29 June 2019

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Albums and Singles

Lena Andersson is a fictional character created by Berlin-based Japanese artist Kyoka and Irish producer Eomac. Both met in 2016 during a residency at the Stockholm EMS studios. The initial spark of their collaboration was a joint session on the studio's Buchla system, later expanding to multiple other sound sources and instruments at sessions in the Etopia studio in Zaragoza supported by Fuga.

During the improvisations, a call-and-response working principle emerged immediately which joins the special talents of both musicians. Kyoka's free and experimental approach forms part of the source material that is contrasted with Eomac's skillful editing; unconventional reflections face a driving force. From Kyoka's extensive field recording collection, an arabesque of disturbing vocal fragments arises that is set against Eomac's hard rhythmic framework, as in "Das Tier," for instance. "37 Years Later" or "Mystic" live on a vivid texture that has been condensed directly at the mixing console into a kind of dramaturgical capturing of the moment. The immediacy of the collaboration forms the basis for a synergy of the individual production techniques. A strategy that lacks neither absolute creative freedom nor an awareness of musical function.

Söder Mälarstrand thus captures an intuitive cooperation between the two producers, which also refers back to the place of origin through its dialogical, moment-related production principle. The album title is a tribute to the Stockholm studios where the project began.

More information can be found here.

29 June 2019

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Albums and Singles

After several acclaimed EPs, including Risk in a New Age (Desire Records 2014), License To Desire (Desire Records 2015, reissued by Aurora Borealis recordings in 2017) and Weehawken (Clan Destine Records 2016) - Orphan Swords' debut LP, Ascent, finally arrives. In recording the album, the duo took the radical decision to interchange their usual respective input in the creative process, which resulted in a revelatory piece of music, one that functions as an initiatory narrative summarized as follows:

"Ascent is the story of an unsolved vanishing in a mountain, somewhere undefined.

You have been assigned to solve this mystery and you have departed from home long ago. Today, you have finally reached the highest town in the mountains, the ultimate refuge before the highest peak. You are now setting for the ascent where the final search will take place.

You are now climbing up, the path gets increasingly steep and the oxygen begins to rarefy. Exhausted and out of breath, you try and keep on going. Surrounded by clouds and ice-cold stone, in the midst of your confusion, you're struck by the idea that the very object of your search, the missing entity you've been assigned to find and grown obsessed with, is a part of you. Something that you have lost long ago, you have no idea what it looks like or what it is supposed to be, but you know for sure it is what you’re looking for.

Ascent is the story of that search, it is mostly about transience and vacuity, acceptance and the search for inner unity. An ascent that becomes profound introspection."

Ascent is the first part of a diptych. Breach - also recorded during the same period - will follow and conclude the two-part conceptual series at a later date.

More information can be found here.

26 June 2019

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Albums and Singles

Release lost 1979 soundtrack Chance Versus Causality

CABARET VOLTAIRE have announced the release of their 1979 soundtrack, Chance Versus Causality, available officially for the first time since the film’s release. Chance Versus Causality will be out on limited edition transparent green vinyl, CD and digitally on 30 August 2019 via Mute. Listen to a taste of what to expect here: https://youtu.be/nQHVJu9lYr4

PRE-ORDER: https://smarturl.it/CV2019

On the same day 1974-76 will get its first vinyl release. The album, originally released on cassette via Industrial Records in 1980, was reissued on CD by The Grey Area of Mute in 1992 and will be now available on limited edition transparent orange double vinyl and digitally. 1974-76 is a selection of material recorded by Cabaret Voltaire in their formative years. Recorded in Chris Watson’s attic on a domestic reel-to-reel tape recorder, a number of the recordings were included in the now legendary limited edition cassette released by the band in 1976.

