a harmonic shift, besides igniting impressive pulses and buried moans. As it often happens with Organum, the record comprises two versions of the same piece in slightly different mixes. It just adds to a great sense of gratification, which gets amplified by raising the volume level until we hear the apocalypse knocking at our door.

ORGANUM – Omega (Die Stadt)

On the correctness of information, part ∞. In a pretty famous somewhere, the (negative) review of “Amen” – second chapter in a fabulous triptych – was closed with the announcement that the final episode of the trilogy had been cancelled due to the request of David Jackman, somehow implying that he wasn’t satisfied with the results. Sure enough here it is: similar orchestration (minus the choir), slightly different harmonic changes. In a nutshell, amazing music. Now, either the composer had a change of mind (which, after reading his coherent explanations to Kevin Spencer on the official website, would not seem the case) or, as usual, certain reviewers keep “listening” to albums while vacuum-cleaning the house or frying eggs, sticking whatever bullshit heard or figured out on their write-ups. It is by now acknowledged that most “experts” are puzzled by Organum’s last three CDs (“Sanctus”, “Amen” and “Omega”), essentially in virtue of the absence of “noise”. That’s right, for someone Jackman “went new age” (hey, this outing features a tamboura if my ears are working. Should I light an incense stick?) or turned into a pale imitation of his old self. Just wondering who’s really approaching this stuff in the correct situation, how many incompetent “analysts” destroy the breathtaking power of these drones by wearing headphones (Organum on iPod? Somebody save me…) or playing the CD in a two-by-two room cluttered with objects in front of the speakers. Let me stress this once and for all: if one can’t afford to listen to this or other similar offerings in appropriate psychophysical condition and within a proper setting, there’s no authority to write about the music in question. Yet if an album like this – fruit of a vision that took Jackman years to fully detail, furnishing the well-rehearsed listener with a head-spinning sense of introspective evolution – still leaves indifferent or even provokes irony, then the problem resides elsewhere, namely in the head of the receiver. These works can be considered at the same level of the best “historic” droning reiterations (I am still willing to bet that Charlemagne Palestine’s lovers will enjoy these three CDs, despite the temperamental distance between the entities – but are they really so distant?) and, under any circumstance, the whole trilogy is an absolute must. Raise the volume, polish the antennae, enter the zone. If your being lacks this ability, no worry: running on materialistic fumes camouflaged by bombastic phraseology, holy commonplaces and a totally undeserved role – thanks to which false truths are fed to superficial participants – is certainly more acceptable in everyday’s life.

ORGANUM / Z’EV – Tinnitus Vu (Touch)

David Jackman and Z’EV let us imagine what will be the outcome of an eventual longer collaboration in these intense 16 minutes which I truly hope are just an introduction to future opuses. A piano chord repeating itself every once in a while reverberates for long, surrounded by introspective electronics and a soundtrack of storming black energy caught from percussive warblings and wind channeling through obscure tunnels. Music that needs just a few fingerprints to be recognized as masterful, “Tinnitus Vu” is a brief manifestation of two never too lauded road openers, whose personal ear sacrifices have brought us many records to be jealous of.

ORGANUM / Z’EV – Tocsin -6 thru +2 (Die Stadt)

Finally, what I already started craving after the short Touch appetizer (“Tinnitus Vu”) has become reality. The collaboration between David Jackman and Z’EV is an intriguing one; the percussionist’s signature tracks – that he does not copyright anyway – move along coordinates of full-metal solicitations, dronescape immersions among squealing high frequencies, repeating piano figures spiralling onto themselves in a “Palestine-meets-Conrad” confluence of waters. Strangely enough, they sound more Organum-like than Jackman’s tracks themselves. Instead, Dave puts his name on the final two pieces; first, he surprises us with a melancholic piano improvisation, underlined by outside world noises sounding like they’ve been tuned to the music and thus channeled into the final mix: a real touch of magic in a fantastic demonstration of top class artistry. The final track is the cherry on a fabulous pie; here, Jackman’s piano work is surrounded by Z’EV’s rumbling tangential waves, transforming the solitary path of these harmonic repetitions into fading lights and hesitant steps to transcendental capsules of forgotten past ages.

ORIGAMI MINIMALISTIKA – X12 (Tibprod)

Jan-M. Iversen really used a “minimal” approach for this release, which is pretty spartan both in sound and cover artwork. 20 minutes of a computer’s inner circuits noise were treated and processed, forming a multilayer kind of audio trip to various realms of static and electronic matters. In certain moments everything seems like the result of the degradation of organic materials; on another hand, holding fixed frequencies is one of Iversen’s preferred techniques. Between long reflections and strange disintegrating distortions, the best moments come when sound refraction throws a faint light of pensive digital restraint, which is highly appreciable amidst the acid abrasions of the rest of the disc.

ORIGAMI SUBTROPIKA – Ultimatum (The Locus of Assemblage)

This 3-inch CD is made of two tracks that surely will be appreciated by lovers of white noise/data files music a la Cornucopia – in fact the Origami project was conceived by Jorge Castro, who’s half of the above duo. During “Ultimatum” – a cascade of hissing frequencies, electrostatic emissions and feedback with touches of impressive deep resonances – I was also reminded of John Duncan’s works like “The crackling”: what you hear is pretty associable to particles in ultra-speedy activity. In its cold austerity, this is a rewarding listening and among the best of Locus releases.

JIM O’ROURKE – Jim:Computer:Hotel (Olof Bright)

This is a limited edition of 100 copies that was released in 2000. I came across this album just recently and I immediately felt that it needed a review, also because I didn’t find one on the web – therefore off I go. The proverbial eclecticism shown by O’Rourke throughout his artistic path finds another confirmation in this rendezvous of laptop fantasies, subtitled “Chicago – Ystad”, which precedes his Mego album “I’m happy and I’m singing and a 1,2,3,4″ and is its quite obvious term of comparison as far as the musical content is concerned. This Spartan-looking thing contains five nameless track, length varying from 24 seconds to the 26 minutes of the fascinating No.3, which instantly evokes sonic ghosts of Stephen Scott’s bowed piano elegies submerged by a liquescent Reichian harmonic construction, with cyber-feedback and knife-blade-cold resonances keeping our eyes wide open. Elsewhere, the Chicagoan privileges outspoken chains of apparently random events (No.2) or extremely harsh saturations that leave no breathing space at all (No.5). The chewed piano opening the dances involuntarily recalls Randy Newman’s initial chords in “Song for the dead” (on “Trouble in paradise” – a must, ladies and gentlemen) then flow into a controlled marasmus which shows O’Rourke’s peculiar outlook on (presumably) aleatory occurrences. Far from eliciting monumental emotions, this stuff is nevertheless thought-provoking and impressively hard-hitting. If you surf attentively enough, copies can still be grabbed around the world. (UPDATE 9/2007: Olof Bright’s website, inactive at the time of the review, has this item for sale).

JIM O’ROURKE – I’m happy and I’m singing and a 1,2,3,4 (Mego)

This is the best record Jim has released since “Terminal pharmacy”; yes, I also liked the Fahey influences in “Bad timing”, I loved “Happy days” and its hurdy-gurdy. But this is another story: three stunningly beautiful live tracks, starting with a minimal piece sounding like the best Rileyan trance transported 40 years in the future – lots of interweaving patterns leaving you speechless. The second piece is a cross between Mike Ratledge’s parts on Soft Machine masterpieces and an electroacoustic mixture of the highest conceivable level; the third and final chapter is a reworking of sampled strings in a slowly burning candle light and I’m brought back to the O’Rourke I love most, the man who presented us with “Tamper” and “Disengage”. And what a great title for a “serious” CD.

JIM O’ROURKE – Two organs (Three Poplars)

Let’s face it: even if nowadays he transforms everything he touches into gold, Jim O’Rourke’s real mastery is best lodged in his “youth music”. Case in point is this beautiful record, containing two pieces from the early nineties so deeply affecting and full of significance, one can instantly put them in the upper echelon of contemporary drone compositions. “Two organs” is monolithic, hypnotic and mesmerizing in its extremely serious appearance: it unfolds slowly, resonates through the whole being and, right when you’ve got used to that chordal chemistry, it leaves you numb flying out of the window. “Two more organs” is played in the upper register, privileging high frequency beatings and a sense of undefinable harmony; it’s a little bit unquiet, forcing the listener to concentrate rather than abandoning to himself. Both tracks certainly pay a respectful homage to Charlemagne Palestine’s works on synth oscillators but there are moments – side one in particular – when the stillness of the sound waves could strike as the progenitor of some of Mirror’s astonishing parts. When you talk about art at this level, these resemblances are not only normal but utterly desirable.

FABIO ORSI – Birds are smart, but they cannot speak (The Locus Of)

This 17-minute composition, which comes on a 3-inch CD from a label whose output I had been missing for a while, presents a few basic similarities that prevent the music to be described as “groundbreaking”, yet at the same time define its elegance and, dare I say, beauty. Orsi starts with something that sounds like muffled shortwave à la Asher, then introduces a dose of semi-Basinskian loops (which, halfway through, are contrasted by a clean guitar timbre that distracts from the concentration quite a bit but luckily doesn’t last too much), the whole finally morphing into a heartwarming repetitive figure, a looped arpeggio that goes close to ripping a page off Aidan Baker’s book but also reminds me of Pepe Maina (an Italian loner that decades ago released a splendid first album, “Il canto dell’arpa e del flauto”, then went straight to a world of forgettable self-releases). Field recordings and water are used sparingly. I can’t actually say more than this: the piece is very pleasing despite not being an innovating statement; and let’s be thankful that birds cannot speak, otherwise they wouldn’t be smarter (and much more appreciated here) than humans.

(OS) – What those ingredients are (Sijis)

I’ve always been fascinated by audio documentaries made with life sounds, both from urban agglomerates and country; Steve Polta, a San Francisco film maker, collected hours of environmental materials that are now finely represented on this highly appreciable release. I could not put it better than Sijis’ press notes: “The real world fights to break through and be heard”. That’s exactly what this music is: engines, operators’ voices, drones coming from the bay, distant piano notes upon the heavy traffic rumble. Steps in the mud, clicks, bumps. Some degree of menace in siren-like sounds. The immensurability of everyday life’s enormous flux of energies – being them good or evil, I’ll let you decide – is finally defined thanks to cheap microphones, cassettes and a well developed talent: the final track, “BART fr East Bay”, is a low-budget masterpiece of “musique-concrete minimalism”.

°SONE – Passerelle (And/OAR)

This disc presents the aural memories of a site-specific sound installation prepared by French soundscapers Yannick Dauby, Christophe Havard and Hughes Germain at Passerelle, Brest (France). The artists obtained what’s heard on the CD exclusively from the channeling of the sounds coming from within the walls of the building that contained the construction, capturing them via big transducers and diffusing the result through the main exhibition space. A strange, flowery description of the mechanical means utilized is available at the label’s website; it’s not completely comprehensible, but sufficient to understand how a complex system of resonators was fundamental in setting the above mentioned walls as the core of a design where the harmonic qualities of the inherent vibration are exalted and enhanced. The musical value of this material is on a par with the best offers in the genre and – unquestionably – with the consistency of And/OAR’s output. Ominous echoes and dull drones are easily the most engrossing feature of the disc, their emergence even more enigmatic in the large hall’s environment which the masterful recording represents with excellent fidelity. Purring emissions arise from nowhere, extemporaneous presences scarred by rare metallic clangors whose staying power is minimal, soon swallowed by an overall muffled hush that nevertheless contains germs of vital activity. Towards the conclusion we perceive the presence of visitors, the album ending nicely with a baby’s stuttering voice amidst the sonic ghosts. One loves to believe that it’s an expression of wonder, and that this kind of experience will be burned in the infant’s brain forever.

OSSO EXÓTICO + Z’EV – Osso Exótico + Z’EV (Crouton)

Great collaborative piece between two historic entities, the ever-morphing Portuguese collective – here represented by André and David Maranha plus Patricia Machás – and the only percussionist (I believe) who, among many partnerships, has played with both nuclear master Glenn Branca and dancer Simone Forti. The balance of the album is evidently shifted towards the hypnotic dimension of the music: it’s been years now that Z’EV moves frequently within structures that don’t really belong to that freeform way of hitting metals which had become a trademark in the past, privileging “composed” settings where his extended technical approaches work wonders even if a little restricted. Those who are more familiar with Maranha’s crackling and howling organ will find this CD suitable to their taste, yet the special ritualistic concoction to which the players gave birth in this occasion reminded me most of all of John Cale’s triptych on Table Of The Elements: distortion and trance, percussive groove, a sense of potentially explosive tension that, on the contrary, leaves room to a total abandon of defensive postures. No gnashing teeth, no stricken nerves, just a few touches of feedback, whispers of wooden flute, some bouncing mallet, rarefied gong waves. Z’EV’s instrumentation appears somehow filtered, although we’re told that no processing is involved. Mystery. Channels are finally wide open, the quartet reached its goal: a transcendental improvisation that nevertheless sounds as fascinatingly skeletal as a grim harvester who comes creeping, knocking at the door when least expected, delivering the ones who presumed to be enlightened from that illusion.

JOHN OSWALD – Aparanthesi (Empreintes DIGITALes)

It’s useful thinking about the extreme contrasts in John Oswald’s output. Famous for his “Plunderphonics”, a multidimensional musical-genre kind of studio schizophrenia; concretely active as a sax improviser in various new music settings. Yet in “Aparanthesi” the Canadian artist stretches forms, lights and dynamics out of a single pitch, forcing ears to be constantly in full-receptivity mode and tuning any event to that “big note”: a piano chord, a thunderstorm, frequencies that bats would hear better than humans. This concept is fully described and discussed by the composer in the CD booklet, which I encourage you to read carefully; what remains to be said is that this is music at the highest depth and introspection levels: its “one” note is at the same time a signal, a promise, a mirror room, an expectation, a blood pulse, those small signs our body transmits at night when silence surrounding us becomes unbearable. Listening to this record is like watching the sun complete its cycle through the day: firm-looking, it actually moves and radiates incessantly and – before disappearing under the horizon – it reminds you another day has passed by and you’re still another little point in that universe you thought you were the centre of. A major milestone in acousmatics history, this work confirms there’s no need to talk too much to get to the point. Yes – you need SILENCE to listen to “Aparanthesi”.

HANS OTTE – Orient:Occident – Minimum:Maximum (Pogus)

Hans Otte, besides being a renowned pianist and composer, was the director of music department at Radio Bremen from 1959 to 1984. His music is highly individual, incomparable to anything else, as clearly showed by the two pieces contained in this CD. “Orient:Occident” was born as a simultaneous concert in 1973 in Stockholm and Bremen; tapes of text-sound are layered with millimetric precision, constituting a dramatically theatrical background to cyclical repetitive burst of organ arpeggios whose mechanical dissonance becomes a perfect contrasting force to foreign idioms, syllabications, long sighs and breaths. This version sustains its 41+ minutes well, even if I would love being able to experience the music together with the gestural/pictorial world to which it is linked. “Minimum:Maximum” is a shorter reflection for tape, oboe and clarinet; slow, sad woodwind melodies move calmly over a quick sequence which implies a minor chord. Its nice flavour comes as a bit of a relief after the serious intensity of the longer track but it obviously does not equal “Orient:Occident”‘s introspective power.

