Posts Tagged ‘Experimental’

Sly and the Family Drone – Every Knife In This House Is Mine

Posted: 4 August 2023 in Singles and EPs
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The Quietus

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s not that I like to brag, but I’ve been writing about Sly and the Family Drone since 2012, when they blew me away at the Brudenell in Leeds, with a chaotic, percussion-heavy, audience-participation-led performance (and since when my writing has improved and I’ve become a shade more sensitive, perhaps). Witnessing Matt Cargill standing aloft on a stack of amps while surrounded my members of the crowd battering drums distributed by the band was one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life, and I was an instant convert. In some respects, I was fortunate to witness it: in a recent interview, Cargill was at pains to stress that it’s one of those spontaneous things: “It doesn’t happen at every gig,” he warns. “And I don’t want it to become a thing that people expect or are disappointed when we don’t do it. There are times I’ve seen people write, ‘Bring your drumsticks!’ I’ve never said that and I don’t want you to do that! If we were doing it every night people would be, like, ‘Oh, fuck off! They’re doing their schtick.’”

It’s this spontaneity and true commitment to improvisation that is a significant part of the band’s appeal. You never know quite what you’re going to get, and there’s a sense that nor do they: it all unfolds in real-time.

Their subsequent releases since my introduction in 2012 have never disappointed, and for me, at least, the best thing about Sly is that they embrace the difference between the live and recorded media. As such the recordings are the recordings, the performances are the performances. Explaining the difference to The Quietus, Cargill says “It was nice to be able to do all that spatial and stereo stuff which we wouldn’t be able to do live,” he says. “Because of mics on drums and stuff, it just doesn’t really work in that way. So we were able to spend a bit of time just working on that and doing some quite weird-sounding drum stuff which I’m really happy with.” The same article also explains, ‘The passages of manipulated drumwork are bookended by the band performing together in full skronking and lumbering flow and, in a move that vaguely echoes the ecstasy of their live sets’ endings, it finishes with a warm and symphonic cacophony of horns. “It’s kind of a pieced together track but I think it works as an entire piece,” reflects Cargill.

They have forged a career – or perhaps eked one, on the breadline, with a cult reputation which exceeds the returns a fringe act can attain in this crappy climate, a climate whereby post-Brexit overseas travel is prohibitive and not just financially – from being far out. Embracing elements of jazz and noise and a whole spectrum beyond, it’s fair to say that this is an act who plough their own furrow, and for that, respect is due, and them some.

This latest release is – as ever – an interesting one. It’s a limited lathe-cut 12” released via The Quietus, a publication with an immense reputation for its championing of the weird and the wonderful, and which perhaps more than any online publication with a significant readership plugs the gap left when Sounds, and then Melody Maker ceased to be. For non-subscribers, it’s available digitally via the usual platforms.  The ones I don’t use or advocate. But I digress. ‘And Every Knife In This House Is Mine’ is Sly at their best.

As a single track – less a composition than an exploration – with a running time of twenty minutes, it’s an EP or an album by some bands’ standards, but what it ultimately is is an immersive experience which sees them make the most of having access to studio facilities to push their sound further in different directions.

It’s a shrill, rippling wave of feedback that pierces the eardrums in the opening seconds which announces its arrival before a tempest of crashing drums, wayward brass and extraneous noise deluges in, and more happens in the first forty seconds of this tune than the entirety of many albums. Shortly after, it settles into a thunderous groove, the rhythm section grindingly heavy while wild horns – Kaz Buckland’s alto sax and James Allsopp’s baritone sax interplay is a back-and-forth that is timed with perfect precision.

There’s a lot of reverb, and a lot of space here. They pull back from the brink of pure chaos and meander through some expansive gentler passages, before, each time, exploding into a wild crescendo. It’s hard to differentiate snarling electronics from barking vocal yelps , and there isn’t a second where there isn’t something happening. It’s impossible to maintain a commentary on this sequentially.

A tumult of noise, bleeps and glitches, bloops and whirls, all fuse to form a wild cacophony, and it’s pure bliss to yield to this sonic tidal wave. But over the course of the track’s twenty minutes, there are constant ebbs and flows, the lower-level churning swashes rendering the louder segments and extended crescendo’s all the more impactful.

Things get decidedly Throbbing Gristle around the midway point, with swampy electronics and groaning low swoons taking things down, disrupted by random clatterings of percussion, before things take a turn for dark around the fifteen minute mark, with drones that sound like a 747 heading towards the ground in a nosedive… and then the climaxes with an extended jazz frenzy, and… woah.

Running through every form and texture, Every Knife In This House Is Mine is both exhilarating and exhausting… and everything you would expect from Sly and the Family Drone, and all that jazz.