Chance Versus Causality was recorded in 1979 as the soundtrack for director Babeth Mondini’s film of the same name. The band originally met Mondini at the infamous Brussels Plan K show which saw Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire and William Burroughs share a bill, and soon after, she asked them to create the soundtrack for her film. Chance Versus Causality was improvised, in a similar vein to what the band refer to as their live “ambient sets”, described as having “less rhythm, more tape” and the soundtrack was recorded live by the original line up – Richard H. Kirk, Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson – at the band’s Western Works studio with no prior knowledge of the film, or instruction from the director.

Only one copy of the soundtrack existed, two reels of tape that were sent to Holland for inclusion in the film, a split-screen 16mm film that was given a limited release and never seen by the band. Only a section of the soundtrack had been previously available, the b-side to the ‘Silent Command’ 7” (RoughTrade004). Around 15 years ago the tapes were returned to Cabaret Voltaire, and this lost classic from the archive was placed to one side and only came up again recently during discussions with Mute. The artwork, was created with archive and found montage imagery from that period, including images projected at performances from that time, was mixed digitally by Richard H. Kirk and Phil Wolstenholme.

Live, improvised but coherent with a touch of mischief and warmth, this single piece of music is an evocative snapshot of this era of Cabaret Voltaire, just after the release of Nag, Nag, Nag and ahead of the Voice of America album release, which has strong ties with this release through the vocal samples and overall sound.

Cabaret Voltaire have been performing select festivals in recent years, and Richard H. Kirk is currently working on a new Cabaret Voltaire album.

23 June 2019

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Albums and Singles

THE THIRD & FINAL CARTER TUTTI VOID STUDIO ALBUM - OUT ON 30th AUGUST 2019

Containing all new studio recordings, Triumvirate brings Chris Carter, Cosey Fanni Tutti and Nik Void's collaborative partnership as Carter Tutti Void to a conclusion. The trio first came together as a collective for a live performance, invited by Mute for the Short Circuit Festival in 2011 and released their acclaimed debut, the live album Transverse the following year.

Carter Tutti Void went on to release f(x) (Industrial Records, 2015), their first studio recording and performed a handful of selected shows, culminating in their final live performance in Hull, part of a series of events for Hull City of Culture 2017 centred around the COUM Transmissions retrospective at Humber Street Gallery.

For some time Carter, Tutti and Void have been awaiting an opportunity when all three artists were able to gather at Carter and Tutti's Studio47 in Norfolk, where the album was recorded, produced and mastered. Triumvirate was approached with the improvisational spirit of previous Carter Tutti Void albums. The rhythms, created by Chris Carter, formed the foundation and starting point from which the process began of melding the live instrumentation of Cosey Fanni Tutti and Nik Void's searing guitars, vocals, effects and the arsenal of sounds each had amassed from a variety of sources, some sounds manipulated to extremes, all fed into the mix. Tying the album together is the power of three, and a free open approach to sound shared by the trio.

More information can be found here.

23 June 2019

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Albums and Singles

Compared to the last two albums I have heard from the always-fascinating Jim Haynes, this new tape features him pushing his penchant for rusting, decaying sounds into a slightly new direction. Always one for tactile, crackling sounds and unsettling noises, Throttle and Calibration and Flammable Materials From Foreign Lands were colder, sparser affairs that heavily featured field recordings and a distinct sense of isolation. Inconclusive, however, is a more commanding and forceful cassette. Besides featuring Haynes back into chaotic, harsher noise territories, it also shows him working in more rhythmic, vaguely industrial and power electronics sounding contexts as well.

Audio. Visuals. Atmosphere.

The pieces that open and close Inconclusive both have the sound that I most often associate with Haynes's work.Right from the sputtering analog crunch that opens "Blotched" it feels entirely consistent with his previous body of work.A distinctly analog sheen covers the whole piece, with what sounds like fragments of Morse code and radio transmissions appearing here and there within the walls of static, overdriven noises, and the occasional hushed, ghostly apparition far off in the mix.