OUT OF CONTEXT – Plays Wenomadmen by Theater Grottesco (High Mayhem)

Theater Grottesco is a leading performance ensemble (indeed I had never met them before) of which I found the following description on the web: “This troupe combines the best of comedy, drama, and dance in its original productions performed each spring and summer in a renovated space at the Center for Contemporary Arts” (in Santa Fe, New Mexico). Out Of Context is instead a multi-instrumental electroacoustic chamber group of eleven players led by J.A.Deane (who I remember as a collaborator of Jon Hassell among the others) active for many years in the field of spontaneous conduction and composition à la Butch Morris. This soundtrack is divided into eleven movements whose length ranges from one and a half minute to almost fifteen. Although the music contains a good degree of improvisation, it sounds pretty much correlated to a series of (ambiguous) tonal centres while also being characterized by a state of perennial ebulliency that nourishes its very movement. At various times, one can detect vague similarities with Stravinsky and Art Zoyd; yet we notice a strong spiritual element, highlighted in the most psychologically charged sections (bassoon player Sam Rhodes’ evocative throat singing comes to mind). The spontaneous logical consecutio of the parts allows them to flow in different streams and processes of sound and “vision”, yet the whole remains on a level of “acceptable difficulty” even in the most interlocutory moments. A very interesting, quite difficult to describe record that should appeal to multimedia art aficionados.

OUTPOST – Time-based landscapes (Transacoustic Research)

The alien soundtracks created by Outpost allure and seduce with a glacial possession of your attention. Following the direction of footsteps left by radical laptop and “regular” electronica composers, Nikolaus Gansterer, Mathias Meinharter, Jörg Piringer and Ernst Reitermaier get you intoxicated and disoriented, throwing sonic acuminate darts without thinking for a moment about aesthetical judgement. Complex microcosms of multi-layered transmissions and a small dose of abstractness give birth to several relentless moments of extreme beauty, right there when you less expect it. “Time-based landscapes” is certainly full of schizophrenic pressure that distances it from similarly conceived materials; get well acquainted with its phenomena and you’ll be in for a lot of strange surprises.

OVERDOSE KUNST – Was ist Overdose Kunst (Zhelezobeton)

A Japanese duo active since 2001, Overdose Kunst identify their work as “schizopoetry”. In my ears, that results in an appealing enough merging of semi-detuned guitars, drunk-ish voices singing in inexplicable idioms and fertilized fields of reasonably unsullied imagination, spelled out by pretty undersized “songs” that at worst sound a little raw and, in the most interesting sections, make good use of the knobs of a digital delay, rendering the accelerando and rallentando representative of those tracks a feverish trip through several moments of perplexing pleasure. The initiation to this music comes easy – there’s actually nothing truly innovative, including the employment of backward vocals – but everything remains well isolated both from mawkish new folk and radical-yet-obtuse experimentation. The catchword here might be “misshapen”. Even the alleged regularities appear as slanted, yet the feel is not one of excoriation. In the right conditions, an intriguing company.

OVO LACTO – Maintaining radio silence (Evelyn)

This is an analogue sounding project by Welsh musician Richard Atkins. In less than half an hour, Ovo Lacto goes from disturbed post-Eno ambient music to otherwordly interferences from second rate sci-fi movie soundtracks, again to crunching distortions and rhythmical abuses. As in many Evelyn releases, one appreciates the total freedom of these artists from overproduced commonplaces, thereby managing to digest even the less ear-pleasing pieces. That’s not to say there’s shortage of charming sounds: the delicate, intriguing “Internal step” opening this CD is alone worth the ticket price.

PACIFIC 231 & VOX POPULI! – Cthulhu revisitation (Monochrome Vision)

Given that we all know what area Monochrome Vision moves around by now, and that I was not that familiar with the work of Pierre Jolivet (aka Pacific 231) and very scarcely with Axel Kyrou’s Vox Populi!, the curiosity for this CD was tangible. Let me tell you that it is not one of the tops of the Russian label, although it has its moments. The temporal collocation is, once again, the 80s – age in which the tape was a main method for exchanging ideas and concepts, but also the means for collages that, heard today, range from the intriguing to the ridiculous, frequently standing halfway through these opposite poles. The good resides in the musicians’ will of finding new ways to communicate their mental picture, which results in music that often winks to Nurse With Wound-related atmospheres: manipulation of the sources and arpeggios of acoustic guitars can easily live together with female vocals of folk-ish derivation. The bad is the loathsomeness of certain sounds: experimental or not, there were occasions in which this listener’s stomach literally gurgled. The audio quality is not extraordinary, thus listening from speakers at moderate volume for the best effect is strongly advised: a strange brew of enthusiastic naivety and captivating unusual vibrations is going to show up in a few seconds, and you might be willing to forgive those ejaculations of lesser inspiration.

GABRIEL PAIUK – Res extensa (Sedimental)

Explaining why this album is so beautiful is not an easy task. Maybe we should simply quote Paiuk’s definition of “perceptive skin” as the “great variety of articulations and nuances nurturing our feeling and understanding of the world”. Indeed I lost count of the unbelievably numerous instances when – especially as a kid – I was captured by the sudden realization of the presence of sounds which elicited immediate emotional reactions. A neighbour practicing a sad song on his violin. The rolling prayer of a faraway train at night during my summer holidays (I can still smell the pines). A motor plane passing every afternoon at the same hour, its drone sounding like a lament from purgatory. The distant industrial roar of granite and marble cutting factories in my parents’ hometown. Although “Res extensa” starts with (and often employs) earth loop hum, its complexion is mostly made of those noises, “errors” and “heard musics” that always caress our solitudes, letting us marvel at the immense perspectives offered by a sound world which, even in these insensitive slapdash times, never ceases to amaze the ones who still try to postpone their succumbing to the uselessness of most everything.

GABRIEL PAIUK / JASON KAHN – Breathings (Cut)

Recorded in a single afternoon at Paiuk’s house, “Breathings” is a negation of protection, in that it brings an impression of apprehensive immediacy which often borders on a feeling of “soft danger”. Although Kahn is credited with “computer” only, I’d swear I hear his subtle cymbal caress in more than one section. This, in addition to the most intense, penetrating frequencies that a human ear can decode, flatters Paiuk’s piano textures, which come under the guise of “regular” chords, percussive spirits and disassembled obstructions, revealing a conceptual affinity with a post-Feldman minimal aesthetic which is all the more fruitful when decorated by the atypical embellishments coming from Kahn’s resourceful bag of laptop creativity. The nine tracks are all parts of a coherent design where ear stimulation is just one of the artistic factors, together with many different prototypes of meticulous application and sensitive intelligence. Thus, we’re not really quivering from emotional intensity when approaching this music, yet witness a gradual shift of attention from the single detail to the complexity of the whole soundscape, and our sense of orientation benefits a lot from this.

IVAN PALACKY & VJ VERA LUKASOVA aka CARPET CURTAINS – S/T (Errant Bodies)

A delightful mixture of reductionist sonic crumbles and live video manipulations, this DVD showcases the talents of two Czech artists whose cross-pollination of genres is the guarantee of excellent developments in a spartan – but very effective – multimedia approach to composed and improvised materials. While Palacky generates microsounds from dictaphones, guitars, a knitting machine and contact microphones, he seems to look for disguised meanings in simple forms of life; long moments of near-silence are carefully yet unpredictably alternated with a course of modified voices, humming tranquillities and prepared strings. These small aural pleasures constitute a gorgeous soundtrack to Filip Cenek’s aesthetic of contraction and expansion of photographs and still pictures; both in polychromatic combinations or black and white entrancing sequences, VJ Lukasova fights a silent battle against the expected, his successions of images as a transliteration of a REM state for our too relaxed retinas.

DAVID PAPAPOSTOLOU – One and two (Self Release)

In about 20 minutes David Papapostolou, a French musician living in Bristol, shows good improvisational and assembling skills over the course of three tracks in which he manipulates guitar, cello and soprano saxophone with the kind of extended techniques one could expect from an artist working in the “Creative Sources zone” of EAI. It’s a honest, modest record that, besides the instruments, capitalizes on a background of urban environmental sounds, especially noticeable in the solo guitar track which is also the disc’s best. Papapostolou is also interested in acknowledging the effects of educated feedback and small percussive gestures in pretty tranquil settings; the gentle whispers, subdued frictions and wheezes he conjures up from cello and sax are like phantom voices that recount the unadulterated beauty of the acoustic properties of a “normal” source when it’s carefully investigated in its minute components. Nothing really unheard before, but very well done and worthy of several concentrated attempts.

EVAN PARKER – The topography of the lungs (Psi)

After Evan Parker’s famous split with Derek Bailey in 1987, this fundamental piece of history of improvised music had never been reissued. Now that Bailey has left the building, “The topography of the lungs” resurfaces, becoming a sort of hommage to the deceased partner. Contrarily to what you will read on several modernist reviews, the trio of Parker, Bailey and Han Bennink sounds fresh, nice and good today as in 1970; if you consider the disc as a whole, including the two extra tracks added to the remastered vinyl version – the best available source in absence of the master tapes – this agglomerate of burning coals and fiendish disobedience is still a heavy-punching statement of intents by three colleagues whose insights were already top-notch 36 years ago. Predating his trademark non-stop spiralling style, Parker interchanges crumbles of visions with disfigured lyricism (check the final minutes of “Dog meat” to get an idea), his nervous persistence the turning point for raw eruptions to become mature indications of every available way for the music to evolve. Bailey’s electric guerilla impresses me more here than in recent times, volume swells and tumultuous phrases often comparable with the increasing and diminishing intensity of light bulbs during a storm, depending on how near the lightning strikes. Bennink has always been animated by a never-expiring battery of energetic fantasy, translating nerve-twitching fusillades and indiscreet intrusions into the compulsive beauty of extreme imagination, the land where everything appears reversed but also the place to which everybody aspires, usually without having the means to even try. Therefore, let’s leave mental contortions to those blasé cognoscenti who were into Cure and Talking Heads until the day before yesterday, then discovered how to make a living out of new music. Me, I’m going to push the “play” button for the nth time; although this record is still several years younger than me, I just shut up and learn from artists like these.

EVAN PARKER – Hook, drift & shuffle (Psi)

Through its constant effort to rescue unheard gems from the past and reissue quality recordings that somehow were overlooked or even forgotten, Evan Parker’s Psi has become one of the most significant labels when we need to reassure ourselves that good, inquisitive music can even run the risk of not being put into the eternal grave of oblivion. Recorded at the Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels in 1983 (a time in which Depeche Mode, Sade and Nik Kershaw were all the rage in Europe, just to give you an idea about the meaning of “courage”), these three improvisations were played by a stellar lineup including Parker on tenor and soprano sax, George Lewis on trombone and “amplified modifying devices”, Barry Guy on double bass and electronics, Paul Lytton on percussion. The art of improvising should ideally possess an ever-morphing shape and avoid rules at any cost, but we all know that this is often forgotten in favour of easier paths, patterns and formulas. The 34-minute “Drift”, besides being the longest track, demonstrates that there is indeed a way to drive blindfolded even in the streets where traffic is impossible to avoid, transforming the dangers of “not knowing in advance” into a kind of authoritative expression nourished by its very purity. The instrumental modifications applied by Lewis and Guy attribute a crazed vocal quality to several portions of their phrasing, meshing with Parker’s concentrated outbreaks and meandering tweets’n’twirls and Lytton’s conscious subdivision of a time that’s never been so malleable, the overall outcome a symphony of accumulations and subtractions – bathed in knowledgeable ante litteram electronica – that could leave regular jazz fans penniless. “Shuffle” will rearrange your hair’s features if you ever make an attempt to understand what’s going on, before being run over by intermittent gurgles, intelligent fanfaronades and caustic lyricism, often coming all at once to save your memory from fossilization. “Hook” alternates wooden chickens, melodic entombment, scattered nervousness and torsion-full straightforwardness in six minutes that complete an unquestionably important album, proof of the altitudes which music can be launched to when the involved minds are 100% functional.

EVAN PARKER – Conic sections (Psi)

Recorded, as per Evan Parker’s words, “on impulse” in 1993 and dedicated to the memory of Kunio Nakamura, “Conic sections” could be the perfect starting point for the neophyte if a solo album for soprano sax had to be considered as such. It is indeed one of Parker’s best releases, period. The five tracks are all outstanding in detail and instant vision, figurations and fantasies chiselled by the typical resourceful inventiveness – often bordering on sheer fury – that the English master shows whenever featured in a private examination of the meanders of consequentiality. The uncharacteristic acoustics of the recording studio donate a strange sense of timbral morphing, the reed resounding at times as a cello if one gets lost in the hurricane of upper partials and quick turns generated by the “convoluted minimalism” that this music actually represents. “It seemed as though the room itself had something in mind too”, says the saxophonist, and there’s no doubt that the pair works wonders on our lust for substantiality. These spirals of geniality are permeated with attitude and fluency at once, the listener receiving their gifts like unexpected twists in an otherwise humdrum life. Parker doesn’t know the meaning of “happy medium”, a continuous flux of impressive creativeness at the basis of an artistic route that I can’t but define as admirable, in which this record constitutes yet another essential landmark.

EVAN PARKER OCTET – Crossing the river (Psi)

“Close listening and point to point interaction” is how Parker describes this series of intense exchanges between eight improvising grey eminences. Just by considering the excellence of the music produced, one could easily hide behind a cycle of superlatives and end the review right after; yet, some of the more concealed mechanics at work in this octet – often fragmenting into smaller units depending on the piece – are worth of scrutiny. The strings (Philipp Wachsmann, Marcio Mattos, John Edwards and John Russell) relate to Agusti’ Fernandez’s piano in unbelievable quasi-Schönbergian pictures of pre-constriction and final liberation. Flute and clarinet (Neil Metcalfe and John Rangecroft) capture glimpses of impressionistic shimmer while depicting forms of an advanced perceptive intelligence. Curiously enough, it’s Parker’s tenor which seems to be a little less on the forefront than usual, but this looks like a definite choice by the master of circular endlessness. The longer collective improvisations remain completely intelligible, highlighting a methodology of sound making that only players at this technical level can aspire to.

EVAN PARKER / GEORGE LEWIS – From saxophone & trombone (Psi)

Reissue of a vinyl edition released in 1980, this recording shows the perfect technique, the unalterated artistic quest and – needless to say – the sparkling results obtained by the pairing of new music icons Parker and Lewis. At the beginning there’s a mutual respect between the two players, like in the first round of a boxing match when the fighters study each other. Then, as time goes by, the timbral canvas gets splashed with all sorts of droplets: unisons, free-ranging counterpoints, staccatos and ostinatos, wrestling and caressing; quite often one struggles to guess who’s playing what. After these 43-plus minutes, what I’ve listened to is basically an enhancement of the space around the players, even in the most expositive sections; Evan and George never grow us tired of listening and learning, because listening and learning is all you must do with records like this.

EVAN PARKER / PAUL LYTTON – Collective calls (Psi)

Recorded in 1972 in a loft near London Bridge, “Collective calls” is a mixture of animal and industrial vibration. Generated on sax and all sorts of percussion, it’s music requiring maximum attention in order to be fully understood, as the multiphonics and squealing notes by Evan and the rumbling metals and tumbling drumming of Paul force the mind to an altered state of increased perception. There’s a particular feeling about some of the tracks – “Some mother blues” or “Shaker” come to mind – looking like a conjunction of freedom and request for help, something similar to a desperate but at the same time liberating cry for attention. There is no blue sky to contemplate here, just the necessity of revealing what’s really behind the façade. Another example of snapshot taken in the dark side of the…guts.

EVAN PARKER / PAUL LYTTON – At the Unity Theatre (Psi)

This is a live recording from 1975 finally finding its way onto digital format. Introduced by a super-speedy drum roll (by Parker, no less) these duets show both musicians with absolutely no shame of anything, their sound completely naked and soaked in an animal-like fierce demeanour. Evan Parker’s tenor is quite often on the verge of a bursting out, his soprano’ s piercing like we always would expect from him. Even in 1975 his concentration was scary to say the least, his squealing notes and fabulous ostinatos never giving the listener a cold shoulder. On his side, Lytton is much more a craftman than a percussionist; he meshes timbres so well, at one point I almost got confused exchanging a thunder outside my house with one of his colourful underlining of his artistic cohabitant. Paul never finds himself in a rut, instead suggesting new ways of listening even to the ones used to smoother sailing.