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Loaf of Beard – Dog

Posted: 3 August 2023 in Albums
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skoghall rekordings – 4th August 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

This one feels like it’s had more build-up than any previous releases on either of Dave Procter’s labels, the recently-founded skoghall rekordings,, or the more established noise-orientated Dret Skivor: there have been numerous one-line quotes, snippets of lyrics from the album posted on social media in the last month – and it’s certainly piqued my interest as to just how far this latest project will take things.

Not that far, my notes suggests, but that’s no slight. You see, Procter’s output is copious and widely varied, from the abrasive noise of Legion of Swine to the recently-released acoustic protest songs of Guerrilla Miner. In between, there’s the grumpy spoken-word-with-noise of Trowser Carrier and the technical experimentalism of Fibonacci Drone Organ. But – and this is something I can say from personal experience – Procter is also a strong collaborator, one who’s open-minded and intuitive, but at the same time always retaining his own unique style as a clear element.

Loaf of Beard’s debut, Dog, features ‘2 British immigrants in Sweden point the finger at the state of politics in their home and former home countries, in a number of musical styles’. When they say ‘a number of musical styles’, it’s like listening to Joh Peel in the 90s, where baggy indie and experimental stuff would be crammed back to back with trance and grindcore. It’s all good, but it’s like a musical fancy dress party, with the pair tossing on different outfits and doing a different genre to go with it. And sometimes, it’s as if they’ve thrown on flares and a biker jacket, or a cocktail dress and a gimp mask by way of a combo.

‘Zippy Was a Blairite’ raises the curtain on the album in a post-punk style, and harks back to arguably one of Procter’s most popular and cherished musical vehicles, The Wharf Street Galaxy Band, with a nagging, elastic bassline pinned to insistent drums. Here, they’re programmed rather than acoustic, but that crisp, cracking vintage snare sound serves the purpose well of (re)creating the sound of the early 80s – but it’s the sound of the 80s as reimagined by Sleaford Mods, a primitive loop providing the musical accompaniment to the lyrics… and those lyrics are bitter. And at the risk of sounding like a crackling piece of overplayed 80s vinyl with a scratch, the current renaissance of the sound of the dark days of Thatcher in Britain is no coincidence. After thirteen years of austerity and the quality of life of the average worker being eroded faster than the world’s glaciers are receding, the mood is gloomy, angry, nihilistic. We can’t even think about protesting without risking being arrested. ‘The middle of the road is sitting on the fence’, Proc half-sings, half-speaks, reminding us of something many of us knew at the time, but chose to overlook because it meant getting the Tories out: New Labour was a long way off left in real terms: ‘pseudo-left credentials, politics so central’, as they summarise, chucking in a well-placed ‘motherfucker’ for essential emphasis.

Following ‘No Puffins for You, Lad,’ and Dale Prudent’s piece about pigeons, ‘Birds’ revisits the avian fascination that’s been a long-running theme in Procter’s work, and it’s a semi-ambient, spoken-word piece, which collides with the gritty chug and hyper-energised pumping of ‘Hund’, which comes on like Metal Urbain. ‘It’s a man in a frock!’ It’s a succinct summary of the indignation of the culture wars that obfuscate the real issues that are crippling the country.

That snarling glammy stomp of ‘Boothroyd Every Time’ is pure quality, and celebrates both a strong woman and a fellow Yorkshire person, and if ‘The Atrocity of it All’ is a less than subtle hectoring rant about the fucking state of everything it’s entirely justified, and the mangled, frenetic groove of ‘Cock’ may not be sophisticated, but it drives to the heart of the way the rich are milking the country dry while blaming increasing wages for inflation. Funny how wages are going down but profits aren’t isn’t it? No, it’s not remotely funny. Cock. Yes, Richboi Sunk, we’re looking at you.

‘Vote your life shitter / get your life shitter!’ Procter repeats over and over on ‘Lagom Murder Diaries’ and it doesn’t matter if he’s preaching to the converted here. Fuck. Just tell it to anyone who will listen: vote tory, get fucked. ‘Shithouse’ is comedically loose slacker funk, which finds Dave having a stab at rap. It’s not really his forte, but there’s a nice bassline and nagging guitar that’s a bit Orange Juice. It’s an odd mess of a tune that sounds a bit like a more tongue-in-cheek Yard Act.

‘Good’ sounds like Chris and Cosey but with that classic Northern flat vowel delivery in the vocals adding to the gritty groove as they sneer at the cuntiness of greedy capitalists. As if there are any other kinds.

Dog is fun, challenging, and tells it like it is. Fuck the Tories.

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Carl Stone –Electronic Music from 1972-2022

Posted: 22 July 2023 in Albums
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Unseen Worlds – 4th August 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Having failed to make it to Carl Stone’s show in Leeds the other week – in the same way I’ve failed to make pretty much any shows this year and am largely tied to engaging with music in recorded forms for the foreseeable future, it feels only right that I should compensate in some small way with a review of his upcoming compilation album, a monster career-spanning triple album.