On "An Isolated Failure," he leads off with a somewhat structured loop that sounds like the slow death of a 1970s computer mainframe before throwing in the harsher elements:a wet, almost rhythmic electronic loop and passages of shrill feedback and heavy distortion.With that sense of chugging progression and emphasis on the shrill, higher frequency sounds, the overall sound veers into power electronics territory.However, unlike that style’s often-simplistic repetition he keeps everything dynamic, building to crescendos and then stripping things back apart to conclude the tape on a high, if occasionally painful, note.

The three pieces between these two are where Haynes seems to step out of his usual zone and embraces more rhythm and structure.This is apparent right away on "And Then, Theranos," when an honest to god drum machine rhythm appears.Around this he conjures up acidic static and buzzing electronics, keeping a constant flow but grounded by the robotic beat.The following "Through Diana's Stare" also has a sense of rhythm, but here generated by a distorted noise that Haynes shapes into what best resembles an EBM bass sequence.The whole thing is caked in dirt and grime but there is an undeniable sense of musicality to be heard as well.

The 11-minute "At Nerve Ends" is unsurprisingly the most varied composition here, leading off from a hushed, distant rumble and the occasionally jarring outburst.Haynes dials up the frequency and intensity of these harsh outbursts, eventually erupting into full on rhythmic, chaotic noise.It is distorted, sure, but there is a distinct, structured undercurrent to be heard that is not far removed from the early Ant Zen scene.Haynes keeps this in place but swaps out layers and segments, allowing the piece to fall apart and then to be built up again carefully, keeping a fresh dynamic for the entirety.

Perhaps it is indicative of the way his Helen Scarsdale Agency label has expanded its repertoire into some more traditionally musical sounds, but Jim Haynes's work on Inconclusive seems to brush up against more conventional genres, but in an extremely subtle, tasteful sense.I do not expect him to attempt any sort of crossover outside of his crumbling building and radioactive landscape aesthetic (nor would I want him to), but these little smatterings of rhythm and song structure work extremely well here, and result in a brilliant tape that is among his best work to date.

Samples Available Here.

23 June 2019

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Albums and Singles

Caleb Mulkerin and Colleen Kinsella’s Big Blood project has consistently been one of the most delightfully unique and life-affirming bands in the American underground over the last decade or so. Admittedly, their major releases have been increasingly prickly, weird, and experimental in recent years, which likely explains why the duo are not nearly as appreciated as they should be: the current era is definitely not the easiest entry point for the curious. Prior to the run of ambitious concept albums that kicked off with 2013's Radio Valkyrie, however, the duo self-released quite a transcendent run of brilliant songs on homemade CD-Rs. It is not an exaggeration to say that the ramshackle back porch psychedelia of those early years yielded some of the most beautiful songwriting that my ears have ever heard. This 2006 release is where that hot streak first began, preceding Fire on Fire's brief but wonderful lifespan on Young God Records by a year. How they managed to be the driving creative force between two great bands at once is beyond me, but Mulkerin and Kinsella managed to churn out at least four stone-cold masterpieces in the span of two years and this was the first of them.

Dontrustheruin

As is quite characteristic for Big Blood’s self-released albums, Strange Maine 11​.​04​.​06, briefly appeared as a limited run of CDRs with screen-printed covers with only the most cryptic and minimal information provided therein (and it has only been available digitally ever since).According to the release notes, "these songs were written and recorded by Rose Philistine & Asian Mae together at home."At other times, Big Blood has been described as a "phantom four piece of Asian Mae, Caleb Mulkerin, Rose Philistine and Colleen Kinsella [who] perform only as a duo. An intimate team, walking blind through each other's songs presenting one of a kind recordings tailor-made to the night's performance."Amusingly, I was not fooled by the phantom members or alter-egos, but I was fooled by the dates listed in the titles of several early albums.Mistakenly believing them to be live albums, I waited much longer to investigate both this release and Space Gallery Jan 27, 2007 than I should have.As it turns out, the date is just the night that the duo (and their phantom friends) recorded a particular batch of songs at home.I was also very surprised to learn that Mulkerin and Kinsella wrote songs separately, as the aesthetic of their early releases feels like an almost supernaturally vivid and focused channeling of a long folk tradition, albeit one filtered through an endearingly ragged and psych-damaged sensibility.Big Blood being half-rooted in the spirit realm seems almost apt and believable at times, as imagining two flesh-and-blood artists so uncontaminated by the modern world feels similarly improbable.