EVAN PARKER / BARRY GUY / PAUL LYTTON – At Les Instants Chavirés (Psi)

This is what should be called “Free”. These three men have their own way of joining their respective forces and instrumental personalities; what they play is the meeting of small life particles, something bringing beauty and stridency, lyrical phrasing and gasping noise at the very same split second. Guy is maybe the one who orientates this trio’s acoustic compass towards an undefined arriving point, trying his best to chain Parker’s monstrous whirlwind voice on tenor and soprano saxes and riding it, at the same time controlling his own beast with magnificent arco techniques and his usual masterful plucking; all the while, Paul Lytton transforms the meaning of percussion, releasing a torrent of debris and muddy water, once in a while revealing a scintillating bunch of golden coins hidden under a big stone. Challenging stuff for real “connoisseurs”; Parker’s label keeps us delighted and joyous.

EVAN PARKER / ALEX VON SCHLIPPENBACH / PAUL LYTTON – America 2003 (Psi)

This is a double CD documenting two U.S. concerts that Parker, Schlippenbach and Lytton played in New Orleans and Seattle in 2003. In about two hours of mordacious improvisation the trio shows feverish passion and burning sidelights, their experienced acumen routing that ugly enemy called boredom. In this particular occasion, Parker’s phrasing leaves a little more room for our thought, even if his trademark sea-foam spirals of non-stop blowing persist whenever it’s due. Schlippenbach behaves like he’s fused with a mechanical piano player one moment, only to direct himself towards transparent chords and linear reaffirmations of logical consequentiality during more open structures. Lytton is marvellous whatever he does: energized and enthusiast, yet almost protective of his partners, whose interplay is cemented by Paul’s mind bogglingly inventive rhythmical prototypes. These men’s great prowess often brings the music to a spectacular level.

EVAN PARKER / JOHN COXON / ASHLEY WALES – Evan Parker with birds (Treader)

How can I find the words to talk about a meeting between two entities I love so much? The wonderful singing of birds and the total dedication of Evan Parker go head to head in this beautiful recording, the character of which is both experimental – listen to the “natural acousmatics” of most tracks – and documentary, when Evan respectfully enters the volatile polyphony with his soprano (track 2 is the best in that sense). The lively soundscapes worked by Coxon and Wales stand on their own effectiveness but – of course – the efflorescences added by Parker are constantly memorable; as the record goes, there’s no shortfall of intense listening experiences. Halfway through a contemporary “environment music” treatment and a solitary reflection, the educative force of this CD for anyone’s ears can’t be denied.

EVAN PARKER / JOHN EDWARDS / CHRIS CORSANO – A glancing blow (Clean Feed)

Recorded at London’s Vortex in 2006, “A glancing blow” features Parker on tenor and soprano sax, Edwards on double bass and Corsano on percussion. I’ll borrow Brian Morton’s pugilistic hint at the beginning of the liners to associate the relentless drive of this trio to the image of those Asian fighters who, particularly in the lower weight classes, gain victory through overwhelming, incessant attacks without caring too much about tactical exercise, only by keeping throwing leather until their foe collapses near the ropes. This is especially true of Corsano’s drumming, an example being the first section of the title track which literally leaves no room for thought, Parker attempting to perforate the surging steamy mass with doses of immediate realism in the shape of atonal zigzag and small eruptions of garrulous inquisitiveness, Edwards trying to act as a moderator but rapidly establishing his elegantly chiseled voice as the third element of a timbrally cultivated family row. When the waters get a little calmer – because that’s what everyone needs, listeners and players alike, after all that fury – the trio’s finely interpreted concept of responsible interplay comes to a magnificent proportionality between the parts, the music remaining not only totally credible despite the lengthy physical effort but allowing us to penetrate, at least partially, the collective vision that the three musicians share, saluted by the audience with an enthusiastic cheer at the end of the set.

ANDREA PARKINS / LAURENT BRUTTIN / DRAGOS TARA – Quick-drop (Creative Sources)

The relationship between different phases of present-day improvisation is the most apparent trait of “Quick-drop”, an album that can sound both oppressive and appealing over the course of a minute. It’s hard to determine how much of these conversations was pre-conceived in terms of configuration and overall direction, yet my conjecture would have to be “very little”. Each of the three players faces a variety of accidents, the listener allowed to peep into their idiosyncrasies; and when the attempt is as cooperatively focused as in this case there’s no risk of being neither beleaguered nor exasperated. Parkins plays an electric accordion with effects and samples, the whole electronically modified; she’s able to raise noisy nightmares in a matter of seconds, then calm down the mood via tainted realities jam-packed with deconstructed chords and anguishing wheezing. The erratic temperament of Parkins’ array of diminutive monsters is brilliantly complemented by Bruttin’s unswerving attitude, his clarinets (including bass and contrabass models) often suggesting the interplay’s real foundation by means of an expert management of space and the usage of effective extended techniques, not to mention raging spirals of breathless anxiety. Tara has his crucial say too, his double bass often marching into the range of cello besides being in charge of the lower regions of the frequency spectrum, resounding plucks and scraped growls added every once in a while to hark back to the essential nature of the instrument, the soloist sections leaving no doubt about the fact that the big beast is still to be tamed. In two of the tracks, guest vocalist Wanda Obertova adds her own touch of class through neat, if not exactly novel fusillades of tiny garbled syllables and broken soprano sighs. Unclassifiable material indeed: no silences to get lost in, (almost) no angry deflagrations to find shelter from. Efficient, mature music which made me want to return to it soon enough to illuminate the few unclear spots, which resulted far from irrational after an additional couple of visits.

KEVIN PARKS AND JOE FOSTER – Ipsi sibi somnia fingunt (Self-released)

A wonderfully illustrated cover introduces to a special record, comprising four improvisations captured during live exhibitions in Korea. The instruments include trumpet, delay pedals, contact microphones, oscillators, temple bell, open circuit electronics, analogue synthesizer and guitar (thanks to Dan Warburton, to whom I stole this information). What is immediately, shockingly clear is that Parks and Foster don’t noodle around. This is one of those performances in which the emitting sources are rarefied yet exploited to their full potential, often becoming veritable weapons for masochistic membranes, tickled and put in vibration in a way that sees the satisfaction of aural libido outhustle the fear of a latent damage. The gritty consistency of the “electronic vs trumpet” continuums is one of the album’s most intriguing aspects, while the only quasi-regular sounds that can be heard derive from things like long-reverb earth loop discharges, prolonged meowing rainbow arcs, nastiness-based entrancing developments. In general, there’s a splendid sense of restrained nervousness at work that prevents the sonic mass to go astray and become cacophony, accompanying instead its flux through narrow channels where even sheer noise is gifted with a harmonic content that’s as gratifying as indefinable. And, in the regions where noise does reign, here’s the view of those ample spaces where the disintegration’s remnants land, fluttering feathers of a bird just hit by a car on a highway. What’s left to do is getting a copy of this great release and enjoy its idiosyncrasy – an abundant hour of it.

ROSY PARLANE – Iris (Touch)

Evoking past imageries while remaining confidently firm in its tracks, Rosy Parlane’s music certainly has all the necessary tools to become an indispensable reference for everyone putting its money on the table looking for lasting emotions. Parlane builds muffled majesties at accessible level, so that one is not taken with force in order to understand; on the other hand, the slowly turning contrasts between stalling suggestions and concrete sources, often elaborated by a computer, generate a sense of safety that’s never jeopardized, leaving all channels open until you reach a sort of submissive condition. The absolute best is the second movement, where music flows like small puddles covering a subtle stratum of sand; it’s an island of meditative calm amidst mysterious intersections of currents, with extraordinary muted mirages coming out of colliding bodies. Ear pleasure is granted in every moment of the record, though.

AKE PARMERUD – Jeu d’ombres (Empreintes DIGITALes)

Born in 1953, Parmerud is already a major electroacoustic composer and “Jeu d’ombres” confirms his status without a doubt. The six pieces contained here run across a big rangy arc, spanning from the nice “analog vs digital” contrast of the spacey “Renaissance” to the almost violent character – like it was a sound shootout – of “Stringquartett”, where samples of strings are treated in way of percussive hits, electric chattering and environmental menace. The only pure tape piece is the final “Repulse”, a track based on sound placing and textural transformation more than pitches; on the other hand, “Retur” is Parmerud’s idea of jazz analysis and a sort of delayed homage, as it’s based upon a Charlie Parker phrase that Stockholm Saxophone Quartet chew and spit out – with the composer’s help of course. While “Le flutes en feu”, with its flute spectral modification and timbral scanning, is great listening in itself, the most intense and beautiful piece for your reviewer is the initial “Strings & shadows”, where the basic sound is harp: its alternative between fairy tale and nightmare, life and death, security and fear is fundamental in the creation of a masterpiece of unresolving tension.

ANDREW PASK / JONATHAN BESSER – Griffith Park (pfMENTUM)

The sketches contained by this exquisite record are rooted in a friendship that has been going on since the 90s, when Andrew Pask (soprano sax, bass clarinet and live processing) and Jonathan Besser (piano) both lived and played in New Zealand. Over the years the couple has undergone a nice share of significant (or less) musical experiences, from Ed Ware to Hong Kong hotels, bars and Cantopop (is this a karaoke thing?). The reedist reports that when they took advantage of a suddenly available stretch in Wayne Peet’s studio, the feeling was one of restart of an amicable conversation after a long time. Indeed there’s a sense of intimacy in many of these improvisations, which the unobtrusive treatment of Pask’s reeds modifies just that bit to render things a little more slanted, if always totally gratifying. “Cloud formation microscope” is a jewel of deformed multiphonic restraint over a cycle of secludedly pensive chords that comes much appreciated in an era where slapdash banging is often the menu du jour. In“Wellington Harbour”, the bass clarinet seems to gently wipe the dust off a forgotten old piano to elicit memories that are willing to be retrieved but, on a second thought, are better left where they are. In the most complicated yet ever enjoyable interconnections atonal flights, nightmarish marches and compressed dynamism translate the listening experience into an exercise in sensitive unconcern, Pask and Besser’s impressive technique at the service of a music that shines bright in repeated circumstances, without any sort of uncertainty.

ANTHONY PATERAS / SEAN BAXTER / DAVID BROWN – Gauticle (Synaesthesia)

A trio like this one could never belong to that group of “a la page” improvisers who are all the rage in circumscribed reserved circles. “Gauticle” owns a genuinely positive vibe which distinguishes it from senseless wanking at the very first listen, working wonders on a physical level thanks to the fervent attention and painstaking care that Pateras (prepared piano), Baxter (percussion) and Brown (prepared guitar) put in every minute detail of their playing. The whole content of this CD was gathered during their 2004 European tour, the recording quality so high that little interconnections and quasi-invisible patterns are splendidly brought forth even during the most intrinsic insinuations. Assuming that sounds are absorbed differently by each listener, there is no doubt anyway that these five improvisations are “disjointedly compact”, surrounded as they are by an aura of dynamic organization which makes the music resplend in a kind of rough diversity, even more exceptional given the tendency of this trio to mesh timbres in almost unrecognizable ways (not that we really need to know if our nerves are stimulated by a piano hammer or a guitar string but hey, there are still “anal-yst” retentives out there). The enchanting alternance of roll, tumble and environmental connection with an outside harmonic awareness gives “Gauticle” a character of involuntary, potential joyfulness that’s able to kill any conflict between a passive acceptance of dissonance and our reaction to the rupture of habits in the way we receive acoustic signals.

MAGGI PAYNE / PALI MEURSAULT / CHRISTOPHE HAVARD / PERRI LYNCH / EMMANUEL MIEVILLE – Overheard and rendered (And/Oar)

The thin line between acoustic pollution and insightful exploration is easy to trespass, yet “Overheard and rendered” is one of the finest compilations of unprocessed field recordings in recent times. Environmental sounds have a vocabulary of their own, but it’s the composer/soundscaper who applies the necessary touches to transform common hearing in artistic sensitiveness. Focus and perspective are fundamental in all of these five pieces, which exploit the attributes of simple elements and everyday’s objects but also disguised monstrosities: Pali Meursault’s creation for power units and air extractors in Budapest’s railway station has some impressive sinister buzz which one would never notice while traveling. And what about the ever-emotional ship horns echoing in Perri Lynch’s track? What this listener means is that by isolating a sound – or a series of sounds – from its original context, we can appreciate a whole new aural dimension that is the key to a better appreciation of our own reality as perceptive human beings. Or – as Emmanuel Mieville calls it in the liner notes – “oscillate from microcosm to macrocosm” (and vice versa) will allow to better develop a personal discipline that must necessarily include a change of attitude towards our surroundings.

PBK – Retro (Waystyx)

“Retro” is a limited edition of 264 copies that gathers several PBK recordings from 1987 to 1991 in three CDs and constitutes an excellent introduction to Philip B. Klinger’s work, also because – contrarily to the large part of the albums conceived in the flourishing age of post-industrial music – his creations have aged splendidly, still sounding modern, disquieting at times, gorgeous more often. “Traces of past events” is a collection of loop-based compositions that originally came out on cassettes and were “remastered, compiled and sequenced” by Vidna Obmana for the occasion; it’s Klinger’s most cinematic stuff so to speak, regular instruments and sampled voices becoming progressively integrated in a sound that drifts and shifts through one hour of your life with stubborn repetitiveness bordering on the graceful. The tracks are mostly born from a single idea, whose reiteration is gradually augmented by new functional elements or even by sonic clones of the original sources, generating mesmerizing dreams of hypnotic minimalism; all are beautifully crafted, sustaining the weight of time thanks to a competent work of camouflage. “Asesino!” is certainly harsher as far as the timbral choices are concerned but is on a quite high level, too; distortion and anguish are the key to these untitled pieces, yet amidst monstrous crescendos and clattering patterns from hell one gets a sense of harmonic stability, and I don’t necessarily mean in terms of music: I tried mixing PBK’s nightmarish hallucinations with the outside sounds and it worked great. And there are a couple of “calmer” sequences – one of them being the disc’s closure – that alone are worth of maximum appreciation. “Die Brucke”, like the previous CD, dates from 1988; it’s the most variegated disc on offer here, almost 80 minutes of studio concoctions that influence the mood and alert the senses. At times more rhythmically oriented, to the point of recalling a couple of pages from the Krautrock book, this record is also the one containing the largest number of creative abstractions, with Klinger using electronics, tape loops, guitars and much more to avoid everything approaching humanity. A real juxtaposition of hope and despair, confirming PBK as an unsung hero of iconoclastic spellbinding.

PBK / ADAM MOKAN – Split (Cohort)

If you heard PBK’s music for the first time, probably you wouldn’t believe that one of his main influences is John Coltrane (well, Diamanda Galas too). Instead, Adam Mokan lists “sounds, cars crashing, metal scraping, analog drums, feedback, and rock candy” as foundations for his compositions. This odd pairing makes for another nice Cohort CDR, which consists in four tracks by Philip B. Klingler and two by Mokan. The entire spectrum of audio unpredictability is analyzed in PBK’s soundscapes; reminiscent of his past glories in the post-industrial area, but also a highly skilled hypnotizer (don’t forget his collaboration with Vidna Obmana), Klingler juxtaposes the scary and the (sort of) sweet in metaphysical potions where one feels like continuously spinning with a hole in the center of the body, flesh constantly ripped by a needle. If this reminds you of vinyl, you guessed it right: PBK’s tracks often have a “locked groove” quality that renders them acceptable even in their most obscure, apparently unconceivable sections. Thus, the four exhalations contained here will paradoxically appeal both to dark ambient and turntablism fans; but the man is truly in a class of his own. Adam Mokan prefers to work with simpler elements, mostly based upon interdependent connections of distortions and pretty harsh frequencies which at first sound rather sparse but, after a while, start creating a flow which the mind and the body have no trouble camouflaging in. Just think that – amidst all this noise – I managed to get into a half-sleep state during one of my first listenings and that should tell you a lot about the effective harmonic richness of Mokan’s work. Both artists deserve my kudos for this mind-altering collection, which comes totally recommended.