And when it comes to his career, the title sets out the immense landmark it represents. Not just the fact that this release is a summary of a career spanning half a century, but the broader context that there has been electronic music for so long. Village Voice have called him “the king of sampling”. Being born in 1975, I only became aware of sampling in the late 80s, and while Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk and Throbbing Gristle are legendary as pioneers of electronic music, you probably don’t generally think of there being many other artists breaking ground and experimenting as far back as 1972.

The accompanying notes provide an outline that’s easier to quote than to summarise: ‘Electronic Music from 1972-2022 seeks to frame fifty years of Carl Stone’s compositional activity, starting with Stone’s earliest professionally presented compositions from 1972 (‘Three Confusongs’ and ‘Ryound Thygizunz’, featuring the voice and poetry of Stefan Weiser – later known as Z’EV) up to the present. This collection is not meant as a definitive history but rather as a supplement to be used alongside the previous two archival releases. It is simultaneously an archival release marking Carl Stone’s evergreen 70th birthday and a document of archival art. In the spirit of disorienting repetition and layering, call it an archive of archiving.’

This, then, is by no means a retrospective in the conventional sense, but it does clearly trace a trajectory of the evolution of Stone’s work. The album doesn’t spread the tracks evenly, being weighted heavily to certain years, with each year effectively representing an era.

The 1972 material, which occupies side A and represents the early years, is very much a cacophony of loops and echoes, reminiscent of William Burroughs and Brion Gysin’s tape experiments of the later 60s, and foreshadowing the first releases by Foetus and Cabaret Voltaire, as well as the disturbing drones and processed vocals off Throbbing Gristle, and clearly very much ahead of its time and venturing into the realms of dark ambient before it was even given a label.

Side B leaps forward fifteen years to 1987, with a brace of scraping, discordant pieces, both of which extend beyond the ten-minute mark. The production of these more structure, beat-orientated collage pieces is quite eye-opening: how times and technology change! ‘Vim’, which sounds like a cut-up of The Beach Boys is very much a cut-and-paste assemblage of loops, but the sound is crisp and marks an evolution more of light years than actual years. At ten and a half minutes, it feels it goes beyond proving its point, but then again, perhaps that is a point in itself. It also reminds us of the changing musi8cal landscape: 1987, the year the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu released the sample-riot 1987: What the Fuck is Going On. This is significantly more sophisticated than the JAMMs, and takes a less confrontational approach to the application of the emerging technologies. In contrast, the other 1987 track, ‘Noor Mahal’ combines tribal drumming and hypnotic folktronica, prefacing the airy new age folk crossover forms that would bubble up in Enya’s ‘Orinoco Flow’ and The Beloved’s The Sun Rising’ a year or two later.

And this is what ultimately threads Stones’ work together. He’s astute enough to be aware that evolving technologies are in themselves the soundtrack of the times, and it’s clear listening to this in sequence that experimental music invites chicken-and-egg discussion as to whether the music evolves because of the way technology facilitates it, or of the technology encourages those who are so inclined to push it to its furthest ends.

There’s just one nineties cut, with the jaunty ‘Flint’s’ from 1999, before the millennium brings a selection of dark jerky pieces (‘Morangak’ (2005) is a particularly gnarly Dalek-like mess of a loop) with two absolute beasts in the form of ‘Ngoc Suong’ (2003) and ‘L’Os à Moelle’ (2007), which both sit around the twenty-three minute mark and occupy a side of vinyl apiece, proving particularly disorientating. The former is also particularly testing, an experience akin to water torture, while the latter is… different by its sameness. Like listening to The Eagles on a three-hour car journey. I woke up with a jolt, my face on my keyboard, realising my review was incomplete and it was fifteen minutes later than it had been, and this track feels like a comment on the time in which it was created. It gets weirder as it progresses, of course.

Cut forward to 2022, with three much shorter pieces occupying side F, and ‘Walt’s’ presents a different kind of surprise, being bright, crisp, with technicolour energy and it’s almost game-showy. Spinning folksiness with cornball AI –sounding blooping, and also whipping in some Bollywood bang and an 80s synth-pop vibe, it’s dizzying, and these elements are present in varying levels on ‘Kustaa’ and ‘Merkato’ which are overtly ‘world’ music inspired wile spreading in all directions at once. And this, ultimately, is what Electronic Music from 1972-2022 tells us: Carl Stone has spent five decades ahead of and / or capturing the zeitgeist, distilling the essence of the contemporary into a headspinning whirl. This may be a swift tour, but at the same time it’s comprehensive, and well worth exploring.

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Me Lost Me – RPG

Posted: 9 July 2023 in Albums
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Upset The Rhythm – 7th July 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Personal confession: I’ve had a tough few months. No, I don’t really want to talk about it, but the name of Newcastle-based artist Jayne Dent’s musical vehicle is one which resonates – because the fact is, it’s easy to lose sight of yourself, especially when under stress, especially when under pressure, especially when dealing with difficult circumstances.

