Being thankful for an earful.
Brand new music by Marie Davidson, Niecy Blues (feat. Joy Guidry), CEL, Marisa Anderson and Luke Schneider, Stina Stjern, Carmen Villain, Murcof, A Lily, and Far Golden Pavilions, with music from the vaults by Tomaga, Ozzobia, Jan Jelinek.
Sushi photo by Lindsay.
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I definitely have a soft spot for industrial music that is so goddamn industrial that it is literally just the sound of machines, so I am the target demographic for this suite of compositions built upon recordings from two French printing facilities.  It is very hard to say how much conventional "composition" was involved though, as Offset often feels like pure audio vérité that has just been cleaned up and EQed for maximum impact.  That is fine by me: regardless of how much or how little studio tweaking, manipulation, and multi-tracking actually took place, Meursault's inspired selection and sequencing yields a very coherent, weirdly hypnotic, and intermittently dazzling whole.
Doubtful Sounds/Universinternational
Offset may seem like an album that draws from very narrow source material, but Pali Meursault's previous album (2011's Without the Wolves) featured a 20-minute piece built from recordings of a melting glacier, which must make recordings of printing presses seem positively liberating and limitless by comparison.  In fact, Meursault actually found these field recordings to be fertile enough material to sustain two fairly different creative directions, one of which is covered on each side of the record.
The first side is devoted to rhythmic patterns or cycles, which is the most obvious theme to explore when faced with a room full of vibrantly whooshing, buzzing, clattering, and clunking machines.  The recordings are predictably and appealingly relentless and mechanized-sounding, but Meursault occasionally surprises me with a striking passage that transcends my limited field recording/collage expectations.  For example, "Cycle 1" sometimes sounds like the labored inhalation and exhalation of some kind of massive metallic monster, while "Cycle 2" sounds absolutely nightmarish when a grindingly dissonant buzz cuts through the crunching and echoing clanks.  Parts of "Cycle 4" even manage to sound like some kind of cutting-edge experimental dance music, as its locked-groove-sounding rhythm starts to resemble a minimalist bass line with dynamically satisfying stops-and-starts.
The second side of album is dedicated to the idea of "flux" and focuses upon the gradual morphing of the machine rhythms, which turns out to be where Meusault's skill and vision truly manifest themselves.  The first of the two lengthy pieces, "Flux 1," is the album's clear highlight, but its brilliance does not become fully evident until the very end.  Instead, it just sounds like constantly clicking, whooshing juggernaut of thrum, which is still quite impressive.  In fact, its sheer relentlessness is utterly mesmerizing, as are its constant minor shifts in texture and density.  Its sole flaw is that the momentum occasionally flags, but that setback is easily eclipsed by the surprise ending where everything coheres into a full minute of shuddering, sinister-sounding machine drone.  The longer "Flux 2" does not quite achieve a similar feat of last-minute alchemy, but is otherwise equally hypnotically propulsive.
Naturally, a vinyl-only album of printing press-based electroacoustic compositions is about as "niche" as it gets, but Meursault unquestionably excelled at what he set out to accomplish: there are definitely some people out there who will want to hear this and they will be very happy when they do.  A small part of me secretly wishes Pali had been more aggressive in his treatment of the material or perhaps collaborated with someone who might have taken the recordings in a more conventionally musical  direction (Offset seems like it would be prime grist for a killer Esplendor Geométrico album), but most of me just appreciates Meursault's commitment to purity and is largely awestruck by what he was able to accomplish with such a willfully limited palette.
 
It is not surprising that Tom Smith and Rat Bastard's TLASILA project would release such a baffling work as this. Three discs, four-plus hours (more if the bonus downloadable material is included) and more than 60 artists reworking their material. However, Smith took it upon himself to mix the contributions into long form DJ sets, making it an odd and difficult release to listen to at times. However, with the slew of diverse artists represented, both well known and not so well known, the challenge and effort is worth the listen.
The concept behind this release is this massive collection of artists took improvisational recordings from the Noon and Eternity album, as well as isolated tracks from The Cortège and Épuration albums in order to construct their contributions/remixes, which were then sequenced and blended together to create these distinct, disc-long megamixes that are unrelenting in their approach and duration.