PBK / BMG – 1 (GMBY)

A magnificent record. That’s right. PBK and BMG or, if you prefer, Phillip B. Klinger and Brent Gutzeit: a mainstay of the sonic manipulation scene since this writer’s first contacts with it, in conjunction with the father of at least two personal milestones (“Mosquito Dream” with James Plotkin and his own “Drugmoney”, a pair of absolute musts for everybody’s droning lust). This CD contains five tracks, all beautifully designed in terms of emotional response. “Eyes of the mellified man” is the soundtrack of a day of guerrilla in a previously abandoned city while someone is washing a car with headphones on, totally oblivious of the whistling of the bullets and the roar of the aircrafts swarming in the sky. “Praising suicide from a well set table” (great title) lulls consciousness into a constellation of flat electroencephalograms through highly affecting parallelisms between subliminal lows and membrane-tingling highs. Don’t get lost in space when, at the piece’s conclusion, the whole room starts wavering, directing the focus of the third eye to infinite. The initial “Appetite for clarity” applies touches of nature around menacing sinuousness and not-better-detected subsonic activities; those birds are marvellous, engrossingly singing just before the end of the world. “Absurdity of metaphysical solitude” begins with a rhythmic step introducing another helping of riveting murmurs from the dark side of the mind, those which people swats like annoying mosquitoes yet contain the germs of their persona’s just-potential-yet-never-happening evolution instead; a detuned guitar is a welcome presence amidst the clouds of indetermination. A splendid segment throughout. “Corners and fear of oblivion” threatens to call your house’s metallic entourage to arms, still remaining in a range of frequencies that is probably the same heard from within a submarine, the indicators flashing awry since the onboard instruments are going cuckoo. Sixty-seven minutes of pure class. Go for a copy now, as only 100 were made.

P.D. – Inweglos (Absurd)

One of the several incarnations of Ralf Wehovsky’s musical output, P.D. mixes anarchy and logic in well balanced doses with the spicy addition of a rhythmic element that – through cheap drum machines or real percussion – carries the whole package to ironic territories where Yello, Neu! and Mothers of Invention start a holiday camp open to a very scarce group of people. Indeed these old recordings have a particular flavour, which could result completely tasteless for newcomers; but the ones whose ears are used to the lunatic quirks of German lo-fi heritage of genial idiocy will surely be happy to find a lot of engaging moments, to be savored with a fixed glare. And I just love those five-second electronic pieces…Shine on, you crazy Ralf!

SARAH PEEBLES – 108-Walking through Tokyo at the turn of the century (Post-Concrete)

More a documentary than a composition, Sarah Peebles’ release is nevertheless perfectly capturing the soul of a city that’s world famous for its messy life. But what’s incredible listening to “108″ is the fact that the very characters of noise, confusion and – not to exaggerate – stress one usually gets in metropolitan environment become – little by little – appreciated companions in any of their particular inflexions: the fast-food girl’s almost carillon-like voice accompanied by company jingles, a preacher, commercial music from Japanese radio, and so on… The only moment of relief comes with the wonderful tolling of a temple’s bell preceding the New Year. Here you have the total meeting: the body has time to settle down, the mind can work in spans at last. Contrarily to similar projects that just draw a blank, Sarah’s soundscape needs to be listened with polished ears.

WAYNE PEET QUARTET – Live at Al’s Bar (pfMENTUM)

Most of today’s jazz/rock/fusion releases fall widely off the target of bringing back the genre to its ancient laurels, rather tending to become corporate wallpaper for supermarket managers; on the contrary, this live recording of organist Wayne Peet, here flanked by G.E.Stinson and Nels Cline on guitars plus Russell Bizzett on drums really kicks some ass, imbued as it is of raw energy, streetfight creativity and electric wisdom. One could get a good point comparing this stuff to a miniature replica of various incarnations of Miles Davis bands – think a cross of “Jack Johnson” and “You’re under arrest”; other references could be found in the music of another “famous Wayne” (Horvitz) during his most acid expressions. Nevertheless, Peet and his friends play ambitiously loud, their contracted fury articulating in sinuously scorching guitar parts, propulsive drumming and massive Hammond turbulence; what finally emerges is a collective personality born from a roaring heart which alone is able to keep you on the ropes for the whole duration of the disc.

PEI – Ipatti-Tomorrow will take care of itself (Post-Concrete)

This girl’s fantasy is very next to infinite. Her record is astonishing as far as the quantity of micro-rhythms and timbral changes are concerned, particularly after the initial track showing us slow processed piano notes…Then, we’re launched in a dozen or so electric furnaces where white noise, alarm signals, regular/irregular pulses and washes of faraway power plants constantly accompany your mental wandering. In rare instances there’s an oasis of consonance, not without a hint of irony: a Reichian marimba figure almost transforming the scene in a Caribbean caricature; a “normal” music loop, maybe taken from a radio station, illudes the listener everything’s under control; but your equilibrium will be soon in danger again. Fact is, this brainshake is profound but thoroughly enjoyable because Pei’s output, at least in this release, is the one of an intelligent musician.

PEOPLE BAND – 1968 (Emanem)

Improvisation can be poisoned by personal ego, reciprocal intolerance or because the single elements don’t mesh well in the overall scheme of that situation. On the other hand, an improvising open structure like People Band – a collective of real musicians plus occasional additions – is astonishing in its good sounding, even after more than 35 years from when these rescued tapes were recorded; everything seems to fall right in its place and there’s a sense of controlled freedom I wouldn’t expect in such an “anarchic” context. If anything, expect no whining or joking from a bunch of artists without a leader: instead, observe an interesting organism perspiring passion and conveying some magic (even if it’s from muddy vinyl transferred to digital) that will have you gazing and looking back to a world where there was really space for everyone…and in that space, lots of fun and plenty of ideas sprang out the brains. The thought of Charlie Watts – THAT Charlie Watts – producing this raised my respect for him up a coupla notches!

IVO PERELMAN – Black on white (Clean Feed)

Right when you think about jazz mummification, here comes a guy like Ivo Perelman reassessing the power of genius. Flanked by two fantastic comrades on bass and drums (Dominic Duval and Jackson Krall) Perelman mugs our sensitivity with repeated tenor sax assaults, only to relieve everybody’s pain through rhapsodic marasmus of rewarding stir. Every melody sounds like pummelled, even in the calmer pieces; Perelman’s involving passion dances on a subtle thread between Ayleresque irascibility and the almost poetic call of a wild animal. Technically speaking, this trio is utterly inviolable: the interplay just builds a fortress over a precious formula, of which the leader happens to be the unaware generator. “Black on white” is a strikingly potent demonstration of the difference between people like these and the pusillanimity of corporate wallpaper.

TIM PERKIS / TOM DJLL – Kinda green (Self Release)

What’s missing these days – even in the so called “extreme fringes” of avant-garde music – is a genuine will to disregard what one has been learning until then and present the audience with an item that’s crude, unprotected, without the grease needed for sticking it up our arse, crucial as a “new revolution”, or so they will call it. Every now and then, a few elements – placed with a logical view of how a piece of music should work in the intuitive portion of our being – function as off-ramps in a continuous mobility, which results to the ears as the initiator of an abnormal kind of liking, the act of listening becoming more an association of certain emissions to the contiguous circumstances than a consecution of concepts that would like to delineate a comprehensive view of the work itself. When people such as Tim Perkis and Tom Djll decide that a recording will work better if a “drone-fart” is used in conjunction with “fucked” Hendrix samples, or simply because fragments of pop music are the ideal prologue to a world of hums and buzzes from outer space radios, then we’re in for surprises. “Kinda green” is chock full of these revelatory moments, but also abounds in what’s worryingly similar to the stillness of the brain, the listener perceiving only small fractions of sound, intruders in an empire of unconventional sub-telluric movements and sarcastic decorations. The hoi polloi might not understand it but this is a great record, increasingly revealing its importance under amassed layers of unassumingly fascinating microcosms that probably not even their discoverers can give a name to.

LAURENT PERRIER – Downfall / Disperse (Sound On Probation)

Perrier works with simple electronic elements that he seams, loops and repeats according to what he calls “a method inspired by that elaborated by Steve Reich”, certainly not for the resulting music – which is at times nearer to the softer sides of Daniel Menche – but because he applies a series of out-of-phase layers which move everything gradually, until an apparent inertness reveals instead a repressed turbulence, culminating in growing distortion. Each disc of this double CD contains a whole composition; “Downfall” is more dusky, evolving from a darkish pulse which mutates with the passage of time. The immediacy of the basic drone is the key for a not-too-difficult interpretation of Perrier’s language, which remains discreetly surpriseless throughout the piece, with just a few alterations and modifications over a droning scattering of low-frequency discharges. “Disperse” is slightly more interesting, constructed as it is on harsher sounds that – in similar hypnotic structures – make their noisy timbral presence even more noticeable, capturing the attention with their lively, genuine “positive violence”. The scarcity of compositional seeking is balanced by the sonic intensity, which in both pieces is often noteworthy, raising the drama to the point of serious unquietness.

LAURENT PERRIER – As far as (Sound On Probation)

For the latest release under his actual name, Laurent Perrier once again recurred to loops as the major building block in a work that was designed to accompany a choreography by Alban Richard, which – from the photos on the sleeve – I’d love to see performed emphasized by its sonic complement. The piece lasts about 55 minutes and it’s structured very plainly, four or five parts expanding for a long time before new elements are appended, so that the state of affairs changes increasingly at times, quite unexpectedly elsewhere. At first, the soothing qualities of this music are directly traceable, the seamed recurrences rather unclean as far as sound transparency is concerned – a little bit à la Thierry Zaboitzeff if you ask me, anxiousness and suspension at the basis of the whole edifice. When further snippets of sounds and noise are introduced – just like apparitions – the concept’s vitality is amplified, the overall architecture really starting to develop until the vocal presence become more and more in evidence, remnants of female sopranos appearing from nowhere to dislodge the listener with semi-hysteric broken virtuosity. The most lyrically striking character of the album resides instead in the use of sampled orchestras and string sections, proficiently meshed by Perrier in the sensitively charged portions of the soundtrack (which, we’re told, was slightly edited for the CD version). Despite an entrancing temperament that would seem to take advantage from a large-room circulation, it was by listening via headphone that I managed to discern additional fascinating particulars that reinforced my affirmative response to this record.

STEVE PETERS – Three rooms (Sirr)

“Three rooms” is Steve Peters’ response to the overwhelming anguish that silence causes in many people, called to the arduous task of fronting their untold fears without a noisy soundtrack. The three soundscapes originate from previous installations that the artist created in Santa Fé, Chicago and Albuquerque, different contexts that nevertheless give us reason to wholly appreciate Peters’ music’s sparseness. “Delicate abrasions”, dedicated to Steve Roden, consists of rarefied clicks, drops, pops and scratches amidst an impressively quiet environment, all sounds obtained through the sheer human interaction with the interior surfaces and materials of the room, including “nails, dust, a sliding door, concrete, metal, glass and wood”. “Center of gravity” reminds a little bit of some of John Duncan’s experiments with breath and voice; the composer’s exhalations are at the basis of amplified wheezes and whirlwinds that – opportunely treated with EQ, reverb and delay – sound like standing near a runway while aircrafts take off, one after another. At a medium volume, it’s rather strong material. But nothing equals the fabulous experience of “Mountains hidden in mountains”, a 30-minute meditation whose only source is a strike on a densho (the bell gracing the CD cover, recorded by Peters in a Zen Buddhist temple) whose sonic components get altered and stretched so that the original metallic resonance gradually morphs into a mind-healing caress that concludes its existence in the realm of the ultra-bass frequencies, undulating hums coming through the air to cross our body and get discharged to the ground. Think about a Klaus Wiese/Thomas Köner hybrid and you’ll get a vague idea about this piece’s enormous power, shrouded by subtle oscillations. I tried in a dead-silent evening, juxtaposing it with summer’s last crickets, and thought that I wouldn’t have protested had I died then and there.

STEVE PETERS – The Webster cycles (Cold Blue)

Music writers are often in the lucky position of receiving first-class recordings without asking – not only that, also without knowing what to expect from the content of a CD. The latter circumstance is not valid with Cold Blue, though: whenever a release from Jim Fox’s label arrives, a couple of certainties are enclosed in the same package. One, the generally well-over-average artistic quality, not rarely leading to feelings that could be synthesized by the term “beatitude”; two, those sounds becoming part of the surroundings in such a natural way that the temporal segment in which aural events materialize becomes a frame of wholeness where everything, and I mean everything, is in the right place at the right time. What happened in this afternoon of mine while being pervaded by these fumes got me out of the experience enriched, to say the least. Lasting less than 30 minutes, this is a piece that can be performed with “any combination of wind instruments and/or voices”. Peters, who is active in various fields of contemporary arts (including dance, theatre and installations) is here interpreted by J.A.Deane (Jon Hassell, Brian Eno, John Zorn) who layered six tracks of trombone, mostly scored yet with a series of improvisational choices available to the performer. The composer’s dedication of this version to Stuart Dempster is not surprising, as the long-reverberating, mind-calming phrases fathered by Deane bounce from the corners of the listening space in gorgeously shaded combinations, refractions and superimpositions. The overall outcome should be placed among the genre’s best albums in the last five years, a channel-cleaning affair establishing the correct order of priorities in a sensitive human’s life.

STEVE PETERS – Filtered light (chamber music 4) (Dragon’s Eye)

This composition, like the entire “chamber music” series by Steve Peters, originates exclusively from resonances extracted from empty spaces and rooms set to host site-specific sound installations. “Filtered light” was born from recordings of fourteen frequencies between 70 Hz and 3 kHz taken out of the University of New Mexico Art Museum, subdivided in 32 segments which “recombined randomly” in a four-channel setting. The composer recommends low playback volume for best results, and I definitely concur. This is first-rate backdrop music following ambient principles but also suitable for active listening, made of hardly traceable movements requiring silence, or at least a quiet environment, to be carefully valued in their unassuming wealth of gradations. Developing in an uninterrupted fluctuation one moment, in slightly uneven chiaroscuros the next, this billowing accumulation of processed whispers is just what the doctor ordered for concentrated absorption, his gentle touch on mental strain a much welcome break amidst pressuring circumstances. Peters, whose connection with “place, presence, perception, attention and duration” is way deeper than the average in a world of latecomers, is the holder of an exemplary and infrequently paralleled sympathy, which translates into psychological repercussion even in view of an apparently frail structural foundation.

PÅL ASLE PETTERSEN – Skjegg (Zang:)

Gathered in about 25 minutes – a perfect duration for such a release – are millions of samples and electronic sounds carefully assembled by Pål Asle Pettersen in very nice combinations over 50 (!) tracks, each one lasting about 30 seconds. “Skjegg” sounds organic and crisp, its varied and colourful sources being a major asset in Pettersen’s low budget plunderphonics, really a pleasure to breeze through. Through headphones one can get effectively galvanized from these concentrated clusters of consecutive sonic snippets, all the while traveling around the edges of sensorial lapse; at medium to low volume from the speakers, it all amounts to a biotic hyper-techno-ambient working as a semi-discreet stimulation of different circuits, which contributes to a constant state of alert resolving into a tangible aural gratification.

PÅL ASLE PETTERSEN – Kompromisasjoner 2001-2004 (Zang:)

After the excellent “Skjegg” on the same label, Pettersen gives us another essay about “new ways to use computers to create sound and sounds structures”. What these “new ways” are is not explained by the composer, but the results are fresh and interesting enough to sustain our attention without recurring to eyebrow lifting. Given also the absolute lack of liner notes on the CD – whose artwork shows a faceless girl posing with a chainsaw – the best thing we can do is forgetting about an overly conceptual approach and leaving ourselves open to the flow, which transports a not-too-customary sonic detritus of treated regular instruments (or so I believe), electrostatic activity, sudden interruptions and burbling eruptions of unconventional noise. Two main characteristics are to be appreciated in Pettersen’s music, the first being the almost naïve genuineness of his collages, whose constitution never causes one to feel like having predicted the occurrence of events, while the second is its unpretentious appearance, light years distant from certain jumbles of insignificant racket justified by their originators with vacuous references to some abstract relationship with cosmic realities. Instead, Pettersen’s material is “concrete” in its basic essence, privileging matter upon rarefaction, without being ashamed of its outside-the-canon conjunctions and clashes. A radio, an organ, a metallic object and the crumbling noise of synthetic distortion have all the same meaning, being equal components of a whole that sounds organically coherent and definitely ear-pleasing. In a word, natural.