I suspect whoever initially wrote a particular song did not matter much by the time Big Blood was done working their dark country magic, as all of Strange Maine 11‚Äã.‚Äã04‚Äã.‚Äã06's seven pieces feel lived-in, timeless, and packed full of enough vocal harmonies to feel like a campfire sing-along.That said, the songs that prominently feature Mulkerin's frayed yelp tend to be more hook-filled and fun ones, while Kinsella's Siren-esque vocals tend to drive the more dark, moody, and unusual ones.Both sides yield their share of highlights, but the rolling and weirdly joyful ode to friendship "A Friendly Noose" is the closest thing to a great single here (despite a very non-pop layer of textural field recordings in the mix).That piece was later reprised in more raucous, stomping fashion on the first Fire on Fire EP as "Hangman," which was a great move, as that incarnation is an absolute masterpiece.This one is good too, but it is just one part of a perfect run of fine songs, notable primarily for being the most straightforwardly hook-filled piece on the album (aside from perhaps the buoyantly clopping cowpunk of "Full of Smoke").The similarly countrified "Under The Concourse" is also a strong contender for that honor once it fully blossoms into its ragged group chorus.Those two skewed homages to classic county music almost come close to courting kitsch, but Mulkerin and Kinsella bring such a deep sincerity to them that they feel like they legitimately belong in the same continuum as folks like Hank Williams."Full of Smoke" and "Under The Concourse" feel like the fruits of an alternate timeline in which the DNA of honky-tonk and early outlaw country became improbably and gloriously intertwined with that of The Incredible String Band.

While I love all of the songs in the catchier vein, it is the haunting and lovesick "Past Time" that hits the hardest and leaves the deepest impression, as Kinsella sensuously coos lines like "love made in a day, took a lifetime to recover" over a backdrop of minor key banjo arpeggios and subtly lysergic backwards guitar.It is a truly wonderful marriage of torch song, heavy psych, and traditional folk, sounding like an intensely soulful rendition of a heartbreaking ballad that Shirley Collins and Alan Lomax might have unearthed.Some of Kinsella's other vocal performances are similarly powerful though, as the closing "Slumber Me" is eerily chant-like and ritualistic, while "A Quiet Lousy Roar" masterfully emphasizes the "strange" in Strange Maine.

Built from just a tom-tom and tambourine rhythm, the music of "A Quiet Lousy Roar" sounds plucked straight out of a burlesque show in '50s Las Vegas, yet Kinsella's trilling, distorted melody and the bizarre backing vocals make it feel like a feral Joanna Newsom was dropped into Twin Peaks. More than any other piece, "A Quiet Lousy Roar" showcases how truly eccentric and inventive Big Blood were at this stage, as the sole thread that runs through everything is the sense that I am hearing hallucinatory radio transmissions from the darker, weirder corners of an imaginary mid-20th century America.To their eternal credit, Big Blood’s endlessly shifting vision has always remained a deeply singular one in the years since, but this early era will always be a particular favorite of mine and the reason lies in Mulkerin and Kinsella's unerringly brilliant execution.While there were plenty of wonderfully unique, beautiful, and even ecstatic releases to emerge from America’s New Weird America/Freak Folk explosion in the late '90s, I cannot think of any other artists who managed to combine the outré with casual looseness, homespun charm, strong melodic sensibility, and skilled songcraft nearly as organically as Big Blood did on Strange Maine 11​.​04​.​06 and its immediate successors.This is a great album by a great band.

Samples can be found here.