Perhaps it is just my own attempt to make sense of this work, but the three mixes seem to have some sort of genre-associated cohesion to them, albeit in the loosest sense.Disc one, My Finger Was Hooked, seems a bit heavier on the harsh noise end of the spectrum.Opening first with RM74's brittle digital noise of "Bones, Beers and Muscles" and immediately followed up with Howard Stelzer's untitled work of fuzzy tape collages, it takes on a noise vibe right away.With the likes of Carlos Giffoni, Aaron Dilloway and 16 Bitch Pileup appearing, it is some heavy players in the world of noise, even if the mixing makes it occasionally hard to tell who is contributing what.For example, I think Dilloway's contribution of "In Memory of Phil Anselmo" is the one full of cut up Thin Lizzy samples with TLASILA material, but I could be completely wrong.Plus, there are some more music moments around, such as the techno stomp and helium voices of Otto Von Schirach's "Cream Pie 2" keeping things weird.
I Offer Syrup embraces more of the conventional world of electronic music as a whole, from Sickboy Milkplus' "TLASILA THAF Remix" sputtering out with canned drum machine rhythms and stuttering breakbeats to Richard Devine’s microsound laden "V2 Mix".To keep things from being overly similar though, both Dave Philips and Rudolf Eb.er appear in this mix to represent the Schimpfluch scene, as does Thee Majesty, who supplies an abstract ritualistic electronic collage.
Finally, I Offal and I Stumble puts a bit more emphasis on the drone artists, with the likes of William Fowler Collins, C. Spencer Yeh and Kevin Drumm all making their appearances within this disc.Of course it does not stick to some consistent plan, with the likes the random junk cut-ups of Evil Moisture and the harsh noise of Torturing Nurse also rearing their distinct heads.Most surprising, however, is a collage/spoken word appearance by Jared Louche, formerly Hendrickson, of Chemlab (one of my long standing musical guilty pleasures from high school).It is not exceptional really, but his appearance alone made me smile.
While I understand this work from a conceptual standpoint, I would have preferred to have seen these contributions indexed individually, as there are a few pieces I would rather listen to multiple times, and others that, while not especially bad by any means, feel more like filler when placed alongside the more unique artists.It is easy to appreciate and enjoy it as is, but I personally would prefer it as a more traditional compilation album rather than the DJ mix setup that it is.But, given the artist responsible for the project, that sort of rewarding frustration is not surprising in the least.
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Menche was the first American noise artist that I was able to embrace, as his approach to art was not only unique (the first work I heard was him processing the sound of salt rubbed between contact mics), but it also was cliché and pretense free. It was simply the work of a man who loved experimenting with different sounds and ways of generating them. While he has stepped back from his more prolific past, the works that he has been releasing are more fully fleshed out and rich, and these two albums are no exception. With Vilké building upon drums, guitar, and wolf howls, and Marriage of Metals focusing exclusively gamelan, the two are vastly different in approach, but the same in quality and structure.
The four track, double LP of Vilké is perhaps the most traditionally musical work I have heard Menche having his hand in.The A sides of both records emphasize his more recent fascination with percussion and drums as a starting point for noise collage.Part one is an instantaneous percussive oblivion, with non-stop pounding clattering from left to right throughout.Processed howls of wolves rise up early on, mutated resemble a choir of human voices.Midway through some of his harsher noise tendencies shine through, but even with them in place, there is an overall sense of structure and organization to be heard.
The third part focuses on percussion that is somewhat ritualistic in nature, but cut up and shaped into an unnatural, thudding sound and static laden brittle rhythms.An almost synth-like pattern also opens the piece that soon falls apart into noise chaos, but is then pulled back together again by an expansive, but obscured ambient melody.
The fourth part is perhaps the most different from what I am used to with Menche's work, with erratic, reverb heavy guitar opening and staying prominent throughout the piece, giving a certain metal edge overall.Menche has never made his love of heavy metal a secret, but this is the first time I have heard it overtly shine through in his art.Even when heavy effects and layering leads to a more traditionally noise oriented sound, there is still a bit of metal bleakness to be heard.
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Marriage of Metals is a bit more understated in comparison, however.His processing of gamelan into a deep, low-end thump and overdriven guitar-like noise layers makes it not even vaguely resemble its underlying source at first.A slowly evolving rhythmic structure stands out, and again it has more of an overall musical quality to it, while still resembling nothing traditional on its surface.