PHANTOM LIMB & BISON – Phantom Limb & Bison (Evolving Ear)

With the richness of descriptive details and aural sensations that Evolving Ear uses in their press releases – indeed written in the style of an introspective review – one is almost ashamed in trying to add or subtract something to those prose poems. But I’ll do my best. Phantom Limb & Bison is the quartet of Chris Heenan, Shawn Edward, Jaime Fennelly and Chris Forsyth. That’s right, again Peeesseye derivations: is it anyone’s fault if these guys are producing so much intensely interesting stuff lately? This long album, which took about two years to complete, presents six tracks where the listener is required to sit down, stare at a wall, try not to interfere with what’s coming from the speakers and get all buzzed out. A little drool is allowed, because it is likely that the mental malaise caused by several of these elucubrations will leave selected mouths slightly agape. For PL&B, a track could even be made of a single chord – maybe an electric organ – whose monochromatic appeal is rendered more visible by a constant addition of crackled layers of electro-acoustic paint. Reeds and strings are also necessary means for the depiction of a menacing lividness, which no fake drum machine or amorphous combination can sweep away from the ears, whose wax is nicely complemented by this liquefaction of the aesthetic sense. This “super group”(it’s in the blurb, folks) has transformed sound into a form of trance-inducing parasitism: by sucking every drop of energy, their music encourages an escape from reality at first, then throws up remnants of an even uglier truth directly in our face.

TOMAS PHILLIPS – Drink_deep (Nonvisualobjects)

Unbelievable how music so minimally austere and dejectedly reminiscent of something that doesn’t exist anymore derive, of all things, from the tapes of a punk band. We’re talking about Rites Of Spring, a Washington DC group that, according to Tomas Phillips, “provided a soundtrack to a generation of veteran punks for whom introspection and renewal were increasingly necessary tools in the ongoing (re)construction of personal and political defiance”. Having promptly admitted that I have never heard a note by them, at the same time I don’t hesitate to define “Drink_deep” as an exquisite album in which every sound is judiciously placed to satisfy the intrinsic need of a repetitive structure that provokes leaf-curling in the plant of memory. Starting with a damp subsonic activity and unobtrusive interferences, the title track gradually unfolds to become a crystalline, if rough-edged sculpture of pseudo-static emissions whose deceiving gentleness should not encourage those who look for saccharine-drenched wallpapers. Phillips is a true aural painter, his choice of alternating camouflaged patterns and chiaroscuro thoughts efficient and almost spotless in the economy of a very fine piece. “In silence_words away” is more decipherable and – in a way – classic, based as it is on a consecutiveness of shrilling frequencies and fragmentary loops attributing a decisively minimalist, definitely pretty entrancing character to the story. It’s also a more “normal” configuration of reiterated lights and intromissions, nonetheless educative enough for lovers of not extremely complex computer music, certainly welcome to lull stressed brains into half-oblivion. The composer manages to maintain a delicate balance between tension and calmness, showing the indispensable composure not to exceed in one sense or another. As the number of listens increases, so does my appreciation – especially when enjoying the record’s fabulous conclusion, an almost motionless goodbye that sounds like an aurora.

THOMAS PHILLIPS / DEAN KING – A travers le bord (Nonvisualobjects)

There is a puzzling ambivalence about certain kinds of microsound-based music, sort of a bipolar coherence according to which the best results are obtained by an attentive headphone listening, yet – when one mixes these sounds with a life’s soundtrack – every sonic message seems to converge to a sudden, multi-faceted revelation. “A travers le bord” was engendered by two composers who already issued several limited CDR editions under the Eto Ami moniker; here, they tried to define a usable method of assemblage for a series of recordings – ranging from environmental echoes and meteorological manifestations through wonderful chordal indeterminations appearing out of the blue – to give them a sequential character, just like in a movie, only this time the picture is disturbed/enhanced by extraneous impressions coming from the director’s room. In this piece, these “interferences” become an engaging code to deliver our frazzled ears from the excesses of timbral discrimination. Music of omission and untold, yes; but what Phillips calls “excursions through borders” walks a path full of immeasurable underground vibrations and isolationist rediscoveries, which lets us appreciate the usefulness of those silences acting as welcome pauses in the score of a whole existence, miniaturized and compressed into a little more than 37 minutes. Phillips and King force us to depart from sensual lethargy and rejoice in an intense listening experience.

PHOLDE – Relating to the ultimate purpose (Mystery Sea)

Making music through the reverberation of metals is Pholde’s field of work. Alan Bloor treats them with different approaches as opposed – for example – to a Dave Jackman or a Z’EV: his art uses length and resonance to build rumbling cathedrals of superb irregular harmonics. Crossing low and high frequencies in thudding forms and rolling thunders, the Canadian (who also played with Aidan Baker’s ARC among others) presents us with a series of spellbinding explorations of deep connections to the high spheres of acoustic cosmos. Bloor’s messages contain a large dose of rigorous seriousness that is the perfect contrasting element to those moments where sudden outbursts of clangour could bring the music out of control; instead, Pholde regroups his forces into cohesion, restraining his textural emanations to the core of significance.

PHOLDE – …and with it, we shall divide (Panta Rhei)

Through stainless steel plates, something deep can certainly be touched; such is the case of Alan Bloor’s music, which keeps an uncommon consistence throughout his different releases. This work could easily be filed under “sound sculpture” but this definition does not do any justice to the powerful quality of Pholde’s treatment of the resonant features in his playing. The reverberation following every hammering or touch of bow contributes to a sort of “proletarian luxury” built upon this impressive metallic aural mass. Therefore, I’m talking about a record appreciable by art music/installation admirers but also directed to the visitors of those desolated quarters of urban deterioration and – does this adjective still exist? – “industrial” descendence.

PHOLDE – In accordance with conscience (Panta Rhei)

Here I am again, talking about another metallic paradise by Alan Bloor. Of all the music by him that I heard, this CD stands among the very best; this time, the overall sound is more rarefied and almost totally installated into imaginary deep caverns, voicing a never ending tension accumulation. Disconnected from any possible comparison, the translucent quality of these intense metal drones morphs into elongations of nightmarish phenomena; each track shows a signature timbre that’s typical Pholde. To get an idea of the beautiful objects from which Bloor generates this sonic juice, take a look at the photo section of his website. This artist is capable of creating perfect hybrids of concrete manifestations and quasi-tonal miscellanea in a music that’s highly personal and explorative without being too harsh to the brain.

PHOLDE – The extent of signification (Cohort)

An abstract handmade painting on the small case hides this 3-inch CD by that metal healer who is Alan Bloor. Eighteen minutes are enough for Pholde to let him seduce us again into his darkish aura, made of resonance and subterranean rumbling. “The extent of the signification” projects listeners towards a habitable world of eternal waiting, deadening any melodic edge in favour of a rapacious mass of almost invisible foes that end being your best company in these meanderings. Alan has a rare ability in submitting powerful frequencies to his will, thus gaining momentum in his personal ascension to the high spheres of sound art.

PHOLDE – In which one may descend (Panta Rhei)

Recorded without overdubs, the self-built stainless steel instrument which is the only source of sound here represents the fusion of several artistic paths that Alan Bloor’s incessant quest for knowledge sees as necessary methods for his unique vision. Using natural reverberations and a looping device, Pholde creates sounds that are at one and the same time imposing and embracing, realizing a giant cloud of harmonic resonance which expands inexorably, taking complete control of your space and senses. This music has no climax or peak of any sort, it’s a majestic body of aggregating thunders that start from the same basic principles of Harry Bertoia’s “Sonambient” collection of metal sculptures to achieve the dream of a perennial echo in a plumbeous atmosphere of self-awareness. It’s about time for submitting Pholde to a much deserved wider exposure.

PHOLDE – That which tends to dissuade (Gears of Sand)

The trademark sound of Pholde – and his penchant for hermetic titles – are once again showcased in this classic album of metals resonating in long reverb. Alan Bloor structures his improvisations in long, menacing vapors of indetermination and standstill where his matchless instruments, sculptures of multiform beauty, swallow any remnant of melody and harmony to conjure up images of natural forces and – why not – impending disasters. We’re enveloped by huge waves of implacable percussion whose harsh edges appear here and there amidst a torrential background of quivering roars and unsettling rumbles; Bloor’s finely concentrated bursts of esoteric noise finally find their way through the precipices of hidden violence, becoming the key to an extreme demonstration of “powerful sensitiveness”, a feeling that’s not new at all for those who are already familiar with Pholde’s condensed abstractions.

PHOLDE – Finding internal asylum (C3R)

Over the course of several fascinating albums, Alan Bloor – armed with his arsenal of scary-looking percussives – has steadily grown into a name to be attentively considered when talking about the entrancing effects of long reverberation and impressive rumble of metals on the psyche. “Finding internal asylum” is yet another example of Pholde’s catch on this kind of composition/improvisation. Six pieces, about 42 minutes total, that do not evidence gestural explicitness or easily reachable ecstatic states; Bloor sets a mechanism of deep-impacting vibration in motion and observes the outcome, which at high volume can be truly stunning. There seems to be no restriction to the duration of the resonances: they overlap and multiply in such a manner that the differences between the tracks almost go unnoticed. The muscular, yet haloform power generated by these waves act as a lubricant for the hesitation of the mind, which is lured into the enjoyment of a pure physical phenomenon able to modulate our perception into a deeper sense of belonging to something totally undefinable through mere words. Pholde is worth of being compared with the best representatives of creative percussion (Z’EV comes to mind) even coming from a different school of thought. Give this music a try with well clear channels and be prepared for several surprising revelations.

PHOLDE – Aperture of the internal surface (Afe)

One thing that I didn’t know about Alan Bloor is that – besides various projects dealing with noise and punk – he also has a past as a jazz bassist and classical/flamenco guitarist. Thinking about this while listening to his thunderous enigmas for bowed and scraped metal sculptures, one can’t help but feel a smidgen of irony, as there is nothing more distant from rasgueado and funky slapping than the superimposing roars of Pholde’s records, all baptized with inscrutable titles, all sounding impressively powerful – and, on top of everything, all looking down over the average level of that musical area, which is defined “dark ambient” more for convention than real belonging. Those who already know Bloor’s treatments of long-reverb metallic waves and overwhelming amorphous tollings are in for a new chapter of a story that has very few changes in its plot, and in which new words for description are getting harder to find. But the connoisseurs want just that, as there is some kind of security in knowing that, whatever the label or title, Pholde’s creations are always there – granitic, firmly standing, massive as imposing monuments, refreshing like a summer storm.

PHONOGRAPH – +/- (Evelyn)

The code is simple: “Plus” is the presence of treatment and modification, “Minus” is the concrete sound as it was originally recorded. The debut release of Phonograph carries several moments of descriptive repetition amidst various aural illusions, sort of a “genesis of the harmonic content” inside everyday’s sounds. While the initial humming of “Refrigerator” is not so transcendental, both “Stylus” and “Vacuum cleaner” put us in a hypnotizing eagerness for additional levity. “Birds” and “Fireworks” are also pretty interesting showings of how to make normality sound more interesting to our cynical auditive systems. Caught in the right day, this is a lovable release.

PHOSPHENE – The singing woodstove (Evelyn)

The title explains itself: John Cavanagh (Phosphene) assembled about half an hour of delicately blowing sounds made by the wind through a woodstove, taken from a tape recorded by a couple of doctors travelling in search of unusual phenomena. I’m extremely fascinated by the caressing beauty of these simple patterns accompanied by an airy background; thanks to Cavanagh’s accurate choices and superimposition skills, this sounds like those fabulous machines invented by some mad professor in cartoons – Balthazar, anyone?… Machines solving problems, bringing smiles on people’s face and most often having a soul of their own.

PHILLIP PIETRUSCHKA – Itinerant labours (Cajid)

Despite his surname, Pietruschka hails from Melbourne, Australia where he’s active both as a composer and improviser. His studio work is reportedly influenced by the likes of Pierre Henry, Luigi Nono and Ennio Morricone, yet there are moments in “Valeria” – first track of this release – that recall the long-string installations of artists like Paul Panhuysen and fellow Australian Alan Lamb. We can also enjoy more fractured scores like the darkish “I love coeds”, which invokes spectral resonance and concrete sources to kill our eternal illusion of detached transparence; then comes “Lacuna” in which, after being fed with a clattering collection of noisy shards, we’re incinerated by sudden roars and distorted electronic pourings. “The evidence of love” is a unique pot-pourri of growing tensions and pop songs (is that a T-Rex snippet or just an imitation?), while the final “Hidden lattitudes of truth and nontruth” brings us back to the curiosity of a child approaching music like a game, but with a final sinister rustle that invites us to sleep with an open eye. The composer refers to this disc as a “shambolic collection of traveller’s cheques, post-it notes and ticket stubs”; I’m not sure that he really means it, as care for the tiniest detail and precise craftwork is detectable in all the pieces, which feature contributions by several local artists including David Brown, Anthea Caddy and Will Guthrie.

PILOTRAM – A circle and the sound that fills it (Transient Frequency)

This is one of those encounters with spiritual values linked to a scientific approach resulting in an instrument – an utterly unrecognizable guitar, in this instance – becoming the carrier of a multitude of doubts under the guise of clouds of harmonics and mysterious frequency coronas that propagate in every corner. From all those places, Duane Pitre/Pilotram elicits riveting propulsions of sheltering intensity, letting our auricular membranes become an aerial through which the brain receives a swarm of messages, all fusing into a single modulation. This music – austere and impregnable – possesses the key to the decline of our attention, entering our system through subliminal gatherings of tampered narcotics and interstitial smoulders penetrating our imperfect defense to darken our sight.

PIMMON – Secret sleeping birds (Sirr)

Transmutations of noise evolve into a form of electronica which not only becomes progressively comprehensible but also digestible; an apparent confusion gradually slows down until it becomes a song of tranquilized distress full of outlandish memories of disfigured melody. Electric discharges are placed in a chain whose links are recognizable by their grade of distortion, only to be rinsed away by backward loops – “Amarelo pàlido, quase branco” sounds like William Basinski in a reversed clepsydra – or alien cartoon soundtracks (“Bird cage circus”). Pimmon’s music moves like clouds after a storm: they’re still there after the rain, running behind each other but leaving openings for the sun rays to start drawing rainbows; in “Secret sleeping birds”, heartwarming hallucinations and freezing dissonance become a single entity whose favourite outfit is a mesmerizing Harlequin costume. Idiosyncrasy can really sound very accessible when extravagance finally blossoms into common sense.

RICHARD PINHAS – Event and repetitions (Cuneiform)

I think it’s about time we stop linking Richard Pinhas to Bob Fripp, though sometimes their solo work has been strikingly similar indeed; but – by now – Pinhas has developed a set of personal parameters that stand on their own legs, his looping strata giving birth to interlocking patterns, chordal waves and harmonic movements likely to bring you shivers up and down your spine. In that sense, “Event” is a complete and extremely mature work and I believe I can call it one of Richard’s best. It all starts on his guitar, heavily treated and put into oceanic tides of repeats; sooner than expected, you find yourself abandoned to “that wave”, releasing any tension (even in the darker sections) and sipping from the glass of awareness. I happened to have this music in my headphones while watching a wide valley right in front of me, with grey autumn clouds overhanging the hills around; I felt so full of joy for a split second, I just didn’t know who to thank. Absolutely deep and rich, this record is a diamond.