Yes: me lost me, albeit briefly, meaning the moniker s relatable. But you have to get lost to get found, and without fail, at least in my experience, music has a remarkable capacity to have a positive effect on one’s mental state.

If old favourites may offer solace, discovering new music can often prove cleansing, as you approach it fresh and without association, and because you’re engaging and exploring instead of retriggering recollections as with music that’s familiar (I find listening to music I know well is only half-listening while my fills the gaps, and I suppose that’s part of the appeal: it’s easier and less demanding when you know every word and exactly what’s coming next, than grappling with something, and familiarity is comforting. But the challenge of the new seems to run through different neural pathways, and in paying attention to something, your focus turns to that something instead of idly looping over those forefront throughs you’re seeking respite from.

I suppose it’s the same reason people enjoy and become rather obsessed with Role-Playing Games, or RPG: they offer an escapism that the passivity of TV or movies don’t. While I’m not a fan myself – having reluctantly dabbled with Dungeons and Dragons, I found it slow and contrived and it simply didn’t grip me – but I get it. I get it. What I get more is the tension which runs through this album, the fourth from Me Lost Me, which started out as a tentative solo project before subsequently expanding to a collective. What I get are the themes, as set out on the accompanying notes:

‘Hauntological in part, RPG is concerned with tales and with time – are we running out of it? Does insomnia cause a time loop? Do the pressures of masculinity prevent progress? Jayne Dent asks these questions and more on RPG, her homage to worldbuilding and the story as an artform, calling back to those oral traditions around a campfire, as well as modern day video games – bringing folk music into the present day as she does so.’

It certainly feels as if we’re running out of time, and an exponentially-accelerating pace. We’re recording the hottest global temperatures on record and are looking like going the way of the dinosaurs not long after the whole of Lincolnshire – our largest county for domestic agriculture, which sits several feet below sea level – is reclaimed by the waves, turning Boston and its stump into the Atlantis of the 21st Century, yet our government is more preoccupied with ‘stopping the boats’ and painting over murals that might look a bit ‘too welcoming’ to asylum-seeking children than stopping oil and fracking. Once again, as I type, I’m hot and flustered and short on breath. In this context, ‘Heat’, released a few weeks ago, hits the mark. We’re on a collision course with the end of days. RPG explores – in its own way – this end of days anxiety.

‘What things have you seen in real life and thought that’s not real, that’s like a video game?’ Those are the words of the sample which open the album, on the hypnotic collage that is ‘Real World’. It got me thinking: what have I seen? Truth is, simply turning on the news seems unreal these days: every day there’s something that makes you think ‘you couldn’t make this shit up.’

‘Festive Day’ exploits traditional folk instrumentation with spartan strings, plucked and scraped, and drones, and there’s an ‘old’ vibe to it, particularly with Dent’s lilting vocals, which occasionally soar magnificently as she sings of sand and sea. ‘Mirie it is While Summer I Last’ is pure folk, an acapella round of traditional-sounding folk that would be perfectly as home on a Steeleye Span album, and instrumentation on ‘The God of Stuck Time’ is minimal – but there are warping electronics and contemporary issues strewn through the lyrics, not least of all in the refrain of. ‘Checking in again / Checking Out’. It speaks of the world we live in.

Where RPG succeeds is in that is doesn’t moor itself to any one form or period: ancient an modern, sparse folk and fractured electronica alternate and sometimes collide: ‘The Oldest Trees Hold the Earth’ is magnificent in its simplicity, its earthiness, and Jayne’s voice is magnificent. It evokes the spirituality of the centuries when alone or with minimal accompaniment, but when backed by electronica or more jazz-leaning backing, it also works, as an instrument and as a carrier for the words, which cover considerable ground, both ancient and modern.

RPG sounds pretty, but it’s serious and it’s quite dark in places – but it also traces the contours of landscapes past and present with a lightness of touch that’s uplifting. With so much texture, detail, and atmosphere, this is an album that’s subtly moving, and there isn’t a moment that’s predictable here as it veers between folk, electronica, ambient, and abstract noise. Lose yourself in it.

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Watch: ‘Like A Poisoned Dog’ by Khanate

Posted: 29 June 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Khanate, who recently ended their fourteen year hiatus with the surprise release of To Be Cruel (Sacred Bones Records), have debuted an experimental short visual for ‘Like A Poisoned Dog’, bringing the Karl Lemieux-created album art to life.

“These stills are abstract but depending on the context, they become objects and objective. And alongside Khanate, they have this strange organic feeling,” Stephen O’Malley notes. “They’re abstract, hand-painted film stills, not photos of organic objects or something, which I think is really interesting because it’s similar to our music. We put a frame around the music with a concept and it presents something, but otherwise, it’s abstract. This lined up very well with Karl’s work.”