On the flip side, the initial sound is not as removed from traditional gamelan, although filtered into a dense, glassy sound as opposed to its traditional resonating clang.It has a delicate timber overall, somewhere between Indonesian music and church bells with a bass heavy undulation beneath.Compared to much of his previous discography, it is downright subtle and beautiful.
While he has gone through periods where new material appeared monthly, Daniel Menche has seemingly taken his time in putting these two works together, and it shows.Distinctly different from one another both in concept and in overall sound, both bear signs of careful artistry and composition, something many artists filed as noise are often apt to not use.The final pieces on both releases also show a developing sense of true musicianship, albeit skewed and idiosyncratic, but employing a sense of structure that rivals that of the best composers.Both stand out as brilliant releases in a long and extremely impressive discography from one of the true unsung masters of sound art.
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While it often feels like the sun has probably set on the golden age of noise, no one seems to have told Lee Howard, as this effort sounds like the culminating masterpiece of a man who has been single-mindedly hellbent on perfecting power electronics for years.  It was time well-spent, as the album's better pieces remind me exactly why I became excited about noise in the first place, as there are few things quite as bracing as a masterfully crafted blast of gnarled brutality.  Thankfully, however, Howard does not rely solely upon force alone, wisely balancing his remarkably articulate ferocity with subtle musicality, clarity, and a highly developed understanding of space, traits which elevate this album far above just about every other recent noise release that I have encountered.
Before I heard this album, I suspect it would have been extremely difficult to convince me that one of 2013's best albums would be by a British PE guy with an unhealthy Princess Diana fixation, but Who Will Help Me Wash My Right Hand? makes quite an unambiguous case for itself.  Of course, Lee Howard is no ordinary purveyor of power electronics, as he makes immediately clear with the opening "For You I Will," which is built upon little more than an undistorted bass riff, an oscillating hum, a high-hat, and Lee's treated vocals.  Aside from the distorted vocals, the piece bears almost no resemblance to any PE that I have heard, as it is remarkably minimal and boasts a likable "rock" groove, which is probably the most un-PE thing imaginable.
Somehow it all works though, which I attribute almost entirely to Howard's unusual vocals: rather than howling about rape or serial killers, Lee sounds like a man trying to deliver a fitful monologue through a broken microphone that hopelessly clips everything he tries to say.  Buried much deeper in the mix, however, Howard's vocals seem to continue in radically different form, resembling heavily reverbed inhuman howls.  Thanks to the elegant simplicity of the stripped-down music, the strange after-images and echoes of Lee's voice are allowed to be heard and appreciated with complete clarity.  It is an impressive feat that Howard replicates once again with the following "This Dog Has No Master" with slightly different components: conveying simmering menace by moving slowly and leaving a lot of space for his ruined-sounding nuances to make their full impact.
Lee is not always quite that restrained, though, which gives the album some much-appreciated dynamic variation.  The best example of Howard's more ferocious, unhinged side is "Be Forever Green," which begins with a seemingly regressive and shout-y static-fest before it beautifully coheres into a relentless march of massive buzzes of gnarled dissonance that sounds like an unstoppable army of robots slaughtering their way though a post-apocalyptic waste-scape.  On any other album, such a piece would have unquestionably been the highlight, but Howard immediately eclipses it with the epic (and brilliant) "Saltpulse," which more or less tore my head off.
Like "Be Forever Green," "Saltpulse" begins in relatively unpromising fashion, opening with a low drone, a persistent buzzing, and obsessively repeating wobbly swells of mutant bass.  After several minutes, however, it starts to resemble Sonic Youth trying to tune up inside a working trash compactor–still not entirely promising, perhaps, but certainly unexpected. Eventually it starts to sound like everything is shorting out and the song is ending, but then a beautifully melancholy hum slowly fades in from beneath the stuttering wreckage and gradually takes control of the song.  Lee eventually takes the microphone to shout a bit, but the underlying melody transforms his howls and the surrounding crackling entropy into some kind of haunting, ravaged, and rotted elegy that stands as one of the best pieces that I have heard in a very long time.
Naturally, the closing title piece cannot help but be a disappointment after such a tour de force, but its strange 5-minute flurry of lurching swells, bleeps, and oscillating chaos is objectively not bad.  It may not be nearly as compelling and memorable as the preceding four songs, but it does not ruin the spell either, which is the most important thing: any hint of tired PE cliché would have dragged down an otherwise flawless effort.  Rarely have I heard such a perfect mixture of exacting focus, restraint, concision, and intelligence mingled with such crushing heaviness.  This is a truly great album.
