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Those who have taken the time to check out the recently updated Contributors page for The Brain may have noticed my Top 10 list for 2003. Collectively, the readers made so many lousy choices in this year's poll that I felt compelled to remind everyone that there were far more worthwhile releases in this past year than were reflected by the all-too-predictable choices. One such example comes from French producer Jonas Bering on the high-quality Kompakt label, whose releases continue to set the bar for progressive electronic music.Kompakt
Sketches For The Next Season is the full-length follow-up to 2000's debut Bienfait and displays the increasingly more danceable and accessible direction that he has moved towards over the years. The ten tracks that make up this sophomore effort are healthy doses of shimmering ambient techno and funky minimalist tech-house ideal for both bedroom and nightclub enjoyment. On the opener "Diabold," crisp 4/4 beats and tiny rhythmic elements groove along while a clinically mechanical bassline reminds us that this is 100% machine music. From there, however, the music only gets warmer. Tracks like "Nighthawks," "Ninas Song," and the absolutely gorgeous "Wissant" emit and emote near-psychedelic vibes that penetrate the mind for the sole purpose of releasing massive amounts of serotonin. I make this drug-related comment because Sketches For The New Season had a truly narcotic impact on me. Despite the fact that I was clean and sober while listening to it, I honestly felt doped up under the influence of Jonas Bering's mood-altering melodies, rhythms, and atmospheres. The echoey effected bell sounds of "Mustang 1966" twinkle and gleam over the sparsely filled spaces between beats, espousing the concept of less-is-more that characterizes most dub records. (Just so that we're clear, this album is just as much of a dub record as those from Pole, Vladislav Delay, or any other Basic Channel / Chain Reaction descendents.) Appropriately made available prior to this album's release on 12" vinyl, the single "Normandie 1" consists of a clicky bassdrum loop over some deep, deep synth textures that flood the senses. Appropriately the high (no pun intended) point here—the song's catchiness—is instant and the aurally hallucinogenic qualities are very real. Now, I haven't lost hope in all of the readers just yet, so I'm hoping that those who whined publically or privately about my Warp-bashing will take heed to what I'm saying here and purchase what was truly a worthy last minute entry to my aforementioned list. If you fail to do so, then you truly deserve eachother. All of you.
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Everybody should know by now that this boxed set completes the CD collection of all the live Throbbing Gristle concerts begun with the CD release of 24 about a year ago. Complain all you want about cashing in or whatever, but for the package, it's an appropriate price.Mute
The 10xCD set starts with the infamous Oundle Boys School (see the video with only boys between 9 and 16 in attendance), includes both Berlin shows at the S.O. 36, the Rafters gig, and ends with both US performances in Los Angeles and San Francisco. All shows have been remastered by Chris Carter and the results, once again, are astounding. First of all, these releases completely invalidate nearly all the bootleg live releases that have popped up over the years and officially released recordings like Mission of Dead Souls and the Discipline 12" with recordings that, while never crystal clear perfect, are considerably better, even when apologies are being made regarding the source material (with the exception of the Los Angeles show). Hearing the audience screaming back to the group is a wonderful insight that was usually completely muffled out by hand-cassette-made releases in the past, along with the funny opening stand-up comedy-like remarks from Genesis P-Orridge. However, what I do think they fail to do with this is compile the other cassette releases: the TG Live In the Studio (which was bootlegged only recently as Pastimes/Inudstrial Muzak) and the two untitled interview cassettes IRCA and IRCB issued with the original 24 Hours cassette box. Additionally, while the absence of track markings for each new song doesn't bother me, the absence of songlist does—especially when it was chronicled on the Chris and Cosey website a couple years back, before the utterly pointless Industrial Records website came into existence. Finally, the gifts in this box are rather dippy when compared to the illuminating book, postcards, buttons and patches that came in the 24 box: four metal credit card-sized pieces of die cut engraved metal stencils to make your own TG flash symbol. But, honestly, for the price, it's still a pretty good deal.