“In addition to my other film work, I like to work with camera-less film techniques and paint directly on 16mm film,” explains Lemieux, whose resume includes films, installations and performances that have screened at a variety of venues including the Montreal Contemporary Arts Museum, MOMA San Francisco, as well as over a decade of collaborative work with Godspeed You! Black Emperor. “In 2021, Stephen asked if he could use some of those images for the new Khanate record. I’m someone who spends a lot of time flipping through the artwork of records, CDs, and cassettes…. It’s part of my listening ritual. I have always loved Stephen’s record design work and I was very excited about this collaboration and the way it all came out. The idea for a video came later. It’s not a film, it’s not a music video, but some kind of collision between an excerpt from the piece ‘Like A Poisoned Dog’ and the raw material that I used to make still images.”

Watch the video here:

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Tony Buck – Environmental Studies

Posted: 29 June 2023 in Albums
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Room40 – 30th June 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

There is no quick way to consider this album. And for many reasons – the first being that it needs to be heard in its entirety before being able to summarise and pass critical comment. The second being that after hearing it, one needs to drag themselves from the wreckage of their psyche and process an experience that is likely akin to a week being subjected to psychological experiments at the hands of the CIA under MK Ultra. Brace yourself…

As his bio points out, ‘Tony Buck is no stranger to the realm of durational performance and composition. As a part of Australian unit The Necks he has been central to defining a reductive, but rich sound language that equally interrogates timbre and time…[and] with Environmental Studies he moves even further into these longitudinal pursuits.’

Longitudinal is one word to describe this album. It’s a single, continuous piece, some two hours in duration, and while there are a couple of five-minute excerpts designed to give potential listeners an indication of what it’s like, it’s simply impossible to convey the experience in snippets. The snippets are lifted from the album’s lighter moments: that doesn’t mean they’re mellow, melodic, but the multi-layered clattering percussion that’s evocative of some kind of space-jungle and brief segment of avant-jazz feedback is nothing in the wider context. And – as I always say – context counts.

While chart music – geared toward snappy three-minute cuts which are 90% chorus – and the inclusion of streams when compiling charts, has effectively killed the album in the mainstream, further afield (and to be fair, you can’t get much further afield than this), the album is still very much a cherished format for both artists and listeners alike. In fact, it’s interesting to observe the rise of the really long album. I will often harp on about Swans releases from the last decade, but they’re not isolated. Frank Rothkkaramm released an album as a 24-hour CD box set – which couldn’t be much more different from Throbbing Gristle’s 24 hours box – as he explored sounds which helped with his tinnitus. Numerous doom, drone, and ambient albums in recent years have really pushed the parameters of an album thanks to digital releases not being subject to the same limitations of physical formats – or the same production costs. Is the medium the message? Perhaps, at least to an extent.

The recorded medium was always an issue: even going back to the height of the classical era, once recording became possible, the media limited what could be released, meaning to hear a full performance of, say, Handel’s Messiah, you had to be there, since even a recording which required a box-set album release required truncation. It also, of course, required the turning of records and the segmentation of the work.

In its day, Earth’s groundbreaking Earth 2 challenged the conventional notion the ‘the album’ – more even than any monster prog releases like Yes’ eighty-one minute Tales from Topographic Oceans and the two-hour plus, sprawling triple YesSongs. Because what differentiates these is the fact that Yes was a lot of noodling wank, while Earth did something different, with a specific desired effect intended, and its duration was in fact integral to its cumulative effect, namely that of a sonic blanket of suffocation. Anyway: the point is that Environmental Studies is an absolutely immense album, and it’s a work that needs to be heard as an album. You may find yourself drifting in and out, but it feels as if this is part of the experience: better to drift than experience in fragments.

The accompanying notes describe Environmental Studies as ‘An incredibly dense matrix of interwoven voices and layers, each occupying and exploiting a unique space within the fabric of the sound-environment, co-existing to slowly reveal themselves in multiple interconnected relationships.’

Immediately from the start, the listener is assailed by a deluge of discord and dissonance and streams of noise. It gradually drifts through an ever-evolving, eternally-shifting journey, where mellow jazz piano and slow-melting notes emerge and drip slowly over cascading cymbals and an infinite array of extraneous sounds which wash in and out. There are passages of supple, strummed acoustic guitar – which get harder and more challenging at times but also explore mellow passages –– and gurgling extraneous nose, straining, clattering. There are sections which so tense, straining and submerged by noise that as feedback twists and turns and groans and hums, that the enormity of Environmental Studies finally hits.

There are infinite layers of percussion rattling shakes and clangerous curiousness, with errant twangs and all kinds of shades of strange, with dingy distortion crashing in heavy amidst the a maelstrom of noise that sounds like a hundred pianos being thrown down a hundred flights of stairs at the same time while someone in the top floor flat blasts a Sunn O))) album at wall-cracking volume and there’s a fire broken out in the basement and it’s rapidly escalating upwards.