This, Zoviet France's first major release in over a decade, originally surfaced last fall as a characteristically cryptic and incredibly limited box set containing rubbings of neolithic Northumbrian stone and a vial of hawthorn berries.  Unfortunately, it completely sold-out world-wide on the day it was released, so most of us never got to hear it.  Until now, anyway, as alt.vinyl has now issued a second (and more affordable) version.  Hawthorn berry enthusiasts will no doubt be a bit dismayed by the hyper-minimal new format (three black vinyl records in three entirely black sleeves), but it certainly fits the music, as 7.10.12 offers up roughly an hour of minimal/quasi-ambient loopscapes.  While they certainly offer many subtle nods to ZF's weirder, more abrasive past, these records feel more like the beginning of a curious new phase than a triumphant return to form.
This is a very difficult album to assess with any semblance of objectivity, as a new Zoviet France release is unavoidably colored by both my own expectations and the band's shadowy, fractured history.  Given the group's original shifting, collective nature, the very idea of a "Zoviet France" in 2013 is a bit blurry and perplexing, as only Ben Ponton remains from the early days and most of the key personnel from ZF's prime splintered off to form the very different Reformed Faction.  Consequently, this duo of Ponton and Mark Warren bears only fleeting resemblance to the group responsible for Shouting at the Ground.  Instead, this is a continuation of the ZF responsible for albums like Digilogue and The Decriminalization of Country Music.  That distinction is an important one: 7.10.12 is not a suite of post-industrial/sci-fi tribal experiments–it is more like a monolith of somewhat austere sound art.  That is not inherently a bad thing, but it is certainly a radical stylistic difference.
In its own way, however, 7.10.12 is still a very bizarre and inscrutable effort.  For one, it has a rather unique format that is thematically intertwined with its title and release date: a 7", a 10", and 12" LP.  Secondly, the music has the feel of an evolving narrative or soundtrack, but no clues are given as to what it might mean nor how it might relate to the prehistoric relics/symbols included in the original box.  The song titles, while sometimes evocative, offer little insight at all (and actually are not even provided on the physical release).  Finally, all of these 18 pieces feel like discrete fragments intertwined with one or two simple recurring motifs.  There are many very promising ideas scattered across the three records, but none of them ever seem to evolve into anything more.  Perhaps that is by design, but it is certainly a puzzling structure: intriguing loops constantly appear only to be eventually subsumed by subtle variations of the eternally repeating central drone/ambient motif.  On one hand, that ebb and flow provides an illusion (or reality) of cohesion or larger purpose, but I cannot help but wish that either the primary theme(s) were stronger or that the lesser themes were allowed to grow into something more.
Still, some of the loops show flashes of inspiration, which is both promising and frustrating.  For example, the B-side of the 7" ("The Leaves of the Birch") sounds like a blurred and queasily dissonant music box adrift in a sea of tape hiss, which could have been the foundation for something wonderful.  Instead, however, it just fades in and then gradually fades away after 3 minutes or so.  The other two records are even more riddled with seeming missed opportunities and/or teasing snatches of greatness: imaginary field recordings from hallucinatory forests, warped tribal woodwinds, woozily dreamlike/annoying locked grooves ("Freezeling"), roiling feedback ("Stimatze"), creepily backwards and damaged-sounding swells, and ominous atmospheres abound.  Time and time again, however, Ben and Mark just allow their best ideas to appear and disappear without any apparent evolution.  Again, that may be by design (a series of strange, dreamlike loops taking shape, then dissipating), but it still drives me a little crazy.
Despite my best efforts to unravel the mystery of 7.10.12' or find something profound or fully realized to grasp onto, I cannot help but feel somewhat disappointed by this effort.  I would probably be a lot more charitable if this were not a Zoviet France album, but I love Zoviet France–if that name is going to be resurrected, I want it to be attached to something unambiguously wonderful and distinctive.  Ponton and Warren certainly had many fine ideas, but their impact is is dissipated by a seeming lack (or misuse) of compositional ambition coupled with way too much conceptual ambition.  In a very broad sense, there is a definite logic and cohesion to these three records, as each functions as a self-contained whole while maintaining a strong link to the others.  However, it did not offer much reward for me in an immediate, song-by-song sense: 7.10.12 is essentially a single decent ambient piece chopped up and stretched across three records, interspersed with sketch-like, fleeting glimpses of something a bit more strange and compelling.