samples:
- Introduction (Sheffield - IRCD 33)
- Guts on the Floor (Heaven - IRCD 40)
- Marriage Carriage (Veteran's Auditorum - IRCD 44)
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It might be easy to think about this, Jeck's seventh solo release, as marking a maturation or a refinement of the artist's sound, but that analysis cheapens the singular vision he's established over the past years. Sure, he arrived in the wake of Christian Marclay's ground-breaking turntable explorations, after groups like Zoviet France had set the bar for grainy, delay-ridden loopscapes, but Jeck has, since his beginnings, created some of the most distinctive music to emerge from either turntablist or ambient traditions.Touch
He is peerless in his ability to wrest absolutely transporting, surreal textures from little more than the grooves of a few dozen records, working in a way that exposes the primitive quality of the medium almost in conjunction with, or in spite of, the hallucinogenic displacements achieved in the music. With Jeck this is never an uncomfortable experience, as the majority of his compositions lead to places awash in the same golden light and aquatic splendor that fill his Wozencroft-designed sleeves, but when it's best, Jeck's music is as riveting as it is meditative or nostalgic. Fragments of vinyl crackle and machine hum get amplified, distorted, and piled together, making static slopes that are often quicker to pummel than to caress (see "Skew" from Jeck's other new release, Host). Other prized moments find Jeck throwing truly alien records into the mix; most memorable for me are the vocals copped from some moaning gospel singer(?) that appear on 2002's enchanting Stoke, slowed down and otherwise manipulated to simulate a kind of divine response. Moments like these show the artist taking risks that remain largely absent on 7, making it an under-whelming listen. While there are many beautiful sections throughout the disc, Jeck does little to separate himself from the droning masses. Like most of his recordings, 7 was produced live, an impressive feat, especially since signs of artifice are now at an all-time low. Here, Jeck approaches a sound where all surface noises, tone-arm shivers, and loop outlines disappear in service of the whole, but the polished, perfectly integrated result comes off lacking much of what made his music so interesting before. Several of the tracks build on simple patterns or pale, one-dimensional drones, allowing for only subtle transformation over their (relatively) short lengths. 7 could be Jeck's most understated work yet, and the music is, of course, not without merit. Tracks like "Some Pennies" come close to rivaling the artist's previous work, but nothing here has the potential to invigorate, much less summarize or redefine an already impressive body of work. Those looking for a Jeck fix might have more luck with his newer, more eventful release, Host.
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- Michael Patrick Brady
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- Taylor McLaren
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- Andrew Culler
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MIO continues what's looking like a campaign to reissue all the lost gems of the Nurse With Wound list with this long-forgotten and seminal document of the French progressive scene. Birgé Gorgé Shiroc were Jean-Jacques Birgé, Francis Gorgé, and Shiroc before the first two formed the flagship prog collective Un Drame Musical Instantane. Recorded in 1975, Défense de is their only record under the BGS moniker, entering the arms of obscurity only one year before Un D.M.I. became active. As such, the record paints a picture of the Birgé and Gorgé in an early stage of their development, but one that was already overflowing with good ideas.
The music is highly improvisational with strong ties to the free jazz and fusion of the day, made progressive almost single-handedly through Birgé's obsession with bizarre synthesizer sounds and his ability to incorporate a huge variety of exotic instruments, toys, tapes, even birdcalls into the mix. Much of the album sounds like Crossings/Sextant-era Herbie Hancock with a gritty, psychedelic edge where simmering, minimal passages get broken up by clustered freak-outs instead of nimble funk turns. At under 45-min., Défense de needed a little padding for reissue, and MIO has been more than generous. To the CD they've added a bonus half-hour of album-session outtakes, and the package also includes a DVD with six hours worth of home tapes and live material, plus a 40-min. film by Birg? and film school friend Bernard Mollerat called La Nuit Du Phoque ("The Night of the Seal"). Predictably, this previously-unreleased music, dubbed collectively "The June Sessions," explains Stapleton's fondness for the group much better than the album, the only thing he could have possibly heard. They show BGS at their most adventurous, dabbling in everything from murky, proto-industrial textures, to Fripp-ian guitar ascensions, to the extended, vague takes on music drama that inform their work as Un D.M.I. The band's wide-open approach to constructing their multi-layered compositions is no doubt what attracted Stapleton's ear, and these sessions make available near-exhausting investigations into the group's "process." The film is good too, a hilarious Dadaist trip through Paris and surrounding environs, with English subtitles and a score that isolates Birgé's more ambient, textural approach to synthesizer and organ sound. The enormity of this reissue is enough to guarantee its appeal to fans of prog-anything, and admirers of Un Drame Musical Instantane will be shocked that a cache this large has eluded them for so long. 
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