An hour in, we’re in sonic purgatory – and it’s absolutely magnificent. The polytonal percussion builds and builds; industrial, tribal, everything all at once, with sonorous drones and crushing distortion and noise and wailing feedback whistling and screaming all the while, it’s a relentless barrage of sound – but not noise, and that’s an important distinction here. There are noises, and they’re collaged into something immense, with the rattling of cages and furious beating of skins.

When it does simmer down, some time further in, we find ourselves in an alien landscape, that’s strangely spacey and tense before the next round of percussion barrels in. Environmental Studies is big on beats, but not all of the beats are big: insectoid skittering and scratchy flickers are as integral to the complex interweaving as the thunderous floor toms and reverberating timpanis, and everything melts together to weave a thick sonic tapestry.

While there is nothing about Environmental Studies which is overtly heavy in the conventional sense, to immerse yourself in the album is an exhausting experience, both physically and mentally. But if art doesn’t challenge, what is it for? It’s merely entertainment. This is not entertainment. But it is an incredible work of art.

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Šarūnas Nakas – Ramblings

Posted: 9 June 2023 in Albums
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Music Information Centre Lithuania – 7th June 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

This is one of those releases where the context counts for almost as much as the content: ‘The cycle of nine vocal, instrumental, and electroacoustic pieces, Ramblings, a large part of which was written as music for the scandal-plagued drama play Literature Lessons by Jonas Vaitkus, was recorded in 1985 in the legendary Vilnius Record Studio, which at that time was very open to experiments. The recordings were made using a multi-channel tape recorder, a borrowed KORG synthesizer, saxophones, a prepared piano, a cello turned into a noisy bass, percussion, and bells. The composer used all the texts and the title for the cycle from the poetry collection Ramblings by Almis Grybauskas. According to the composer, this poetry is minor, cold, and laconic, like his favourite cool jazz style, while the title Ramblings itself raises a lot of questions, is a bit provocative and irritating.’

‘Provocative’ and ‘irritating’ are appropriate enough adjectives, it has to be said. Indeed, ‘ramblings’ suggest something unfocussed, incoherent, unstructured, and this is a wild ride which flies off on tangents every which way. Yet while the shapes of these compositions may be loose, there’s a definite sense of purpose, not to mention an atmosphere about them.

The further story is significant to this release, and it provides not only a fascinating insight into the way politics can often be the enemy of the arts, but also freedom of expression more broadly. It’s also a tale of underground rebellion, defiance, and strength of will.

‘After the premiere of the performance, the composer could have had a very bad ending – after “terrible” reviews and complaints appeared in the press, the Soviet censorship ordered the performance to be banned and the creators punished. Even the head of the composition department at the time suggested that this “cacophony” should be given the lowest grade, condemning Šarūnas Nakas to be expelled from the conservatoire, which would have meant being conscripted into the Soviet army during the Afghan war. Fortunately, professors Julius Juzeliūnas and Bronius Kutavičius saved their student.”

I mean, it is a “cacophony”. Ramblings is a jumbled mass of layered vocals, atonality, and exploratory jazz, the kind of jazz that prioritises performance over listenability, the kind of jazz that’s about the experience, the kind of jazz that’s interested in the relationship between notes and isn’t afraid of dissonance, discord, variable time signatures. At times tranquil, at others ominous and abstract, there are parts of Ramblings which are wild, chaotic, completely unconstrained. This is, of course, just how it should be.

The story continues as to how thew work escaped destruction at the hands of its persecutors: ‘It was the time of cassette tape recorders, and music was quickly reproduced, so Ramblings began its own journey, playing as background music on radio and television but never being published as a complete cycle. Later, only one piece called ‘Merz-machine’ was singled out from the cycle as an example of Lithuanian experimentalism and released in 1997. It then underwent a kind of renaissance: versions were created for different ensembles, including the Czech avant-garde rock orchestra Agon and the London piano sextet pianocircus. The sextet has performed the work more than 100 times in dozens of countries.’

It’s fascinating how an obscure musical work can infiltrate so many different channels, and effectively exist in a life entirely removed from itself. Consider the fact that parts appeared, internationally, unknown and uncredited. This isn’t only the most remarkable example of subversion for a supposedly ‘banned’ work, but also demonstrates how music can take on a life if its own. ‘Merz-machine’ is, without doubt, an outstanding piece, challenging and discordant as it is, but it’s only partly representative of the album as a whole: it’s certainly by no means background music.