I guess I do not fully understand what Warren and Ponton were hoping to accomplish with this effort, nor do I know whether or not they succeeded.  The structure and presentation just seem less-than-ideal for the material, particularly in the 7" format, as having to flip a record after just over 3 minutes makes sustaining an immersive reverie impossible. Still, it is very easy to imagine many of these pieces working beautifully as part of an installation or a soundtrack, even if they a bit too static and fragmented to make any kind of strong statement on their own.  Which, of course, is an unfortunate irony, given that the lack of any kind of text or visual accompaniment basically implies that the records themselves are the entirety of the statement.  Ultimately, 7.10.12 is a bit of an ambitious, promising misfire: I am happy that Zoviet France are back and that they still have something to say, but they have not quite worked out the best way to say it.
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Having had a few years elapse since hearing my last Masami Akita record, this seemed like a good time to step back in. The best thing about following this schedule with his work is that the variation and evolution he has shown in his overall sound keep things consistently fresh. Takahe Collage covers both his harsh noise past and his flirtations with rhythm in a way that meshes together perfectly.
The first two pieces clock in at around a half hour each, making this album not among the easiest to digest, but Akita excels within these longer frameworks.The title piece launches off immediately, presenting his more recent approach to electronic rhythms, but processed in his own idiosyncratic way.A paring of an blasting drum machine with lurching machinery underscores an erratic barrage of dive-bombing sine waves.
The rhythms continue throughout, evolving and shifting from synth pulses to insistent bulldozer surges to mix both distorted noise and pure, aggressive tones.At times the rhythms lock in and the remainder of the mix becomes more sparse, and a very Information Overload Unit era SPK sensibility bleeds through. Within the closing minutes, however, he goes for the usual balls out Merzbow noise roar.
"Tendenko" is more of a throwback to the mid '90s era of Merzbow (which is where my experience with him began), that goes for the walls of slowly shifting noise that the Incapacitants do so well, with a bit less of Akita's junk metal noise shining through.As old school as it is, there still is a buried, underlying rhythm that nods to his more recent works, covering both classic and modern sounds.
On the shorter (at a paltry 12 minutes) closer "Grand Owl Habitat," once again the rhythms are removed, with an overall dense, complex structure with individual pieces sliding in and out from one another:a rigid, stuttering rhythm with blasts of noise going off all around.It is similar to the title piece, but not quite as diverse, but due to its comparatively shorter duration it is not a problem.
After having burnt myself out on his release schedule in the latter part of the 1990s, my more contemporary experiences with Akita's output have been both more enjoyable and more rewarding.While my self-imposed distance from his always exponentially expanding discography may have improved my appreciation, Takahe Collage feels like more than that: a compelling work that is not just a great Merzbow record, but an exceptional noise album on its own.
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As only their second performance together, the first consisting of a collaborative live show, the duo of Leslie Low (The Observatory) and Lasse Marhaug (Norway's undisputed king of noise), this improvised performance combines two distinctly different approaches to music and sound, but the combination makes perfect sense and pairs together powerfully.
The paring alone makes for an odd proposition, with Low's looped and processed guitar and voice intonations resulting in rich, warm melodies and drones, while Marhaug's brittle, but expertly manipulated electronic noises covering two very different sonic spectrums.The resulting songs are made all the better with this clash of sounds, and actually do sound very song-like in their consistency and structure.
"Silver Needle, Silver Dragon" begins with Marhaug's overdriven, waxy noise passages skittering above a morose passage of melody, resulting in a dark but not oppressive sound.The noise making for an appropriate accompaniment to the dirgey tones, not a drastic shift or distraction that it could be."Each Bay Its Own Wind" has a similar structure, mixing ghostly guitars and sputtering, electronic pulses that become a bit more harsh and jumpy as the piece goes on.
Some of the performances seem to lean more into Marhaug's world of dissonance than Low's melodicism:"Fleas Were The Ancestors of Mankind" keeps with the chirpy noises, pushed into shrill and brittle realms, but never getting too raw or abrasive.The throbbing, low register notes and crunchy noises of "Eggs and Emptiness" also only hint at melody but instead make for more of a showcase of the harsher electronic noises.