RICHARD PINHAS – Tranzition (Cuneiform)

Richard Pinhas is admirably coherent with his past. In this solo release he not only restores his own “cosmic guitar order” through the usual majestic cascades of six-stringed constellations of loops, but also adds an appreciated slight change of direction keeping his research up and going (and very interesting for us as listeners). In this case, the new element is the return of drums: Antoine Paganotti kicks serious ass with his “human sequencing” throughout most of the CD. Clutching each other, Richard and Antoine are the skeleton upon which a tower of emotion gets built in little more than one hour – also thanks to Philippe Simon’s violin and Jerome Schmidt’s laptop – and, from that high, there’s so much we can observe before launching our personal flight. Pinhas’ music has often narcotic effects; its beauty, though, lies in the interjection of cold froth and almost harrowing consciousness that’s present in most of his recent output. Believe me – after listening to the long “Metatron” closing the show you’ll be hooked.

RICHARD PINHAS – Metatron (Cuneiform)

Richard Pinhas’ solo output continues to represent a sort of mystery. His influences are clear, yet he still modifies and develops its attitude until the material is recognizable as a completely personal statement. His abilities are well rooted in the seventies – the trance, the psychedelic use of taped voices, the extraordinary hypnotic jams boiling throughout his albums, not to mention Pinhas’ importance as a father figure for all the branches of European progressive rock – but, at one and the same time, Richard looks straight into the eyes of the future. “Metatron” is the new chapter of this intriguing saga, and it’s another exemplary demonstration of Pinhas’ compositional maturity and admirable determination. It’s a double CD full of highly energizing, truly enrapturing music which should constitute an example for certain Japanese groups that can’t play but are good in making “progressive rock puns” in their records’ titles. The French guitarist and philosopher is accompanied by a few faithful comrades – among them a fantastic Antoine Paganotti on drums, really a force of nature throughout the album – but the essence of the pieces is all Pinhas. Organic looping generates mesmerizing counter-patterns and muddling harmonic shifts that caused this reviewer to remain in a standstill for long minutes, only to be rattled by techno-like structures acting as foundation for transcendental journeys through the mind, the whole enhanced by illustrious voices (Burroughs, Dick, Dantec to name three) appearing every once in a while amidst this hell of parallel convergences. Again, it’s that very special kind of inner resonance that this man is able to put at work with a few concepts, always the same ones. But they still work wonders – and after a couple of hits of the “play” button, “Metatron” becomes almost indispensable.

PINK EYE – Dead eye driftin’ (Evelyn)

Pink Eye’s sound is ominous but – strangely enough – leaves a lot of room to a complete weakening of nervous alert systems. Coming from the deepest inside, sub-drones and intense oscillations surge all around, making a fool of anyone who expects discharges or sudden outbursts. Instead, everything stays at a sunk level of barely audible phenomena whose intentions are, on the contrary, pretty disruptive: raise your volume just a bit and listen to your woofers barely accomodating the mass of ultraterrene rumbles produced through…heaven knows what. Only in the final minutes Pink Eye change perspective, introducing more delineated and noisy colours that are also quite intriguing, even if at first they could sound a little extraneous to the overall context. My total impression with “Dead eye driftin’” remains a very good one.

ALBERTO PINTON QUINTET – Vita pratica (Moserobie)

Let me introduce you to a new friend, who happens to be a very talented baritone saxophonist and composer. Alberto Pinton was born in Marghera, near Venice, but lives in Sweden. Scandinavian are also the components of the quintet: Mats Äleklint (trombone), Mattias Ståhl (vibraphone, glockenspiel), Torbjörn Zetterberg (bass), Kjell Nordeson (drums, percussion, marimba). In addition to sax, the boss doubles on clarinet, bass clarinet and piccolo flute. The first and obvious issue – “what does this music sound like?” – can’t find an immediate response. The instrumentation and arrangements tend to jazz, no question about it; yet, the ensemble often balances the forces at play on the thin line separating chamber music from free improvisation, with a touch of inspiration that finds its (involuntary?) roots in selected pages by Frank Zappa and Eric Dolphy, at least according to these ears. A track such as “Kjell plays marimba” could well be executed in an auditorium in front of an audience of XX-century classical connoisseurs, while “La vacanza italiana” lays unperturbed melodic contents upon a relaxed 5/4 signature, caressing contrapuntal lines introducing a swinging bass vamp over which Ståhl presents rapid-fire flurries of vibes. “Jadå Jadå” is the most enthusiastic impromptu moment, with a spectacular succession of blowouts – first the leader, then a literally unchained trombone solo by Äleklint, with Nordeson alternating tribal, rock and who-knows-what drumming amidst energizing shouts of the participants. These are only a few examples as the record contains much more to savour, the whole constituting one pleasant surprise for yours truly. This is significant composition, not your typical “three-chord-theme-and-go-with-the-solos” trash. Pinton is for real, and I’d be happy to see his work published by serious labels (it would be perfect for Clean Feed – are you tuned in, Pedro?) and diffused in the right circles. It’s that good.

ROBERT PIOTROWICZ – Lasting Clinamen (Musica Genera)

The Polish scene is surprising, to say the least. Labels such as Sqrt and Musica Genera have been putting out records (for years now) on a pretty impressive level, despite productions that surely can’t compete with other famous imprints in terms of budget. Case in point this excellent album by Piotrowicz, a man specializing in noise and free improvisation while being able to depict serious minimal infernos, as demonstrated in the four-part suite that’s “Lasting Clinamen”. Working behind a system whose core is an analog synthesizer, also alimented by electric guitars as a sonic source, the composer sets up a crescendo of static intemperance that starts docile enough, yet it becomes more and more threatening as the time flows until it reaches a degree of tension fifficult to bear for a human brain, depending on the volume with which one listens. It’s mostly a mass of distorted, if rather sympathetic frequencies, its rainbow arc making us think of a cross of Francisco López and Zbigniew Karkowski (with whom Piotrowicz collaborates), particularly in virtue of the sudden shifts in dynamics occurring, from war to quasi-peace in a blink. Not only noise, though: certain sections privilege oscillations and humming skull massages, especially in the second segment where an imposing low frequency mantle left me wide-eyed and silent, stopped in my tracks in the early hours of the morning. Gorgeous indeed, the highest moment in an outstanding release which should be brought as an example of intelligently distressing drone-based composition.

PITA – Get off (Häpna)

Pita’s latest is one ripping example of what happens when an expansionary revaluation of audio file rejects is put into a context of drenching computerized polychromy. While several of the manipulated sounds remain adherent to an almost polluting stasis, it doesn’t take too much to be catapulted right into a series of short and incisive snapshots of appetizing impressions; Rehberg works calmly in the middle of changing weather, concealing awesome dynamics after transients of idiosyncratic causticity, reciprocating shrilling overdoses of refluent frequency tides with sudden openings to murky droning vistas that would make Lustmord envious. The whole record sounds full of unalterable self-confidence, contributing to the still raging (in my head, that is) controversy where the overall cheapness of most of today’s laptop-generated releases is soon forgotten thanks to serendipitous meetings with undisclosed commodities like this one.

DUANE PITRE / PILOTRAM ENSEMBLE – Organized pitches occurring in time (Important)

Who said that every pseudo-static composition must open new paths? Sometimes, crystalline aural beauty is just what we need to spend a hour of our lifetime sitting transfixed amidst emotional failure, gazing at something that might look insignificant in the great scheme of things, while instead one would kill someone rather than give up its presence (my black cat’s sleeping a couple of metres from where I’m writing, therefore watch out). And this album is so gorgeously entrancing that I really don’t care if it’s also directly related to La Monte Young, Tony Conrad or Phill Niblock (well, maybe also Folke Rabe). Almost exactly divided into two long segments, conceptually derived by Duane Pitre’s piece “Ensemble Drones”, this music is compared by the composer to a living organism in which each different listener acts as a pair of “eyes”, depending on individual perception. The instrumentation comprises guitars, tone generator, bass clarinet, alto saxophones, violin, viola, cello and pump organ. Trying to leave any intellectual interpretation aside, this is splendidly conceived and executed material, whose richness of overtones and s-l-o-w-l-y shifting modulations surely amplify the perspectives of the acoustic spaces that our systems are able to determine, which evidently are not the same for everyone. It mostly has to do with the capacity of expansion of one’s mind, and “Organized pitches” is a valid instrument for that particular necessity. On a second thought, I’d even associate some of Pitre’s layers to selected pages of the early 90s’ version of Jim O’Rourke (who indeed has always acknowledged Rabe and Niblock as influences). But quoting all these names – which is only needed to channel your focus on an evasive idea of how this stuff sounds like – doesn’t render justice to the strength of the recording, which catapults Pitre just a split hair below the upper echelon of contemporary minimalism.

PJUSK – Sart (12k)

Taylor Deupree’s 12k label seems to be attentively looking around for new talent these days. In the case of Pjusk, the Norwegian duo of Rune Sagevik and Jostein Dahl Gjelsvik, we’re in front of a product that exudes class from many points of observation. Working with “a combination of electronics, dub, rhythm, found sounds such as tape machine noise, fans and ski lifts as well as field recordings from around the world”, these artists open a window on sound systems that are austere and elegant in the most accessible sections, decidedly unfathomable and gorgeously emotional in the most obscure tracks. Pjusk create pieces that transit through biotic and industrial in the space of a few minutes, then all of a sudden concentrate on more disciplined harmonies to realize an instant soundtrack for the only moment of calmness in that part of your bad day. But when the melodic lines blur and the chords fade into dissonant horizons, all that remains is the vision of the vacant lights of a distant city at sunset, the soul transformed in a container of intuition. A powerful pulse colours the most intense tracks, my mind rewinding back to faded memories of Jeff Greinke circa “Timbral Planes” and early Rapoon. This alternance of radiant comprehensibility and plumbeous oppression gives “Sart” its unique character, defining this debut as one of the most intriguing electronica albums of 2007.

PLATFORM – Distanced (Minimal Resource Manipulation)

It’s nice when the label’s name faithfully describes how the music was made, and it’s also great to see that a handmade limited edition hides a talent that deserves acknowledgement, especially in virtue of a well-visible compositional individuality in a field – that of home-produced electronics – which defining “congested” is almost pathetic by now, every computer or keyboard owner on the earth waking up one morning and shouting “I want to be creative” at the sky, fists shaken in the air. Moreover, Matt Atkins – deus ex machina behind the Platform project, this being its third release – wisely keeps things on the short side, the CD clocking at 30 minutes without an ounce of dullness. Five segments that take into account and consideration the sounds of life (and some unreasonable ones too), which get selected, heavily altered and therefore rendered unrecognizable or, in any case, pretty de-contextualized. A magnetic cycle of electronic fragments is heard in the opening “In praise of rust”, followed by the acrid disordered noisescape of “Spectre”. “The drained lake” is built upon striking rumbling frequencies, scarred by recurring synthetic buzzing flies and clanging metals in the faraway lands of hall reverb. The overall best comes with the unbelievably mournful alien lament that follows the initial digital disarray of “Brittle boned”, a terribly forlorn, slanted spiral – which stops me in my tracks whenever it comes – that gets finally buried by irrepressible interferences, while the final “White space” juxtaposes sharp highs and unbalanced waves in a disconcerting soundtrack for a crumbling psyche, voices from unfamiliar galaxies depicting a bleak scenario of miserable beings swallowed by their own ambiguity. I feel somewhat gratified for having been sent one of the 50 copies of this off-line, brilliantly conceived work.

+MINUS – First meeting (Trente Oiseaux)

Sometimes beauty is revealed without reasons or solicitations, mirroring itself in a hazy glass and trembling for cold – a frail creature just needing to be protected. “First meeting” offers the premiere recording by the trio of Bernhard Günter, Mark Wastell and Graham Halliwell; of course it’s destined to become an instant classic of TRUE deep listening. Immune to any influence, the music contained in this release uses a few instruments (electric cellotar, sax, percussion) mixed with pre-recorded material, feedback and amplified textures; it has a meagre body, with ill-coloured strange reflections barely perceivable even with headphones. Nevertheless, the hidden power of this silent charge slowly unfolds and surmounts any obstacle or doubt, contravening any rule or script about what should be said or left unspoken when people play together. Like that grass that stubbornly breaks the asphalt to see the light, “First meeting” will never recede before finally finding the right key to your life’s out of tune vibrational mess.

+MINUS – A rainy Koran verse (UK live) (Trente Oiseaux)

Locked away in solitary confinement, I’m desperately trying to get some sleep but, somehow, my mind keeps focusing on undefined sensations. What’s that dim whisper that seemingly comes from two hundred yards away? Why I’m so attracted by the gentle air current generated by the opening of the distant corridor’s big door? Though one can’t see anything, the feeble yet distinct sound of a stringed instrument appears, like if it wanted to show a way out I could never imagine, much less find. Its dying luminescence is just enough to reveal the shape of my own heartbeat; only, it’s not that, but the sound a man caressing an idea lingering between vibration and silence. I imagine him – his eyes closed – being guided by an invisible series of almost ritual gestures; instead, the only force driving him is a thin wave coming out of a strange tube. Three different presences smile to a perfect stranger whose body they can’t even touch. They do touch something higher and deeper, though; every other word is better left unsaid. I can finally sleep, knowing that I’ll never get free, but isolation never sounded so beautiful before.

+MINUS – L’écoute libéré (Esquilo)

Contrarily to their usual collective structures, in ” L’écoute libéré” Mark Wastell, Bernhard Günter and Graham Halliwell sign a composition each, using both +Minus and personal sound sources in the process. Wastell’s “Lone Star” is an appealing mixture of his beautifully resonant tam tam, Halliwell’s feedback saxophone and Günter’s electronic shapes, quite near to Mark’s “Vibra” series but with a slightly uneasy edge. Bernhard’s cellotar and harmonicas characterize the ethereal extensions of “Metis”, which is surely the piece that mostly mantains the doleful sacrality of this trio’s composite improvisations. Halliwell’s “L’écoute reduite” uses pre-recorded material by himself and Wastell layered onto segments of Günter’s “Redshift” in what’s the most enigmatic – and my own favorite -track of the album as far as the possibility shift between electroacoustic montage and the hypnotizing influence on perception are concerned. This limited edition is another laboratory of sound-sculpted reminiscences which compares with the very best releases of the genre and – like most of these artists’ output – is pretty much indispensable.

POIRE_Z / PHIL MINTON – Q (For 4 Ears)

For those who don’t know, Poire_Z are Günter Müller, Voice Crack and Erik M. Who better than the incredible Minton could fit so well in this incessantly changing pot-pourri of unconventional situations? You have a little bit of hard time understanding the difference between the English vocalist and the multi-faceted eruptions of the rest of the group; suffice to say, there was not a single moment in the record where I was distracted by something else. While Minton rants, howls, meows and (Donald) ducks like he had a built-in multieffect processor, Poire_Z create a cauldron of hot electronic warping, soliciting ears to raise high upon the sad nothingness of most of today’s techno-geeks. This is a great aural experience, often similar to listening to a crazy AM radio station at night while being surrounded by the noises of a civil war; rarely improvisation gets better than this, another pearl in the brilliant For 4 Ears necklace.

POLA – Meme (Plop)

Stay alert – don’t let yourself be tranquilized by the superficial elegant somnolence of “Meme” because this is not the low-key electronica release it could seem at a first glance. It would be easy to dismiss this one as a wallpaper company to play while looking at the afternoon sunshine from the window (alright, I was really doing that); then, the class everyone expects from this nice Japanese label comes out, with no shortage of extremely pleasing moments. Pola – from Japan, too – is influenced by SND and Oval, that he calls his all-time heroes (o tempora, o mores…). His music has a decisive sequential flavour, yet it manages to remain organic, never too mechanical and finely tuned to my not-too-hard expectations of frosty solarizations. Was it an aural mirage or I really heard distant shadows of Muslimgauze (circa “Vote Hezbollah”) and Jon Hassell somewhere? Never mind; this is a CD that grows in a beautiful progression of legitimate groovy fluorescence and certainly needs more than a couple of distract listenings.