The fact of the matter is that there is no one pierce on Ramblings which is really ‘representative’. Ramblings is truly eclectic, and odd, and that’s its design, its objective. From a critical perspective, it’s almost immaterial whether I like it or not – and I certainly like some pieces more than others – but it’s not aiming to please, and certainly not aiming to please all of the people for the duration. Despite being almost forty years old, Ramblings sounds contemporary – and still sounds challenging. That’s timeless.

AA

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LapCore – Fear_of_D[istraction]

Posted: 7 June 2023 in Albums
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fals.ch – 9th June 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

On clocking this in my inbox, I fleetingly felt a flicker of amusement as I recalled a long-lost article I had written over a decade ago about fictitious musical genres, which included LARPcore, where bands inspired by Viking Metal re-enacted historical battles in full costume. (I also mentioned Symphonic Doom before the term appeared as a thing). Then I realised that, as I’m prone to doing when I’m not concentrating, I’d misread, but then on reading the notes which accompany the new album by Kent Clelland, aka LapCore (which makes a lot more sense in context of what he does musically), my amusement was replaced by a certain crackle of excitement.

For this reason, it’s worth quoting: ‘With Fear_of_D[istraction] LapCore continues his exploration of digital audio synthesis and distortion techniques, researching the complex tonal digital structures he affectionately refers to as cTonality. In contrast to the more upbeat and aTonal album LapCore 132 (his 2017 full-length self-published release), Kent Clelland has freed himself to explore the darker, and more cerebral faces of computer music composition. With multi-channel oscillators he brings sonic entrainment into the musical range of frequencies as opposed to the typical sub-audible entrainment frequencies, composing melodic and harmonic parts with the artefacts to create cTonalities.’

But here’s where it gets interesting, and will likely prove divisive:‘Weaving polymetric binaural oscillators with a lopsided bass drum engine, he lulls your senses into a state of receptivity upon which he then sews synthesised tapestries inspired by his hyper-perceptual, cancer-treatment-infuenced dogma adventures in the pre-pandemic delirium. LapCore produces these tracks as an attempt to preserve his brain damaged audio hallucinations, sharing them in a venue larger than the space between his ears.

‘The performance of LapCore’s Fear_of_Di[straction] (2017-2022) is a 48 minute sonic quilt of recordings of AI Musical Agents during training sessions intricately hand-sewn into the fabricated projection of the audio dimension.’

Yes, Fear_of_D[istraction] incorporates elements of AI. ‘Nooo!’ people will likely shriek and no doubt some will be unhappy even with my writing about this album on this basis for propagating the death of the artist. But the death of the artist – if we take ‘the author’ in a broader context – has long been a preoccupation of literary theory and postmodernism, as far back as Roland Barthes’ 1967 essay of the same title. Yet now, as we find ourselves pondering what some are variously referring to as post-postmodernism or metamodernism, there is mass panic over the chimera we have created with speculation that not only artists but most occupations will be obsolete in a matter of years and we will soon be driven to extinction by our errant creation. I’m reminded of numerous sci-fi novels, not least of all Michael Chrichton’s Prey. Published twenty years ago, it feels more relevant now than ever, as is the way with much true science fiction, which takes current science and projects hypothetically forward, but also demonstrates that this fear is nothing new. And yes, of course, we – as a species – have pursued this end. Our demise through AI seems unlikely, but if it does happen, we probably deserve it.

While AI photos and even falsely-attributed Guardian articles are giving great cause for consternation – understandably – overall, it’s still the potential of AI which is scarier than the current capabilities, and this is nowhere more evident in music, where it’s fair to say that most purely AI generated compositions are toss. But also, in more experimental fields, composers have been using algorithms and customised programmes to generate sound since the advent of computers and synths – and I have covered countless of these in the last fifteen years.

LapCore incorporates AI as simply another tool in his kit, and has used this hybrid of man and machine to forge a work that melds Krautrock and minimal techno, microtonal experiments and harsh electronics to eye-opening effect.

The first of the album’s seven compositions, ‘Stuck Like a Magnet in Switzerland’ is built around grating oscillators and some extreme stereo panning, which is well-executed, and immediately grips both sides of your cranium and squeezes. The flow of blooping synthesised rhythms is rent with a buzzing distortion the like of which some of us will remember as the way a mobile phone signal would interfere with the TV – and at three times the volume of the busy bubbling track, it comes as an uncomfortable moment of shock. All kinds of feedback and interference disrupt the musical melange thereafter, dial-up tones and all kinds of electrical chaos collide and crackle unpleasantly. But being unpleasant doesn’t make it bad: this is one of those works that is relentlessly challenging in its pursuit of ‘difficult’ tones, textures, and frequencies, often simultaneously.