Both "Let the Old Philosopher Use You" and "Elixir of Death" go a bit further out into space.The former mostly reduces the traditional instrumentation to ghostly winds, focusing instead on fragmented outbursts and some bizarrely organic, monstrous cries."Elixir of Death" keeps the guitar mostly unprocessed, but with a more bleak, almost metal tone to it.The electronics are wetter and nastier, and the whole thing takes on some oddly structured electroacoustic tone before falling apart into a world of sputtering noise.
I am more familiar with Lasse Marhaug's overall body of work, and here he once again shows his unparalleled brilliance in controlling harsh and ugly noises and shaping them into rich and complex compositions.His contributions here are distinctly him, but compliment Leslie Low's more refined, traditionally musical elements quite well, making for a stark, yet fitting contrast.What could come across as simply feedback mixed with someone else's musical tracks instead makes for a taut, conceptually fleshed out collaboration that is brilliantly moody and diverse in its sound and structure.
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The fundamental elements of singing and vocalizing are easy to miss in most music. All singers, even the very worst, unconsciously coordinate the various processes required to sing musically, so that respiration, phonation, resonation, and articulation collapse into sung phrases or wordless melodies. Phil Minton and Audrey Chen work to undo that coordination. They break their voices down, emphasizing the dental clicks, nasal hums, and various fleshy noises typically masked by melodies and lyrics. Many of the sounds they produce as part of this quintet—which features two basses, percussion, and cello—are the kind most singers would try to play down. By giving them the spotlight, Phil and Audrey are forced to express themselves in the same way instruments do.
Four Instruments Two Voices is one of two Audrey Chen and Phil Minton albums released this year by Sub Rosa, both of which focus on extended vocal techniques. This one matches their voices with Guy Segers' electric bass, Peter Jacquemyn's double bass, and Teun Verbruggen's percussion. As might be expected from instrumentalists who have worked with the likes of Peter Brötzmann, John Butcher, and William Parker, the music is improvised and mostly chaotic. But because Chen and Minton's vocal contortions lead the group, and because there isn't another wind instrument around, much of the record has a loose and open feel. All the vocal frying and plosive noises they make with their mouths come through loud and clear, from the spit-filled vibrations of their lips to the raspy hiss of their closed windpipes.
Such physical noises make for tense music. When Chen and Minton choke sounds out, my body involuntarily seizes up, and their moans have a way of drawing my shoulders up against my neck. When the band reacts to them in sympathy, the effect is darkly atmospheric and unsettling, as on "Eight" and "Nine." But not everything is quite so serious. On "Three," Minton and Chen's gaseous vocalizations are paired with a squealing cello and a wobbly rhythm section that sounds absolutely lost. It's hard not to laugh at how ridiculous it all seems, and at times I think it sounds like the musical version of a slapstick comedy.
For "Six" their growls and wordless interjections are recast as part of a quiet drama filled with bird-like whistling, ominous bass melodies, and flitting percussive sounds. The band's muted performance fosters a calmer atmosphere, and Phil and Audrey both sound more subdued throughout, but it's hard to tell whether the band is responsible for controlling the mood or if they're following the vocalists' lead. Later in the album Segers plays several naked melodies, and I think those color the way I'm hearing the voices. Either way, though the techniques are unconventional "Six" is a relatively pretty song. It's a solid example of how extended vocal techniques can be used to produce musically pleasant and expressive results without relying on a singer's vocal quality or resorting to familiar melodic techniques.
In the liner notes Minton writes, "This music is first a matter of extra-lingustic expression, the idea of going beyond the word's meaning, an exploration that doesn't stop at letters... but extends to all in-between-sounds made possible by the tongue/oral cavity/breath configuration." I don't know if Phil or Audrey's performances go beyond words, but their fragmented noises and stripped down vocal utterances do get at feelings and expressions differently than conventional singing does. Rather than going beyond anything, I get the sense that they're digging down, drilling into the voice and looking for meaning and expressiveness where most would hear nonsense. Whatever the theoretical framework is, the content is unique and varied—the kind of music that encourages lateral thinking and hearing ostensibly familiar sounds anew.