23 June 2019

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Albums and Singles

It has been a hell of a long time since Nurse With Wound last surfaced with a proper new album on United Dairies, but 2019 is looking to be an uncharacteristically prolific year with the epic Trippin' Music looming on the horizon. In the meantime, however, there is the endearingly strange The Vursiflenze Mismantler, which pairs Steven Stapleton and Andrew Liles with Australian vocal artist James Worse. It is very hard to imagine an artist more attuned to NWW's surrealist whimsy than Worse, as he is best known for his poetry crafted almost entirely from made-up and nonsensical words. Louis Carroll's "The Jabberwocky" is the obvious and unavoidable reference point with Worse's "Worsicles," but his poetry only escapes the gleeful mutilations of Stapleton and Liles on one piece here. The rest of the album is a Dada-esque collage of chopped, digitized, and gurgling vocal sounds that occasionally coheres into some unlikely and delightful grooves.

United Dairies

It is not difficult to guess who named the songs on The Vursiflenze Mismantler, as the first piece is entitled "A Thrasm for Pungdust."Pungdust is quite lucky to get such a fine thrasm in his honor, as it is one of the album's most endearingly deranged and instantly gratifying pieces.It sort of resembles a remix of "Rock n' Roll Station" made by a gibbering lunatic, as it has a similar half-stomping/half-lurching beat.The central monologue, however, has been replaced by a lysergic miasma of skittering electronic flourishes and growling, moaning, and whimpering voices.The weirdness naturally deepens with the following "Smarch of the Bomberdast," which is the album's primary showcase for Worse's playfully eccentric vision.It begins with some distracted, colorful muttering over deep vocal growls, calling to mind a drunken pirate trying to argue with a disinterested didgeridoo.From those modest beginnings, however, it slowly builds into a dense, howling cacophony of squirming, abused sounds that pan and scuttle across the stereo field.Eventually that wonderfully eruption subsides, making room for more gargling and strangled yelps, yet that jabbering abruptly stops as well and Worse ends the piece with a crisp, mannered recital of one of his Worsicles that sounds downright Shakespearean.It is nice bit of compositional sleight-of-hand, as it feels like I narrowly escaped some synapse-frying madness to find a perfectly sane and pleasant man reciting his poetry.But the word-like things coming out of his mouth are completely incomprehensible, making me feel like my brain has been well and truly broken (or mismantled) by the song's roaring crescendo.

Most of the other memorable pieces on the album also appear during its first half, but that is because the warped phantasmagoria of The Virsuflenze Mismantler increasing dissolves into pure texture and abstraction as it unfolds.The fifth piece, "Nana," is probably the closest thing to a fresh NWW classic on this release, as it is a stuttering and chaotic pile-up of chopped and diced sounds.It feels like a howling nightmare that prominently features a cartoon duck, but then the maelstrom dissipates to make room for a choppy, distorted monologue from a jolly man who has much to say about bananas.The closing "My Gloadious Parpinelle" is another strong contender though, as the trio are joined by Af Ursin and Aranos for a hauntingly weird twist on classic exotica.The lazy vibraphone melody evokes a tiki bar in a moonlit grotto, but everything else feels deeply wrong with that picture, as there are a host of metallic cranks, odd squeaks, clopping sounds, and menacing drones that curdle and confuse the experience. There are also a couple of excellent "ambient" pieces lurking throughout the album.I especially enjoyed the eerie beauty of "Gwelt Awone On A Sursibass," in which warm, seesawing drones seem to be emanating from the bottom of a bubbling sea."The Ockenbloster's Froascum" is notable as well, as a simmering, crackling, and rumbling soundscape blossoms into an unsettling crescendo featuring a backwards robotic voice. 