POLIO – Concrete (Humbug)

Several long moments of complete silence. I start wondering if this is a new version of Francisco López or a Günter-influenced work; rather, a beautiful “something” s-l-o-w-l-y grows up, halfway through a buzz and a lament. With the passing of time I’m completely captured: a few more vague timbral strokes join the audioscape, not moving – just sighing – but they keep coming up a little louder, never too much anyway. When my brain is completely lulled and my senses ready to be taken by a total absence of will, everything starts turning slowly towards utter silence – again. And this is only a tentative description of “Sandblaster”, the opening piece on this marvellous record by Peter Wright. Processing live recording made in 2002 and 2003, this man has touched my heart very deeply with “Concrete”, for sure one of the best discoveries I did recently, a kind of sound narrative with a meditative quality certainly too real and serious to be confused with pseudo alternative/industrial/fake-zen rubbish: just listen to it when there’s no one talking or making noise nearby. “Sandblaster”, “Enclave” and “Paradise lost” are three index fingers pointed to a black part of the psyche that you always wanted to visit, never finding the courage. As they say in the trade, “act now”, as Polio is the perfect companion for this trip to nowhere.

POLWECHSEL – Archives of the North (Hat Hut)

For their fourth album Polwechsel gathered in a quintet comprising Burkhard Beins and Martin Brandlmayr (drums, percussion), John Butcher (tenor and soprano sax), Werner Dafeldecker (double bass) and Michael Moser (cello, computer). Ever since the very first moments of the opening track “Datum cut” we plunge right into an equalitarian oleography; this obscure diffusion of massive immanence explicates through semi-menacing permutations of the acoustic matter, like if the players were stimulated by the very transudations of their reciprocal perceptions. The percussive element introduced by Beins and Brandlmayr, which replaces Burkhard Stangl’s guitar sounds, often shifts the overall balance towards territories bordering AMM and Organum, particularly when bowed cymbals and scraped metals enter the picture. Yet it’s the organic continuum elicited by Dafeldecker’s bass and Moser’s cello that colours the album with a sense of “fulfilled gloom” which maintains a firm grip on our disposition; on the other hand, Butcher tends to remain less discernible, although being thoroughly effective in the distillation process of this music’s physical essence. My favourite moment is represented by “Magnetic North”, the lone track signed by the quintet as a whole: a periodic cycle of spheroidal figures rotating amidst morphing nightglows, a piece that functions as an orientation point in between the many conscious suspensions born from Polwechsel’s intuitive gestures. “Archives of the North” is another fundamental chapter in this collective’s history and is warmly suggested as an addition in your wantlists.

POP – Work hard play harder (Absurd)

Radical exploitations of disturbing frequencies and creation of unknown timbral species seem to be the goals of Zbigniew Karkowski and Peter Rehberg in this CD, where the couple presents three versions of the same track, each one pretty different from the others. The first one sees a muss of noisy waves moving around only to grow harsher and harsher, most of them with ear-perforating cynicism; the Karkowski version adds distortion and hiss to an already boiling magma of post-nuclear sound radiations while Pita is the “calmer” of the two assassins with a more subdued (???) work on the highest crests of extra-orbital sound perception. This is not music for contemplation; rather, it could crawl after you while asleep in front of TV and razor-cut your jugulars.

PORCH – ] [ (Evelyn)

I listened to this one early in the morning at pretty low volume and the outcome was excellent; that’s not to say Porch is only a low-key ambient project: on the contrary, this is music for active listening, a well carved sculpture divided into several small units that you have to enjoy as a whole. The basics come from keyboards, samples and effects processing; tracks usually start with a drone or a hold chord: a low burning “parallel” flame which sustains itself for the whole length, sometimes alone, more often reinforced with apparently extraneous sounds that instead fit perfectly. The overall concept is flawlessly laid out, the pieces gain from their total interrelation in a resourceful music making no fuss with snotty stances and pretentious statements; it only asks to be listened carefully and with polished antennae.

PORCH – Fragment/s of light (Evelyn)

I like when a sound artist shows a sense of responsibility even if creating music with scarcity of means; Porch is certainly a mature composer in this area, where lo-fi and instrumental economy not always guarantee interesting outcomes. The main intersections between our psyche and the nerves are sapiently stimulated through a well assembled collection of post-industrial drones and filtered electronics mingling with slow eruptions of lingering “outside” frequencies (shortwave radio?) that together form an increasingly obscure abstraction lifting the spirit from the immobile oppressions of gravity. As the minutes flow the pulse become more disfigured, transforming the overall view into a hopeless desperation that you want to penetrate in full, like if a future redemption depended on this act. The silence after the abrupt conclusion is even more stifling.

ROBERT POSS – Distortion is truth (Trace Elements)

After working with the likes of Phill Niblock, Rhys Chatham and Ben Neill and becoming famous (sort of) with Susan Stenger in Band of Susans, Robert Poss is still unjustly neglected; this nice assortment of live and studio tracks should help you to better focus the attention on one of the best exploiters of the properties of harmonic resonance in electric guitar, in the vein of Glenn Branca and the above mentioned Chatham but also in a manner that’s more consonant and rock-oriented than in the music of the two overtone masters. “Distortion is truth” alternates solid riffs upon rudimental drum patterns with solo improvisations and hypnotic strumming eliciting shimmering feedback and phantom notes all over the place; in a couple of instances, Poss builds his tracks upon synthetic sequences whose rhythm is paired with alien angular melodies, exploring textural galaxies which you won’t certainly read too much about on “Guitar Player”. A lively album, to be played loud and often.

POST BLUE – New shake (Phase!)

A powerful statement by Post Blue, who declare the supremacy of an almost therapeutic noise over any new ageish cure. Saturating the space with rumbling cascades of mashed guitars, found sounds and ghostly appearances of spastic muezzins, these perturbed gentlemen have released a minor classic – by the way, it’s a 60-copy limited edition – where the conflictual waves of uproaring electro-mayhem join their efficiencies to obtain an incredible effect of cerebral bliss. The secret? Probably the predominance of gloomy frequencies submerging the squealing of distorted sources in a magma of doped mass devastation. Sort of “Last Exit meets Lasse Marhaug”, without a single dull moment, “New shake” beats many acid mothers and derivates (…oooppsss…) by a landslide.

COLIN POTTER – Droneworks no.2 (Twenty Hertz)

I love many of Colin’s works but this one is really among his best. Based upon slow intersecting synthesized/electronic loops where noise and warm resonance mix delightfully, “Droneworks no.2″ abundantly surpasses the average of “fake ritual/single hold chord/presumptuous void” that most releases in this field offer with alarming continuity. This “English subterranean drone” movement has certainly become the one against which all the rest must be judged; Colin Potter is a worthy representative of a group of artists – Andrew Chalk, Jonathan Coleclough, Darren Tate, Paul Bradley and someone else I could forget right now – who I feel as totally sincere and deserving, as their music is as pure as you can hope for.

COLIN POTTER – The sights of the drowned fable (ICR)

A mysterious, scarcely penetrable release by Colin Potter, the result of a live performance at the University of Central Lancashire in 2007. Well, maybe not so mysterious. Indeed, is there anything that Colin hasn’t done? Sound engineer, producer, collaborator of Nurse With Wound, Ora, Paul Bradley, Organum, Jonathan Coleclough, blah blah blah. Somehow, I put the CD in the player expecting a classic study in drones; it was not to be – not in the semblance that I had imagined. The music starts in fact with a chain of noisy electronic outbursts, quite obsessive and rhythmically insistent. It takes a while before a (pseudo) tranquilizing stabilization is achieved, but it’s certainly not something to meditate upon – think instead about a series of biotic pulsations and not too regular throbs, a huge mechanism halfway through a living creature and a monstrous submarine machine. Only towards the end we feel wrapped by a more definitive groove and, probably, also reach the levels of depth that better define Potter’s vision, thanks to rather obscure malformations which, in their repetitiveness, provide a sort of altered narcosis that, in any case, doesn’t let us enjoy an easy sleep. Difficult to demarcate, remotely antagonistic, finally satisfactory despite the obstacles. An intelligent album that goes way beyond our anticipations, needing the utmost attention and concentration to be at least partially comprehended. In all likelihood, this stuff is going to swallow your afternoon’s normality.

COLIN POTTER / PAUL BRADLEY – Behind your very eyes (ICR)

A long, slow ellipsis made of breathing from some sort of underworld. Potter and Bradley (listen to his magnificent “Twenty Hertz”) create a music always extremely calm, never flustered or anxious; nevertheless, the record stands clear from sounding sweety or idyllic, distinguishing itself from any “cosmic” or “ambient” catalogue. One can’t help noticing an extremely reposeful character spreading all over, with particular evidence in the final track “Flattered to deceive”, a really involving listening constructed upon a powerful yet warm consonant drone. These sounds are binding energy for undescribable gaseous matters or – if you will – the perfect soundtrack to Earth’s maternity; any way you want to look at it, “Behind your very eyes” is another confirmation of ICR’s consistently high-level output.

COLIN POTTER / PAUL BRADLEY – Live (ICR /Twenty Hertz)

Two long nightmares, recorded in the autumn of 2004, confirm the status of Potter and Bradley as the comparing measure against which all the dronescapers risk breaking their teeth. Economy of means and accurate choices in terms of electronic sources yield quantities of captivating wonders; in both pieces the music starts from a few rarefied touches, slowly unfolding through digital waves of unheard ectoplasmic timbres and morphing manipulations of imaginary rooms. Under an apparent stillness there are instead inspiring structures of samples and treated ambiences where one can easily get lost without waiting to come back to senses. The fact that these materials were played live adds to the outstanding technical mastery of the duo, as the CD sounds like a studio release; the consistent good quality of both musicians’ projects is a major relief for the aficionados of the genre.

COLIN POTTER & THE HAFLER TRIO – A pressed on sandwich (Nextera)

Given the numerous projects in which both Colin Potter and Andrew McKenzie are involved, choosing the right words to review their music is always a pretty difficult task, but I can declare without a doubt that “A pressed on sandwich” is one of the best drone albums that I’ve met in the new millennium. Consisting of a continuous superimposition of electronic/synthetic waves whose complex layering generates imperceptible shifts, it’s a delightful exploration of that semiconscious area where the psyche reaches a sort of nirvana after being subjected to a sensorial overload. The music stands halfway through a simple yet substantial resonance a la Klaus Wiese and those subterranean, slightly manipulated traces of a potential harmonic composite that acts as a puzzling ambience, a virtual room for the mind to rest or just the appropriate, if contrasting accompaniment for a series of images that could range from abstract graphics to TV zapping without the audio on. The body of this composition is formed by the massive interaction between a few basic elements; this simple structure is effectively functional in our effort to channel negative energies out of our system. The slo-mo glissando at the end of the CD, similar to a suddenly switched off record player, is a wonderful signature on a truly compelling release, a fine piece of work standing at the same high level which these artists have always grown us accustomed to.

COLIN POTTER / THE HAFLER TRIO / ANDREW LILES – 3 Eggs (Important)

The burden of thoughts afflicting the poor ones is destined to kill their resistance. Ignorant people contribute to the collapse of worthy beings by accelerating the process of falling into insanity. Hydrodynamics are the perfect means to contrast the ill-minded decision, as only what burbles and gurgles can dilute the glueyness of human cerebral matter. What we would like to forget is brought right in front of us, a silent reminder of our inevitable fallibility, and lonesomeness is not maintainable anymore. A vision of decadent ancestry is the death duty we have to pay to reach what we never cared to explore. No speech therapist will be able to extrapolate the right words to describe a special kind of disturbance; the ears begin to fail, too. Dumbfounded despite knowing the result in advance, we look for a replay, a different angle, but the score is not going to be changed. A beamless sun leads the flock of blind creatures until their final disintegration, an external observer still stunned to realize how stupid everyone looks in this scene. The orchestra plays useless songs, the soloists already gone. They had learnt the parts light years before, but had no time to teach them to the retards that keep impersonating pioneers.

TYLER POTTS – The deluge (Dragon’s Eye)

It’s not that I’ve never met someone who makes art out of toy instruments and cheap machines. But “The deluge” by Tyler Potts – who is better known as a composer of music for dance in the Seattle area – marks the first time in which such a procedure yields results that go way further than the customary “nice, but risible” reaction on my behalf. The eleven snapshots that Potts presents, a total of about 40 minutes, sound like blurred fragments in the existence of a too-soon grown up kid who still tries to preserve the purity of his childhood’s memories while having to front the negative aspects of life for the first time. According to this unfamiliar poetic, what starts as a simple joyful melody becomes an obsessive repetition whose linearity is progressively deformed and mangled by effect treatment and studio warp, while several minimal/looping structures reveal an underworld of intriguing perspicacity under their apparently light complexion. Plastic tones and strange rhythms let us associate this stuff – VERY distantly – to a reduced version of some of Brian Eno’s music “for something” immersed in Residents’ orchestration but, in a couple of instances, I also reminisced about the easier moments of early Kraftwerk. “The deluge” is an album of short visions, not necessarily scary (quite the contrary) but deep enough to make us believe that, behind all those toys and small objects, the soul of a tiny creature moves the different parts like in a magic trick, all the while generating miniatures that somehow we feel as precious.

BRIGITTE POULIN – Édifices naturels (qb)

This is my initial encounter with Canadian pianist Brigitte Poulin who, besides being a refined soloist, is also active as a chamber musician and vocal accompanist tackling many kinds of repertoire “from the invention to the deconstruction of the piano”, as per biographic notes. Not a surprise then that she got a doctorate in “interpretation of contemporary piano literature” at the University of Montréal. “Édifices naturels” is an absorbing collection in which she executes pieces by four young composers – James Harley, Ana Sokolovic, Denys Bouliane and Paul Frehner, all of them perfect strangers to this writer (mea culpa). There seems to be a sort of aesthetic continuity among these scores, whose stylistic range comprises graceful elegies, dissonant eruptions, hints to Chick Corea circa “Children Songs” and materials at the border with pure improvisation. Poulin’s approach with the program is characterized by zeal and elegant restraint at once, her phrasing releasing scents of awareness, a degree of nostalgia for the past, the grief-stricken consciousness of an impossible-to-relive atmosphere. The impressive aspect of this woman’s style is that both impetus and rarefaction appear to be factors of a same equation, the music wrapped by an aura of longing that lets us soak up even the most convoluted segments with contentment, the level of sober musicianship high throughout, a lovely feminine sensitiveness perceptible ever since the very first tones of each composition. This was a much welcomed soundtrack for a dismal November evening.

MIKE PRIDE – The ensemble is an electronic device (Public Eyesore)

This is one of the few recordings survived to the fire that in January 2005 destroyed the apartment of Mike Pride and killed his cat Bobo, to which the record is dedicated. Writes Pride: “If anyone loved more than I did the eclectic mix of people recordings like these brought into our home, it was Bobo”. I hereby declare this man one of my heroes from now on. After this necessary premise, the record features Pride on percussion, glockenspiel, electronics and microcassette, plus Gerald Menke (pedal steel guitar), Brian Moran (electronics), Jessica Pavone (viola) and Aaron Ali Shaikh (Bb soprano & alto saxes). There must be a reason why this CD is part of a series called “Scene Fucker”, as indeed the music contained herein could not be collocated in any of the commonly known “scenes”; it’s just free improvisation in its simplest form, without preconceptions, all instruments moving towards a single goal: being delivered from rules. Among the collective instrumental expansions that characterize many portions of the album, the most noteworthy moments feature Menke’s pedal steel laying out psyched-out, spacey chords against Shaikh’s dissonant calls and Pavone’s drone-ish lines; elsewhere, Pride’s pretty disjointed approach to his battery of percussion instruments yields hundreds of inventive possibilities, while every once in a while the other musicians decide that enough is enough, screaming and torturing their weapons with the same ingenuity of children in a room intent in making as much noise as they can, ignoring their parents’ reproach.

