Posts Tagged ‘Andy Moor’

The Ex – Great! / The Evidence

Posted: 2 October 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Ex Records – 20th September 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s hard to conceive that The Ex have been going for a full forty-five years. It’s more than understandable that the pandemic proved a challenge for them, a band accustomed to getting out and doing it live. As their bio points out, in 45 years they did more than 2000 concerts in 45 countries. But creativity isn’t something that can simply be switched off. Again, to turn to how their notes set it out, ‘The pandemic was a standstill for many, including The Ex. Or perhaps it was more a kind of recharging, as the band is back on national and international stages with new music, ready to return to the studio… It was time for a new 45rpm 7” single. From the brand-new set they are playing full-on this year, they picked two blinking tracks: ‘Great!’ and ‘The Evidence’.

For some reason, I’ve always considered The Ex to be more of an album band, but as the compilation Singles. Period evidences, they’ve released a fair few singles through the years. And what’s interesting is how they clearly approach singles and albums very differently, exploring expansively on albums in the same kind of way they do live and striving to see just how far out they can push things, while exercising remarkable discipline and concision with the single releases, with tracks of two or three minutes and rarely exceeding four in running time. This awareness or tailoring of material to medium is quite a rare thing, but illustrates their phenomenal versatility as musicians, and also provides some insight into their methodology and creative processes.

‘Great!’ is. It’s an uptempo meandering sliver of discord whereby the musicians play across one another rather than together to spin a slice of angular post-punk that’s not a million miles from The Fall in their early years. ‘The Evidence’ – which clocks in at under three minutes – is more focused-sounding, and more noisy. Both songs are the work of a band who are still firing on all cylinders with ideas and energy.

This single is exhilarating in unexpected ways. It sounds fresh – and yes, it might also sound like it’s from circa 1979, but it sounds authentically 1979, rather than some old buggers trying to recreate and rekindle the vibe of their youth. Just what their secret is, I don’t know – although one suspects the fact that they’ve continually striven to create, and to create something new, something different, is a significant factor. In life, as well as with musicians, it’s so easy to simply settle, to adopt a routine, to take the easiest path within an established comfort zone. Fair enough: most people want an easy life, especially when they reach a certain point. But, critically, to accept a diminishing scope for activity is to consign oneself to a future of diminishment in every way. This clearly isn’t the mindset of The Ex, and this single provides ‘The Evidence’ that they’re still ‘Great!’.

And after that shameful punchline, I should probably get my coat – but shall instead pour another drink and get to the next review – because diminishment is stagnation and death, and re-engaging with The Ex post-pandemic is an invigorating experience.

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Yannis Kyriakides – Hypnokaséta

Posted: 28 May 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Unsounds – 24th May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

When it comes to being a music writer, for me, at least, perhaps even more of a buzz than getting advance listens of the most eagerly-anticipated releases is being exposed to music I otherwise wouldn’t have. And the nature of the avant-garde means that you have to be in the know to know. Being introduced to the Unsounds label and the work of Yannis Kyriakides certainly opened my eyes – and more so my ears – to a whole expanse of music I assumed must exist, but would have had no obvious means of locating or accessing while going about my ordinary life before.

Although I’ve only dipped in and out of Yannis Kyriakides’ output, more as one with a casual interest than a fan per se, his work has never ceased to impress with its range and constant questing for something different, something new, both sonically and methodologically and “Hypnokaséta (2020-2021) is no exception.

Kyriakides’ introductory notes explain both the concept and the practice behind the recording of the album: “Hypnokaséta (2020-2021) is a continuous set of 16 pieces for string quartet, improviser (playing cassettes and any instrument) and live electronics. The source material is based on dreams that I had during the first few months of lockdown, April-June 2020. Accounts of these dreams are encoded in the music that is played by the quartet and also encrypted in the sound textures that surround this.

“The pieces alternate between quartet as the foreground and electronic interludes, where solos or duos underpin the soundscape. The title of the piece (Greek for ‘sleep-cassette’) refers to a theory of dreams proposed by Daniel Dennett, that says that dreams are loaded into consciousness like a cassette tape during the night and played just before waking.”

It’s longtime collaborator Andy Moor who provides the guitar and tape work on these recordings, and together with Kyriakides’ electronics, which move between shuddering skitters and unsettling scratchiness and quite abstract sounds, when juxtaposed with the strings – which span playful to mournful to droning discord.

The sixteen pieces have been mastered as six separate tracks, but they flow as one immense composition in a continuous state of transition. Within each of the six numbered tracks, the individual segued pieces bear titles, with their time markers also noted. The titles present, if not strictly a narrative, then a guide to the theme, the idea, the inspiration.