The rest of the album is not quite as memorable as that handful of highlights, but that is mostly because the second half blurs together in a murky, hallucinatory maelstrom of buzzes, bleeps, roars, and machine noise.While the sounds that the trio conjure up are every bit as inventive, garbled, and disquieting as they are elsewhere, there is a dearth of "hooks" that might make any individual piece stand out from the others.Without a human voice or some kind of melody to latch onto, I am hopelessly adrift in an endlessly shifting sea of chopped up, processed, and disorienting sounds that rarely evolve into anything more.Admittedly, that is not terrible place to be and I would probably appreciate it much more if this were my first Nurse With Wound experience.That is not the case, so that second half of the album feels like very familiar territory (albeit quite well executed).The flipside to that, however, is that a healthy portion of The Vursiflenze Mismantler feels fresh and inspired.That is quite an impressive feat in a discography as deep as Stapleton's.Moreoever, this album works quite well as a coherent whole, effectively sinking deeper and deeper into foggier and more elusive realms of madness to pave the way for its resurgent and memorable finale in the form of "My Gloadious Parpinelle."While I would probably categorize The Vursiflenze Mismantler as more of a minor release than a major new statement, it is quite a likable one and the highlights are legitimately wonderful.I suspect this album probably could have been edited down to a near-perfect EP, but only an utter fool would expect Stapleton and Liles to embrace a "less is more" aesthetic this far into the game.

Samples:

• A Thrasm for Pungdust
• Smarch of the Bomberdast
• My Gloadious Parpinelle

23 June 2019

Administrator

Albums and Singles

Gleefully jumping between noise, grindcore, power electronics, and just plain bizarreness, Josh Landes’s Limbs Bin is the premier noise artist of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and with releases such as this 7" it is not hard to see why. The components of Blast Anthemics for a New Generation of Ecstatic Youth are pretty standard: feedback electronics, drum machine blast beats, and a healthy helping of yelling. It is the way Landes mixes these together, however, along with an appropriate amount of silliness, which makes this single stand out.

Wyatt

One of the most impressive aspects of Landes’s work is how well he manages to create music that can be as brutal as any other noise artist, but couched in the right amount of absurdity.Side A establishes this perfectly, from the ridiculously bombastic fanfare into a spoken introduction by no other than Wendell "Bunk from The Wire" Pierce as part of a cut up passage.From here he blends in fragments of live performances from 2014 through 2017, mostly a combination of full auto drum machine programming, manic vocals, and painful feedback.

Comparably, the second side is more of a cut and paste type collage.Various performances are interspersed:some straight up traditional noise feedback and broken oscillator tones, others a mass of plodding doom-laden drum machine and aggressive shouting.Intermingled with some truly bizarre sample choices (Ashton Kutcher and what sounds like a random kid’s YouTube narration) and a grindcore pop karaoke performance, the final product is as perplexing as it is brilliant.

What makes this 7" so exceptional is that, for all its aggressive, edgy harshness inspired brutality, there is a goofy sense of fun and absurdity that lingers not far from the surface.In a style and genre that often takes itself far too seriously, Josh Landes instead revels in the absurdity that is inherent in noise and makes the best of it, resulting in a 7" that is actually fun to listen to.Like the work of America's Greatest Living Noise Artist Emil Beaulieau, he revels in the ridiculousness while still making as abrasive of a racket that any po-faced art school graduate or crypto-fascist misogynist could, it is a lot more fun to listen to.

Samples Available Here.

23 June 2019

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Albums and Singles

Recently reissued for the second time on Spectrum Spools, Robert Turman's Flux is widely regarded to be one of the most unique and essential releases to emerge from the ‘80s cassette underground. Originally self-released back in 1981, Flux was Turman's solo debut after a brief tenure in NON's earliest incarnation, but the only common ground the two projects share is a general fondness for tape loops and vintage exotica. Nearly four decades later, Flux's tender, bleary, and hiss-soaked minimalism no longer feels particularly radical, but the passing of time has done nothing to diminish the album's simple and gently hallucinatory beauty. Flux casts quite a lovely and hypnotic spell, conjuring an aesthetic that lies somewhere between Andrew Chalk and a dream set in an ancient Buddhist temple.