GERT-JAN PRINS – Break before make (Editions Mego)

The area where I live is being hit by violent thunderstorms these days, and at the same time in which my laptop is drilling “Break before make” – a series of short blitzkriegs by Gert-Jan Prins via custom-made electronics, timpani and voice – the light is threatening to go away, perilously oscillating while the brain is being bombarded with the harshest frequencies and the most penetrating pulses this side of standing near an helicopter. Funny systems to spend a Tuesday evening with, but I’m sure that the cure will work alright for better sustaining other kinds of attacks the day after (starting from the stinky breath of the large part of my train companions). Brief tracks of fatless electronica with a (damaging) purpose, stinging truths versus the lies of pachydermous idiots who can’t think behind the second preset of their workstation. Photoelectric scanning of pauperized concepts in shuffling sauce, tickling remote fantasies bordering with terrorism. Matter-of-factness against supposition, concrete sonic atheism contrasting the lowermost species of loudmouth spirituality. Great, great stuff all the way, a snippet of bible for advanced ruckus lovers. Make no mention to your best friend and keep this for yourselves (…friend???).

PSI (Peeesseye) – Black American flag (Evolving Ear)

Another creepy bulletin from Fennelly, Forsyth and Welch, “Black American flag” is at the same time placid and bumpy; its flame burns extremely low about those areas where silence and escaping noises meet. A certain under-the-skin dim electricity wraps the whole album, casually punctuated by sudden guitar affirmations or small drumming irregularities. Electronic sounds are always well perceptible, never cumbersome, sometimes a little curvilinear. Psi have that rare gift of a keen capability of holding their horses at the right moment, using their instruments just like nail-files: a unique touch here, an overlap there, and the majority of this genre’s habituals gets outmoded all at once. Follow them.

PSI (Peeesseye) – Artificially retarded soul care operators (Evolving Ear)

Jaime Fennelly, Chris Forsyth and Fritz Welch are three of the most open minded operators in those areas where taking chances not always yields the expected results. Here, Psi send out their electroacoustic bulletins from various places of guerilla without caring a bit about the fact that someone could be traumatized by the report; their music is evil-tempered, sour-tasting, sounding like a menacing prelude to a punkish agony even in its most static moments. The three use any kind of noise to show their fangs to a common acceptance of the role of “musicians”: one understands their capabilities from lots of elements, mastery of dynamics and sound placement on top of everything, but the whole package brims with repressed rage on the verge of explosion – and explosion does not necessarily mean the sampled death metal inhuman cries heard in some of these segments, it could also mean the definitive farewell to that “beauty” that Jaime, Chris and Fritz consider as enemy but is actually redefined, in raw clothing, by themselves.

PSI (Peeesseye) – Commuting between the surface & the underworld (Evolving Ear)

Starting from the very first track “Oo-ee-oo”, a melange of a Pink Floyd guitar chord circa “Animals”, Charlemagne Palestine and a vomiting impersonation of Captain Beefheart, the mucous malevolence of Peeesseye reveals itself in all its tipsy poetry. All the tracks move quite cautiously, like if afraid of falling in the quicksand of retrogressive imbecility; nevertheless, frequent enervating outbursts of hoggish distortion and instrumental mayhem nobble any hope of fogless days. Fennelly, Forsyth and Welch use regular machines and found materials to elaborate docudramas for wasted afternoons, also with some help from Clare Cooper, Nate Wooley and Shawn Edward Hansen (who, being defined a “reclusive conceptualist”, gains my unconditioned sympathy). Overall, a sense of prominent acousticity is opposed to the murky electric bulletins of the trio’s previous albums, yet the 20-minute ghost track is pure mental impasse, audio-verité of the lowest grade with malfunctioning tapes, domestic rustling and a mess of baas and other assorted half-animal, half-human laments that convinced me about the presence of kids imitating lambs, but don’t take it for granted. Immoderately sick.

PSI (Peeesseye) – Mayhem in the mansion, shivers in the shack (Evolving Ear)

Trying to predict how a Peeesseye record will sound like means looking for trouble. No chance for Jaime Fennelly, Chris Forsyth and Fritz Welch of repeating even a fragment of formula from an episode to the next of their peg-legged walk to the hall of non-fame. This time, a few preponderant factors instigate reactions in the listeners that I can only describe as “disturbed”. One is the use of the voice. Voice? The large part of what’s found in these songs (songs?) is a catarrhal version of the ethereal clouds of smoke that a drunkard might cough out during a REM phase, additionally altered by the chemical reaction that happens in the brain when imagining a sexual intercourse between two horribly ugly persons (don’t raise your eyebrows: throughout my life I’ve been observing couples that are, to say the least, repulsive – outside and inside – yet they pretend to be married or somehow conjugated, so one figures the worst happening in those darkened rooms. The National Geographic Channel offers propaedeutic means in that sense, thus preventing bizarre behavioural responses on our side). Abnormally slobbering acousticity and sudden seizures shake long segments of the music, eruptions of drumming fury and repeated stomach-churning yelps making me wonder if listening to records like this still qualifies us as regular folk (check “Riding on the curly head of a man from Coney Island in a 280ZX” and keep family members at safe distance, if you have any). Electric repression that exudes slimy and grimy, transforming receivers in proud outsiders first, reducing them in shambles later on. Matter of fact, a nobody remains a nobody. These guys just seem to address the nobodies of the world and convince them to move to another town. The most insanely lucid band of the last five years is back, and there’s no apparent escape from the feeling of dissociation that a whiff of their material generates. Avoid mentioning – or, god forbid, playing – this stuff to your favourite “technicians of the mind” though, or they will alert the nearest institute for mental hygiene. Never forget to obey those commands at all times, in spite of the fact that the rules are spelled incorrectly and don’t respect the consecutio temporum. Psychic Surgery Incorporated? Poor Sheep Incoherent? Panic Subjugates Intentions? Pathetic Stupid Idiots? Choose the appropriate label and stick it on the forehead. You’re ready to be taken. Remember: the name of the game is universal love. Pricks Suppress Intelligence – now that’s the right one.

PSYCHIC SPACE INVASION – And the cows go mu (Elvis Coffee)

As Ian Holloway (aka Psychic Space Invasion) explains in the press notes, “we constantly move between states of awareness and consciousness whether this be by chemical means, sleep, meditation or the simple act of daydreaming. This project seeks to map those shifts, to produce aural representations of these other states and stimulate that state in the listeners”. You could probably say “been there, done that” but – surprise – this album is effectively maintaining its promises, constructed as it is upon a series of lively psychedelic vistas which make good use of well known ingredients – throbbing tensions, projection of repetitive figurations, intelligent looping, pseudo-shamanic drones – carefully deployed and organized according to a transmission order rarely heard in recent times, therefore incomparable with (more or less) anything else. Imbalances and contrasting signals fulfil our brain’s needs in an alternance of shades of pregnant post-mortem electronics and somnolent womb sounds where all that appears decontextualized suddenly becomes the most logical explanation to every unpleasing doubt. Holloway lights up the path through uncertainty while we gradually get used to the absence of a guideline, prepared to face our worst preoccupations without flinching.

PSYCHIC SPACE INVASION – The magpie rhyme (Elvis Coffee)

Welsh artists Ian Holloway is the man after this project, a darkish series of variegated soundscapes whose influences range from Nurse With Wound and Contrastate to abstract electronica. PSI moves in an oneiric dimension where every kind of source reveals itself as a passage towards uncharted territories; pulsations and nightmares are levigated by a haze of narcotic effects transforming the sounds into a nice mess of almost naive sensations. If certain tricks – slowed down voices and deformed laughter – sound a little worn out by now, there are genial touches across the tracks, the nicest being a warped quacking duck moving around like a supernatural joke. The most excellent moments come from looping spirals keeping the heartbeat at a calm pace; those “sober” parts could constitute the foundation for interesting future developments.

PSYCHIC SPACE INVASION – All God’s children got space (Elvis Coffee)

Ian Holloway/Psychic Space Invasion has created a minor masterpiece of static minimalism which you’d be silly not to grab, especially considering that all Elvis Coffee’s releases come in limited editions of 50 to 75 copies and are sent in exchange of postal costs only. All evolves from a fixed organ chord which somehow recalls Charlemagne Palestine’s synthesizer pieces circa “Four manifestations on six elements”, all oscillating harmonics and undulating frequencies which truly free the mind from extraneous thoughts and tense interferences. Halfway through the CD, slightly contrasting currents generated by different chords and a few minutes of flanger-like treatment of the sound move the music a little bit while remaining coherent to the grand scheme of things. At the end, everything returns to the initial flux, a quasi-immobile procession of elongated reflections whose conclusion finds us relaxed, almost intoxicated, our heartbeat slowed down of several notches. Warmly recommended.

PSYCHIC SPACE INVASION – Pendulum (Elvis Coffee)

ECR (Elvis Coffee Records) releases its last CDR: from now on, the label’s name will be Quiet World. But Psychic Space Invasion remains the same, and we’re lucky for that. These six tracks were recorded in a 7-night span (winter of 2006) in the Welsh Gower Peninsula; Ian Holloway used pre-recorded loops, bass guitar, hosepipe and glass bottles to raise some serious goosebumps. Now, this gentleman is not that kind of “Johnny-on-the-spot” dronescaper who lends a stroke or two of JamMan whenever the occasion arises. His music’s feel is one of active meditation, a basic minimalism if you will, not in the commonly intended meaning but rather referring to the apparent paucity of means utilized, which for contrast generate wavering lights that almost instantly find the right spot in our ever-willing being, in perennial search of regular doses of ear-rubbing, mind-calming low frequencies. But, lo and behold, there come recycled sequences and melodic snippets, which heave in sight at safe distance from the basic foundation yet give the sound a gradation and a density. Since fine feathers do not necessarily make fine birds, the difference between Psychic Space Invasion and many of his fellow charmers must be found in Holloway’s sincerity: the man does not hide himself behind “majority leader” declarations and quotes from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, preferring instead to let the aural matters speak for themselves, well aware of their alluring behaviour. It’s one of those cases in which the music becomes a presence whose importance is understood only after its conclusion. Great pulse, entrancing in the “right” way. Almost flawless and, as usual, highly recommended.

PSYCHIC SPACE INVASION – Transitions (Persepolis)

Thus Ian Holloway, aka Psychic Space Invasion: “I want people to lose the boundaries between the sounds on the record and the sounds in the real world”. End of the review (wait a minute, just kidding). A question arises: where did this man listen to “real world” manifestations even vaguely analogous to the ones comprised by this casing? I’d love living in that district. The piece starts with a farfetched slow swelling, a bottomless hum that, little by little, collects the vestiges of our resolve and scatters them all over the place, getting us ready for a tantalizing experience. As the time runs unstoppable, the timbral formation becomes beefy and, at the same time, confusing as assorted misshapen sources are observed at once in the stereo field: not a decipherable one in sight, except perhaps for a chronic “something” that resembles a disembowelled rhythmic chant by a Gregorian choir pulverized by atomic radiations. This lasts quite a while, until the music is completely established and the body has at long last adapted. Now we could go on and on, comfortably and optimistically thrilled; instead the whole ends, 41 minutes flown away like a nightingale. A brilliantly conceived CD needing perseverance, efficient in its scarcity of transitional phases. Might teach a couple of things to many operators in the congested sector of transcendence, a definition that in this particular case implies the existence of a gist, not only gormless words.

PULSE EMITTER – Planetary torture (Housepig)

Pulse Emitter is the nom d’art of Portland, Oregon’s Daryl Groetsch (hey, those mountains and forests really charge the brain… Daniel Menche docet). What you’re going to hear is not likely to be the soundtrack for a walk in the woods, though, as this man makes music that’s going to send all your friends running around the house in despair, should you decide to play this disc at a birthday party. Groetsch uses in fact self-built modular synthesizers whose sound is pure aural terrorism – but often of the sublime kind, a real confrontation with what the ears would never like to receive, but once they do they could even become a little addicted. Warped waves, distorted bleeps and burps, slanted sequences and paralyzing distortions attack ferociously, every once in a while giving ground to subterranean menace and earthquake-like vibration. Sputtering insults to common aesthetic laws, Pulse Emitter manages to make real art out of raw meat, recording everything on well-hissing analog tape for good measure. Try this in your walkman while traveling to work on a crowded train: I guarantee that listening to “Planetary torture” while watching the goofy faces around becomes an exhilarating experience after about two minutes. Never mind that you won’t hear what the office’s chief tells you in the next two hours.

PURE SOUND – Acts of new noise (Euphonium)

The deus ex machina behind Pure Sound is Vince Hunt, who gathers all kinds of bits and pieces from wherever he can – including waste bins – and amasses them in ever-changing combinations substantiated by standard instruments (bass, vocals, piano and mandolin). At the beginning, and over the course of a number of segments, it sounds unusual and exhilarating: periodic replications and ludicrous occurrences find a way to coexist, and it looks like we’re in for a thrilling experience. But as the minutes flow, the tape work becomes a tad unsurprising and also less multicoloured, its artistic purpose remaining unswerving nevertheless. One thing is a superimposition of incongruous melodies and malformed voices, another is the employment of pre-existent music for long sections; after a while, there’s a slim sense of inertia that holds the horses of enthusiasm. My best advice is giving this stuff a try at very low volume, from the speakers, mixing it with the rest of your life’s soundtrack: we seem to be tuned on an exotic station run by not exactly healthy DJs. A good release, at times quite attention-grabbing; still, the 22 years (!) that it took to assemble it are not justified in full.

PUTTANESCA – Puttanesca (Catasonic)

The name comes from an Italian kind of pasta. The lineup is made of Weba Garretson (vocals), Joe Baiza (guitar), Wayne Griffin (drums) and Ralph Gorodetsky (bass). The most repeated word in the press release – namely in other reviews, and by the singer herself – is “angular”, especially referred to Baiza’s style. Yet Puttanesca are definitely more a rock group than Doctor Nerve, if you get my point, and there is a clear blues’n'jazz root in what they do, which surely has nothing to do with your typical “easy going” showcase of kerranging riffs and screaming vocals for headbanging pleasures. At times, Garretson could even remind someone of a more vocally corpulent version of Annette Peacock; indeed, in “Shiny red box” I myself was thinking about Peacock’s contribution to Bill Bruford’s “Feels good to me”. There is something genuinely appealing in this band, though; the recording sounds like captured in a garage, but some of the elements are refined and telling in a sensual kind of way. The rhythm section is tightly seamed, without concessions to any lustre, and some of the arrangements wear like deliciously battleworn clothes on the ears; there’s even a Captain Beefheart cover (“Lick my decals off, baby”) that closes the show, and a (probably involuntary) tip of the hat to Jethro Tull in “Red haired woman”. All in all, “Puttanesca” is a nice melange of honesty and passion. But where all these people hear that “punk” attitude, I still can’t put my finger on.

PYLONE – Black grains (Sound On Probation)

Electronica and computer music are often performed following sets of invisible rules, which determine their commercial success, inaudibility, spiritual depth (add your choice here). Pylone’s “Black grains” presents five tracks that, without being excessively dramatic, explore many different areas of the above mentioned genres with expertise, coherence and elegance, and as such is a welcome addition to any open-minded collection. One of the instantly noticeable positive factors in this music is its perfect engineering, from the composition to the gorgeous equalization, which causes no ear-stressing even during its less levigated manifestations. Pylone offers an interesting miscellany of atmospheres and scenarios that never transcend the limits of good taste, hypothesizing networks of developments and designs, both in movement and stasis, which constitute its subatomic essence. Fragments of pseudo-metallic configurations crumble and break, leaving the scene to subsonic hums shaking the ground. High pitches penetrate your membranes until the latter ask for some measure of compromise, then finally decide to obey and adapt to the stronger power. Considerable evolutions are often featured within the frame of a single piece (the longest one lasts more than 25 minutes) but I never lost an ounce of concentration while listening, in different settings, to this arresting album. That says a lot.