‘Hypnokaséta I’ comprises ‘The government’s new cultural scheme’, ‘All roads to the airport are blocked’, and ‘Everyone is nervous, everyone is lost’, titles which serve to encapsulate the events and the sensations they engendered within the populace at the strangeness and uncertainty of lockdown.

‘Hypnokaséta III’ is a stunning work of contrasts, containing as it does the gentle, almost light-spirited string-led ‘The reluctant hotel manager’ and the dramatic, jarring ‘She lifts the mountain’, a dark, alien drone brimming with electronic tension that crackles and tweets. The rapid switches in mood and form recall the sudden and wild extremes I experienced myself during this time: it was impossible to keep up with the constant stream of developments in the news, while at the same time entrapped within the confines of the house, where the world outside felt so very far away, while also having to accommodate the changeable and diverse headspaces of friends, family, and colleagues. No-one knew what the fuck was going on, or how to cope.

There was an air of unreality about it all, and at times it became difficult to distinguish between the bewildering nightmarish reality of the wakeful hours and bewildering nightmarish sleep, and in drawing on dreams in the creation of Hypnokaséta (2020-2021), Kyriakides captures the essence of that abstract space forged in the mind where everything blurs. This blurring and abstraction is also reflected in the titles: ‘The concert promoter complains that not much happens in the piece’ sounds like something that could happen in one of those self-reflective semi-anxiety dreams, and ‘Bridges are being dismantled

across the city’ has an apocalyptic sense of separation, while ‘Body swap opera’, ‘Swimming pool synthesis’, and ‘Mutations on an empty grid’ are altogether more surreal in their connotations.

Throughout the album, the lister is jolted from a moment of tranquil reverie by some abrasive thud or rasp, an unexpected spike in volume, and a turn towards an altogether more disquieting atmosphere.

The composition is nuanced, the placing of the switches and transitions perfectly timed to achieve optimal impact, never allowing the listener to truly settle, to relax, to sit back and enjoy, and the moments of tension are indeed tense; but credit must also go to the performers: the strings are played with a keen awareness of the importance of both dynamics and detail, and Moor, in his capacity of ‘improviser’ brings texture and tone delivered with an infallible intuition. The album’s structures may be subtle, almost invisible, but they’re affecting, and as a whole, Hypnokaséta (2020-2021) is an experience which permeates the psyche in unexpected ways.

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Anne-James Chaton, Andy Moor, & Yannis Kyriakides – Handmade Volume 01: Douceurs

Posted: 5 June 2023 in Singles and EPs
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Unsounds Records – 15th June 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

These are certainly three names to conjure with as prominent features of the experimental scene. Anne-James Chaton and Andy Moor have collaborated on numerous albums, and I personally discovered them via the Transfer series in 2011, around the same time as Chaton’s Evenements 09, which I found fascinating in its contemporary application of loops and with its parallels to the cut-up technique and Burroughs’ and Gysin’s tape experiments of the late 50s and early 90s.

As the biography which accompanies the release of this lates outing explains, ‘the duo Andy Moor and Anne-James Chaton continue their conversation with a new set of digital singles, diving this time into the rich language of the traditional metiers. The Handmade series is an homage to crahftsmanship through an exploration of the lexicons specific to bakery and pastry making, jewellery, joinery and wrought iron making, that will unfold over the course of 4 thematic volumes. With guest Yannis Kyriakides on electronics they create works where abstract notions mix with tangible ones by linking the arts of the hand with sound and poetry.’

The Moor / Kyriakides collaboration A Life is a Billion Heartbeats proved to be a gripping work for quite different reasons, and one thing that’s always a feature of any work featuring Moor is his versatility, as well as the fact that he doesn’t use the guitar in a remotely conventional fashion.

The two tracks on this single really do showcase the strengths of all three artists, and shows just how collaboration and collectivism can amplify individual powers.

But never mistake ‘art’, however obscure or experimental, for something which is always entirely serious: This, the first of the ‘Handmade’ series – projected to comprise four digital singles, to subsequently be released as a CD album and download, akin to the Transfer series, sees them taking on ‘the vocabulary of pastry making… Side A «Garniture» offers a curious anthology of poetry written by mixing the actions of the pastry chef, units of measurement and figures of speech. On Side B, «Sur Mesure» deploys all the richness of the culinary language when it comes to expressing the scarse [sic] or the plentiful’.

Truth be told, for a non-French speaker, the linguistic twists and any humour associated with the juxtaposition of subject matter and context with delivery are lost beyond the cover art, leaving simply the sonic experience – but this alone is more than enough. Chaton’s monotone spoken word is nonchalant and gives nothing away, while Moor peels off shards of dissonance from his guitar amidst drones and hums and clanks and a distant but insistent clattering percussion. Feedback and irregular discordant chanks and un-chords all crash and slide across one another in an irregular latticework of noise.