Spectrum Spools

Spectrum Spools first reissued Flux back in 2012, roughly thirty years after the last cassette incarnation surfaced.Since I do not own any of the original tapes, I cannot say how much Rashad Becker's remastering job transformed the sound quality, but I can safely state that it is not quite the same album that it was originally.For one, the original album was about ten minutes shorter than the reissue (though it likely reflects the "extended remix" that Turman himself issued in 1982).The other noteworthy change is that all of the song titles vanished somewhere along the way.Using my superior powers of deduction, I have concluded that the kalimba-based first piece was once "Kalimba" and the Chinese-sounding third piece was "Mu Shin," but the identities of the other four pieces remain shrouded in mystery.

While all of six pieces are structurally and aesthetically quite similar, the two halves of the album have distinctly different characters.For lack of a better word, I will characterize the first half as the more "exotic" side, while the second half is entirely devoted to looped piano melodies.I prefer the first side because it is a bit more adventurous melodically and rhythmically, but the true beauty of Flux lies in how much Turman was able to do with so little (both compositionally and equipment-wise).He did not merely transcend his limitations–he made them an integral part of the work, crafting an album that feels endearingly ramshackle and intimate, like a broken antique music box creeping into my dreams while I sleep.

Flux's defining masterpiece is the 15-minute opener, which skillfully weaves together loops of plinking and hollowly ringing kalimba tones to cast a gently pulsing and meditative spell.Turman was truly inspired on all fronts when he conjured up that piece, as the notes smear together in an eerily lovely way and the interaction of the loops is both trance-inducing and unpredictable.Moreover, it feels wonderfully timeless and otherworldly, as if I am hearing a decaying tape of an old ethnographic field recording.Happily, the third piece is of almost the same caliber, resembling a swaying and sensuous Chinese dance heard through a hypnagogic fog.If Turman had managed to come up with four more variations of that same magical formula, I would probably be writing him a gushing and breathless fan letter right now, but he decided to explore some different directions instead.

Some of those directions are admittedly quite wonderful, so I cannot lament Turman's thirst for variety.I am especially fond of the tender and delicate second piece, which sounds like a shimmering web of woozy, indistinct electric piano arpeggios.It is probably Turman's most harmonically ambitious piece on the album, as the notes all linger and smear together in a warm, languorous haze.The second half of the album, on the other hand, sounds quite convincingly like a badly worn tape of a classical pianist playing alone in his room.The sixth piece is the most lovely of that batch, as the notes lazily and erratically tumble in melancholy arpeggios, but the other two pieces have some nice touches as well.In the fifth piece, for example, Turman occasionally sounds like he is purposely playing clumsy one-finger melodies like a beginner, but sneakily assembles them into a coherent and compelling whole as the piece progress.The fourth piece, on the other hand, is more slow-building and elegiac, yet feels hypnotically pulsing due to an almost inaudible beat.

While Flux's second half is not nearly as unique and instantly gratifying as its first, I am hesitant to characterize it as an uneven album.It would be more accurate to say that the pleasures of the later pieces are simply a bit more modest: they are hopelessly eclipsed by the opening three-song streak of white-hot inspiration, yet they still feel like worthy and likable iterations of the album's central themes.They belong here.A lengthier hot streak would admittedly be welcome, yet that is beside the point.The important thing is that Flux was an absolutely revelatory release–the best moments feel like they were at least twenty-five years ahead of their time.It is quite an impressive achievement to be so far ahead of the curve and to be so confidently out of step with one's contemporaries.For those reasons, Flux has definitively earned its status as one of the landmark releases of DIY '80s cassette culture.The real reason that it keeps being reissued, however, is that it would still be an excellent album even if it had been recorded yesterday.To some degree, I suppose Flux befits from the fact that loops and tape hiss are still very much in vogue these days, but the opening piece is probably great enough to have reignited that vogue all on its own (if it had been necessary).