 
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I have long felt that the best possible thing that could happen for Bryn Jones' legacy would be for someone to brutally pare down his out-of-control discography to just the essentials, but I am tragically powerless to stop the tide of fresh dispatches from his seemingly infinite backlog of unreleased material.  This latest pair of albums in Staalplaat's archive series are predictably a mixed bag, but the album of almost entirely unheard material (Al Jar Zia Audio) is dramatically better than the previously released (but hard-to-get) Satyajit Eye.  That is both tantalizing and exasperating, as it guarantees that there will be many more albums to come and that Muslimgauze fans will be sifting through them in (financially ruinous) search of scattered gems for years.
Satyajit Eye was originally released back in 1993, but under very bizarre circumstances: it was free, but it could only be obtained by cutting out part of the insert from Hamas Arc and mailing it to Staalplaat with a blank DAT.  Consequently, I sincerely doubt very many people ever got to hear it until very recently, when it finally surfaced as a bootleg.  That is presumably why Staalplaat is releasing this now, though I think they could have safely let this one slip through the cracks.  In theory, I like the idea of a secret, special album that is only available through symbolic sacrifice.  In reality, however, I intensely dislike the idea of defacing album art to get a dire collection of studio scraps in an annoying format, so I am glad I missed out the first time around (and again with the bootleg).
This "expanded" reissue (on CD, thankfully) is quite a bit different than the original release, but it is no less staggeringly inessential.  For one, roughly half of the album's more substantial pieces ("Zion Poison," "Taureg," and "Satyajit Eye") are already available in slightly different form on the better and much easier to procure Vote Hezbollah album.  Secondly, the three "new" tracks added to this reissue, all titled "Remix from Vote Hezbollah," are fairly ridiculous: they are all basically the same clattering percussion loop regurgitated in 5-minute, 9-minute, and 18-second variations (the duration being the only perceptible variation).  Finally, I am confounded as to why the opening "Amritsar" was shortened from 14:54 to 0:26.  I have not heard the original version, but the new, streamlined version is essentially a dull, artless snippet of someone speaking in Arabic (presumably).  I would have shortened it even further by completely deleting it from the album.
Aside from the unique circumstances of its release, the sole other noteworthy thing about Satyajit Eye is that it is apparently one of the first recorded instances of Jones' incorporation of Indian music.  While that is mildly interesting historically, there are plenty of more successful experiments in this direction on future releases and I would prefer to listen to them.  Otherwise, the lone justification for this album's existence seems to be the presence of "Dhobi" and "Caste," which do not seem to be available elsewhere, unless there are cannibalized versions lurking around under different names (not unlikely).  Both are admittedly likable, but both would be fairly forgettable pieces within the context of a "real" Muslimgauze album.  Ultimately, Satyajit Eye is not just for completists only–it is solely for only the most indiscriminate completists.
While Al Jar Zia Audio is not any kind of lost, career-defining masterpiece, it definitely sounds like one when compared to Satyajit Eye: from the very first seconds of "Ayatollah Dollar," this album seemed to explode from my speakers.  Part of that is due to the simple fact that Audio is mixed quite loudly, but it is also a very dense and vibrantly beat-driven affair from start to finish.  These are clearly songs that Bryn was keen to formally release at some point, as they sound very "finished," sculpted, and visceral.  That makes for a very fun and enjoyable album, as crafting inventive and unusual grooves is where Jones truly shined.
In fact, these 15 pieces made me amusingly think of Jones as a kind post-industrial, proto-Madlib, albeit one curiously obsessed with Middle Eastern politics and culture.  The significant difference, however, is that Madlib's Beat Konducta series wisely tends to limit his beat sketches to just one or two minutes, whereas Bryn had a definite tendency to sometimes overstay his welcome a bit.  Long durations suit Muslimgauze's darker, more dub-influenced pieces like "Najibi" (7:13) nicely, but some of the more hip-hop/breakbeat-themed pieces definitely feel like they are flogging one simple idea to death by the 4-minute mark.  That sounds worse than it is though: there are not many weak ideas here, its just that some strong ideas could have been better presented.  Of course, given that Jones has been deceased for more than a decade, it is hard to fault him much for failing to edit these songs more thoroughly than he did in preparation for this release.