‘Microdose’ feels more like an overdose, as an angry hornet the size of a lion takes residence in the space at the front of your skull, right in the sinuses, and vibrates your brain without mercy against a backdrop of disjointed techno. This is some brutal synth torture, and elsewhere, there are drones and whistles reminiscent of early Whitehouse and Throbbing Gristle, atop dome very DAF-like electronica. ‘Americium’ is busy, a constant drip and froth of watery notes bouncing against one another – and it sounds experimental. And this is the key to appreciating Fear_of_D[istraction]: it’s not a work that tries to pretend to be a human creator hiding behind AI for a laugh, and nor is it the sound of AI running wild. Instead, it’s an album which sees its creator consider the challenge ‘how can we use this?’

If it sounds somehow ‘impersonal’, the same is true of much electronica; by the same token, Fear_of_D[istraction] very much sounds like a guy pressing buttons and twiddling knobs and looking to see just how much disruptive, disturbing synthy noise he can throw over a sequenced beat. The artist isn’t dead yet.

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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David Toop & Lawrence English – The Shell That Speaks The Sea

Posted: 4 June 2023 in Albums
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Room40 – 2nd June 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

I’ve been engrossed by Lawrence English’s works for some years now, and my appreciation of him and his methods were only enhanced when I conducted an interview with him about ten years ago for a now-defunct site (so many are now: the idea that once online it’s there forever has been proven false, and we’re all sitting, bewildered by as rapidly-vanishing archive of the recent past), where we touched on cut-ups and William Burroughs and I was struck by the depth of his knowledge and references.

But I have grave concerns around future history, or the future of history. While the move to digital was hailed as a move toward permanence, incorruptibility, the opposite has proved true. No-one writes anything down anymore, no-one produces additional. tape copies. If your hard-drive gets fucked, so does your entire library. The Cloud? Do you even know where it is? Does it even exist?

While we reflect on this, let us also consider this album and its slow gestation. David Toop is another artist I’ve spent some time listening to, and writing about, including his Breathing Spirit Forms three-way collaboration with Akio Suzuki and Lawrence English, but this is the first time just the pair of them have worked together, and Lawrence explains its evolution as follows: ‘Over the years, David and I have shared an interest in both the material and immaterial implications of sound (amongst other things). Moreover we’ve connected many times on matters which lies at the fringes of how we might choose to think about audition, our interests seeking in the affective realm that haunts, rather than describes, experience. The Shell That Speaks The Sea very much resonates from this shared fascination… I’m not exactly sure when we first mooted this duet, but I sense its initial trace is now more than a decade ago. I tend to live by the motto of ‘right place, right time’ and I believe David likely also subscribes to this methodology. A couple of years ago, David and I reignited the duet conversation and began exchanging materials. As a jumping off point, I explored a series of field recordings that, for me at least, captured something of this affective haunting that I mentioned previously’.

And haunting it is: ghosts of memories and fragments of half-recollections lurk and loom amidst the thick, dark shadows forged by the unsettling sounds. The title suggests an album of soft ambient washes, a gentle tidal swash, a soothing, tranquil work. It is not.

‘Abyssal Tracker’ is remarkably atmospheric in a sparse, gloomy, sense, and provides a fitting introduction to the duo’s idiosyncratic work, compiling sighs and vocal rasps over elongated strains of feedback and a suffocating atmosphere. Shrill shrieks echo out over eerie notes and a scratching insectoid clamour in the trebly range. Thuds ripple beneath the surface: there is so much texture and detail here, you find yourself looking about nervously, seeking the various sources and to see what’s over your shoulder, or hovering above your head.

Clanks and clatters and clanks and thuds are the dominant features of this album, and is lasers fire into the abyss of emptiness on the dense and disturbing ‘Reading Bones’, which scratches and scrapes, while there are earth-churning low-range disturbances – and words, but they’re indecipherable, spoken in low, whispering grunts, and it’s impossible to decipher even the language, sounding as it does like an ancient incantation.

It’s not all quite so skin-pricklingly tense, but much of it is: ‘Mouth Cave’ is dark, dank, low and rumbling, but has textures and what sounds like the trickle of running water spattering in the background amidst the cavernous gloom, and if ‘Whistling in the Dark’ sounds like a simplistic description, it’s accurate – but also suspenseful, scary and bordering on horror tropes; the whistling is deranged and floats through a heavy, crackling doomy drone. There are more ominous mutterings amidst the creeping darkness of ‘The Chair’s Story’, which feels like casting a look back through the ages through a thick fog at scenes of torture and pain and great sorrow and forward, to a laser-bleeping future.

As I seem to be prone to lately, I found myself nodding through fatigue but also, simultaneously, tense and alert during The Shell That Speaks The Sea, an album which possesses vast sonic expanses and a bleak, oppressive atmosphere. Each track offers something different, and this only accentuates the ‘otherness’ of the music this album contains; it’s like walking through a series of disturbing dreams, whereby each scene presents a new unfamiliar setting, and there are hints of BBC Radiophonic Workshop and vintage sci-fi about this incredibly imaginative work.

It may have taken a long time to piece together, but the results make the labour more than worthwhile.

AA

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