Samples can be found here.

16 June 2019

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Albums and Singles

Active for over 30 years but with a relatively small discography, Scott Konzelmann's Chop Shop has made a career of releasing only the utmost quality works, although they have largely been in unconventional formats and extremely limited editions. Primer collects two of his earliest works, 1987's Power Pieces Positive Force and 1989's Scraps, albeit in slightly modified forms, and gives them the deluxe treatment, not only resulting in a higher profile for the releases (since vinyl is the most important format these days it would seem), but also giving wider exposure to these important, extremely difficult to find early works.

Crippled Intellect Productions

Each of the two records in this set are allocated to the individual releases, with the first LP being Power Pieces Positive Force, and the second Scraps.For various reasons, however, there were some changes required.Power Pieces… (1987) was initially a 90 minute cassette, but with almost a half hour of heavily sample-based pieces and a 20 minute recent reissue of "A Different Kind of Connie" already available, Konzelmann chose to not only pare it back, but also to rework the material that was included.

The first half of the record, "Primitive Power," is immediately rhythmic metal pounding atop droning electronic tones.With the layered, heavy-duty rhythms that do not relent, it resembles the early, hypnotic Esplendor Geometrico work performed by Einsturzende Neubauten.It builds to an insistent bass throb, with Konzelmann adding in grinding noises and what may very well be loops of music, either created or sampled.It then transitions into a low frequency rumble, which drowns everything into a bassy grind before erupting into a standard, but excellent traditional noise crunch.

Towards the end he pushes things into more shrill spaces, eventually revealing an almost rhythmic quality derived from the loops of distortion, but in a very subtle manner.The second side, "Positive Force" is a more consistent in its dynamics, though continually evolving sound.The first sections resemble swirling arctic winds that are sustained as Konzelmann carefully treats and tweaks the sound, adding a bit more throughout.Eventually he brings back the pounding metal and what sounds like guitar (real or sampled) to again give a more literal industrial sound.Considering how much of this record was constructed using just neglected, thrift store tape machines, its complexity is made all the more brilliant.

Scraps (1989) is the first release of Konzelmann's work utilizing mounted speakers, metallic objects, and the use of physical space, which became a hallmark of his work as a composer as well as a sculptor.The opening is an excellent mid-frequency noise grind, with a tremendous sense of depth and texture and a few sputtering stops tossed in to keep the dynamic unpredictable.Throughout the first side of this record, Konzelmann brings in all of the sounds I associate with a good noise record:shrill, nasal stabs, midrange feedback expanding outward, and eventually a distorted grind and what could be a dying vacuum cleaner.He bounces between these different styles, making smooth transitions from one segment to the next while keeping the overall composition dynamic.

On the other side he layers interlocking passages of hollow warehouse loops, grinding drills, and aggressive bass rumbles.The overall performance is one of dense, metallic force, but not as chaotic as it initially seems.Low bass throbs, scraping and grinding passages and what sounds like a synth loop underscoring everything makes the overarching structure clear, but varied.Eventually Konzelmann allows things to fall apart, devolving into a dull roar and chaotic, hollow outbursts before culminating in a shrill, feedback-laden conclusion.

As the final release on Blake Edwards's Crippled Intellect Productions, which is being shuttered in the shadow of his newer Ballast label (which focuses on more conceptual, limited handmade releases) Primer is a luxurious presentation of Scott Konzelmann’s seminal experimental work.While it may lack the tactile feel of his more limited works, which were often packaged in abrasive materials, it is still a lovely gatefold record with unique liner note inserts from Edwards and Gen Ken Montgomery.Designed with the records sliding in at the center, rather than the edges of the gatefold, it still retains a bit of the confounding packaging associated with his other output.It makes for a lovely, unique package that befits the early work of Chop Shop, and makes for an excellent reminder of the mark Konzelmann has made on experimental music since 1987.

samples:

• Primitive Power
• Positive Force
• Scraps (Part One)