‘Sur Mesure’ is less challenging, less overtly difficult and dissonant, and sees the three employ the same elements but to an altogether more subdued and atmospheric effect, making for a good contrast against ‘Garniture’.

There’s no doubt that most would simply file this under ‘weird shit’, but it’s a strong experimental work which delves deep into dynamics, tones, and unusual juxtapositions, and really prods at the neural pathways in the most unexpected ways.

(Click the image for audio)

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Andy Moor – Music For Safe Piece

Posted: 17 June 2021 in Albums
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CD Unsounds 68U – 15th June 2021

Christopher Nosnibor

No-one plays guitar quite like Andy Moor. Renowned for his work with purveyors of expansive and exploratory avant-jazz The Ex, Moor’s solo work takes that guitar work from a collectivist, band setting, where it’s a part of a conglomeration of instruments, and places it directly under the spotlight.

As the liner notes explain, Safe Piece is an exploration of the question of parenting while maintaining an artistic practice. Choreographer Valentina Campora, who initiated the project, began testing the possibility of dancing onstage with her baby as an experiment. The project became a series of 8 performances where Campora performed with the baby for a small public. Andy Moor, father of the child and Campora’s partner, accompanied and gave a sonic context to this experiment. Each performance was filmed by visual artist Isabelle Vigier for the video Safe Piece (a film).

Tye tracks sequencing is segmented in a way that perhaps make more sense in context of the filmed pieces. There are three themed chapters, if you will, pieced together in chunks – but identifying any specific thematic unity that connects them is difficult. Moor moves between single-string pings and frenetic fretwork. But for the most part, this is sparse and lugubrious downturned fret buzzing notes slumping down like a machine winding down as the batteries run down or clockwork unwinds to a crawl. There’s some growling, gut-churning low-end that provides substantial contrast with the nagging of the picked top notes. There’s fret-buzz and warped, slashing chord chanking, stuttering stop/start shudders and jarring , jolting unmusic, that’s uncomfortable at times – not just a bit awkward, but fully squirm-inducing, setting the nerve-endings of the teeth on edge.

Across the album’s thirteen pieces, Moor’s minimal style that centres around scratching and scraping and all other kinds of angular guitar abrasions are front and centre. Discord and atonality are his signatures – but at the same time, he conjures myriad moments of fractured musicality. Hums and thrums and crunches crash through picked chord sequences and segments that sound like tuning up and down in frantic search of the note and not quite finding it.

Safety is paramount, but Music For Safe Piece brings a cognitive dissonance that’s difficult to process in places. But we know that comfort is overrated, and that art should proffer challenges, and Music For Safe Piece brings plenty.

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Yannis Kyriakides & Andy Moor – Pavilion

Posted: 15 June 2020 in Albums
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Unsounds 65U – 15th June 2020

Christopher Nosnibor

While Andy Moor’s distinctive guitar playing is central to this collaborative work, it’s worth stating from the outset that this is a challenging listen. Spacious and eerie, above all it’s atonal and discordant, as if the two musicians are playing against one another, rather than with, and, moreover, against themselves, particularly in Moor’s case as he digs deep to pick notes in counter-time and counter-melody.

How this album came to be is worth recounting, so I shall quote directly: ‘In 2017 Andy Moor and Yannis Kyriakides were invited to participate in Xavier Veilhan’s ‘Studio Venezia’ at the French pavilion for the 57th Venice Art Biennale. This was a space where a series of musicians were in residence throughout the six month duration of the festival, recording and performing there in an open environment. The two musicians had access to a variety of instruments and machines including Moog, Buchla and Vermona synths which were used for some of the recordings. The unusual situation here was that they were working in a studio, experimenting, trying out ideas while at the same time being a part of an ongoing art installation. So they were part of the space, yet not really knowing whether they should play for the crowds who were constantly passing through the pavilion or just ignore them.’

‘The result was nine hours of recorded material mostly improvised or based on a few basic rhythmic patterns that Kyriakides had prepared as starting blocks. For this album they selected 45 minutes of what they considered to be the strongest material after several listenings and editing sessions.’

That’s a lot of material, and a lot of whittling and editing, but the end result is well-assembled and flows together nicely – while at the same time mining a seam of arrhythmia and clanging dissonance. Moreover, each piece is distinct and distinctive, with different textures, tones, and moods, and as such, Pavilion represents a disorientating, difficult journey.