Aside from an unwavering devotion to rhythm, there is not an especially strong theme holding these songs together.  That turns out not to be problematic at all though, as Al Jar Zia just feels like a fine singles collection rather than a thematically coherent whole.  In fact, this is a remarkably filler-free Muslimgauze effort: aside from the brief, abstract interlude of "All I Have is Sand," it is quite easy to imagine nearly all of these songs connecting with someone.  Given my somewhat dub-centric taste, I was especially fond of both the aforementioned "Najibi" and the weirdly clattering and insistent title piece.  My favorite moment of the album, however, is the brilliantly one-dimensional "Lost Iranian Tourist," which offers little more than a lurching, overloaded, and absolutely bludgeoning thump, which is all it needs to be spectacular.
The sole real flaw with Al Jar Zia Audio is that it is little more than a collection of cool beats.  Jones certainly enhances his grooves with all kinds of textural elements like snatches of dialogue, field recordings, and loops of sitars and other Eastern instrumentation, but there is no real development to be found anywhere.  Instead, these pieces all simply lock into their distinctly Muslimgauze-ian grooves and continue in that vein until Bryn decided to stop.  I am definitely used to that by now though and it seems like a reasonable concession to make in exchange for music this unique and propulsive.  Ultimately, this is a surprisingly strong and varied release that exceeds many of Jones' more formal, celebrated efforts.  Given its smorgasbord-like nature, it is probably unlikely to uniformly thrill anyone, but it is hard to imagine any seasoned Muslimgauze fans (or curious, aspiring ones) not finding at least a few songs worth getting excited about.
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Although dormant for a number of years, Paul Douglas has leapt back into activity on this brief, but effective 7" single. With heavy use of electronics and processing, these two pieces are shaped into fully fleshed out and complicated works that bear the mark of an expert.
"Willow" is heavy on the electronics right from the onset, building from looping, heavy electronics that edge just ever so slightly into the realm of dissonance.Even with that, the slight dissonance gives an engaging grime to the otherwise gentle flow of sound, mixing in textural sensations and just a bit of crunch.The overall performance is bathed in a nice, warm glow of static that does not obscure as much as strengthen the sound.
On the other side, "Morning," Douglas keeps mostly away from the noisier elements and instead works amongst a world of light, ambient sounds.Slowly gliding, string-like passages drift about, propelled along by a low-end swell that never gets out of control, but instead propels the piece to delicately float away into silence as it concludes.
Douglas' work here might not be redefining a genre or breaking any new ground in its over all sound or approach, but it is an example of electronic abstraction done extremely well, presented in a tight, yet fully realized package that keeps things compelling throughout.
Anthony Mangicapra's Hoor-paar-Kraat project has always been rather prolific, but a recent spate of limited new releases has made this even more noticeable, but without any reduction in quality or distinction On these two tapes, he (and associates) balances both tense, carefully constructed pieces with shambolic, improvised sonic rituals.
Robert & Leopold, Black Horizons
On "A Lanoo Alone" (from In Your Absence), he constructs a taut composition of carefully building shrill loops that evolves and develops as time wears on, slowly building momentum like a painfully slow descending elevator into Hell.When that more prominent, forceful sound drops away, it leaves behind a disquieting sense of ambience, with tight passages of feedback shimmering through atop urgent, but obscured undulations before stopping dead unexpectedly.
"I Would Have Made New Teeth for Him" (on Chorea) shows a similar sense of composition, meshing shrill, glassy bits of noise over a simple click rhythm that builds in complexity, building to a more traditional feeling as the feedback and dissonance is miraculously shaped into a more musical framework, coming together as some sort of esoteric, alien approach to traditional composition.
The backing half of each cassette sees Mangicapra going in a different direction, one of a looser, improvised nature rather than the complementing, more rigidly structured works."In Your Absence" puts field recordings with cavernous echoes and massive reverberation, the occasional ghostly apparition or creaking tape loop slipping through."Never Once Did He Complain" involves a wider array of players and sounds, mixing mangled piano and erratic pseudo-rhythms together into a shamanic ritualized jam session.The overall sensibility of the piece is consistent from beginning to end, but a flowing and endearingly sloppy structure.With the looseness and use of toy instruments, it conjures more of a warm, nostalgic feeling than a darker one than I would have expected.
Even with these tapes representing only a part of a recent batch of Mangicapra's work, it continues to stand out as fresh and unique, calling to mind the work of Nurse With Wound or irr. app. (ext.), but with his own sound and approach.His strength and skills at conjuring moods and images via sound is unparalleled, but also extremely complex.Rather than just relying on dark and mysterious, there are far more feelings and themes that arise from moment to moment on these two tapes.