The layers on ‘Camera’ build at different rates, crossing over one another and interfering with one another’s time signatures so as to become bent out of shape, colliding against one another in a clutter of discoordination. The synth bass on ‘Dedalo’ warps and scratches and scrapes away as low grooves that trip and curl, wow and flutter. There’s a playful side to it, with the rhythmic swing and metallic clattering that sounds like pots and pans, which contrasts with the more ponderous atmospherics of ‘Concha’, a nine-and-a-half minute exercise in detuning and retuning, as notes bend and bow with a slow, resonant decay.

‘Diluvio’ is unpleasantly tense and prickly, and the album ultimately drifts towards an uneasy conclusion with the last couple of pieces, which are simultaneously dolorous and soporific, albeit in a dark, horror-movie dreamscape sort of a way.

Pavilion leaves you feeling… not quite bewildered, but spaced, separated, as if standing half a step behind your own body or your own shadow. It’s less about if this is a good thing in itself, as much as the fact that this is a work which has a degree of psychological resonance, which marks it as a creative success.

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Yannis Kyriakides Andy Moor – Pavilion

Anne-James Chaton / Andy Moor / Thurston Moore – Heretics

Posted: 26 December 2016 in Albums
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Unsounds – 54U

Christopher Nosnibor

This is one of many releases I’ve been sitting on – figuratively speaking – for a long time without getting round to playing. I tend to listen to CDs while at work in my day-job, and digital promos at home (because I can’t stream or download on work systems), and while I can stuff a bunch of regular CDs into a jiffy and carry them to and from the office, the packaging of this release made it simply impractical. That, and the fact I had to battle long and hard with myself to resist the urge to burn the thing.

It’s not that I have any kind of objection to any of the artists in this three-way collaboration, or take issue with its premise, namely a series of portraits of radical heretical figures from across history, spanning Caravaggio and the Marquis de Sade, to William Burroughs and Johnny Rotten. In fact, it’s a concept I can get on board with, and for months I’ve looked at the magnificent packaging, a box-type affair which folds out to reveal a CD, a DVD and a book containing all of the words to the tracks – some in French, some in English, some in a combination of the two – forming a rich linguistic tapestry. Published in an edition of just 1,000 copies, including 26 lettered copies, it’s a work of art, not a disposable piece of trash. But the box is a giant flip-front matchbook. The front cover is made of fine sandpaper, and glued inside the flap, on its own, stark and inviting is a match, a full fore inches long. What would be more in keeping with the spirit of the project than burning it without hearing so much as a note, and reviewing the sound of the fire taking hold and the rustle of art burning, the colour of the dancing flames and the texture of the ash? It would hardly be Watch the KLF Burn a Million Quid, but nevertheless… I’m a pussy. I was also too curious to explore the contents of the package. And having heard the album and watched the film, there was no way I could even pretend to burn it. I’m weak. I’m no heretic.

Chaton, Moor and Moore are no heretics, either: they’re artists who appreciate heretics. It’s not always obvious to whom each piece relates, and perhaps a priori knowledge of the individual heretical figures is beneficial, as is an ability to translate French. ‘The Things that belong to William’ does not mention Burroughs by name. However, the bilingual text, in referencing ‘a Paregoric Kid’, ‘Pontopon Rose’, ‘Joselito’, ‘Bradley the Buyer’ and a host of characters and scenes from Naked Lunch and beyond, the connection is clear – to those versed in the author’s work. ‘Poetry Must Me Made By All’ is, then, presumably, a dedication to Comte de Lautreamont, pro-plagiaristic precursor of the Surrealists, Situationists and Neoists, as well as the cut-up technique of Burroughs and Gysin.

Textually – these are texts and not lyrics, delivered in a spoken word / narrative form – it’s an erudite work, researched, intertextual, referential. Sonically, it’s no more immediate. Oblique, obtuse, challenging: these are the first descriptors which volunteer their services in untangling Heretics.

‘Casino Rabelaisien’ is a tense effort, with angular guitar clanging perpendicular to a gritty, awkward bass grind. Chatton remains nonchalant and monotone amidst the chaotic no-wave cacophony. ‘Dull Jack’ begins with Thurston’s voice alone, before churning guitars slither in. There are no regular rhythmic signatures here, no ‘tunes’, no hooks or melodies: instead, this is a set which uses instruments in a more abstract way, conjuring uneasy atmosphere and often simply attacking the senses.

With the guitars of Moor and Moore duelling, playing across one another as much as with one another, the effect is jarring, uncomfortable. Both players employ atonality and discord within their performances, and when discordant passages collide, it’s a brain-bending experience.

Heretics is a work which delivers on its promise and conveys the spirit of the outré, unconventional artists who inspired it. It is, in addition, a true work of art. Don’t burn it.

Heretics