S.E.T.I., Land:Fire, O.R.D.U.C., Horton & Bjerga &
Ohlson, Cesar Bolanos, McFall & Turri, Aaron Dilloway & Rober
Turman, Lusruta, Aaron Dilloway, The Ghost Between The Strings, Ulv,
Anastasia Vronski, The Patriotic Window Kings.
tracklist for Vital Weekly 713:
0000 Tune
0014 S.E.T.I. - Keppler
0312 Fire:Land - Malfunction
0608 O.R.D.U.C. - Do (Triangle Mix)
0907 Horton & Bjerga & Ohlson - Broken Wisdom On It's
Wild Lone
1203 Cesar Bolanos - Flexum
1454 McFall & Turri - Tactile.surface
1753 Aaron Dilloway & Rober Turman
2053 Lusruta - The Last Delusion
2354 Aaron Dilloway
2655 The Ghost Between The Strings - Drowning Time
2954 Ulv
3255 Anastasia Vronski - The Drowner
3558 The Patriotic Window Kings - The Donkey Park
3914 Tune
ROBERT TURMAN & AARON DILLOWAY – BLIZZARD (CD by Hanson Records)
AARON DILLOWAY – HISS NAUSEA (CD by Hanson Records)
Last year in January there was horrible snowstorm in Ohio. It looked
Aaron Dilloway (ex-Wolf Eyes, Hanson Records man) and one Robert Turman
(ex-Non, Z.O. Voider) in a room, with a bunch of synthesizers, tapes
and effects. If you can’t do anything, then do music (and if you can do
something else, also make music). Stuck together they recorded these
four pieces of blizzard music. Unlike a blizzard, this is music that
doesn’t move very fast. Long stretched out sounds on the synthesizer,
bending the music down, down and more down, into a shaking rumble of
sound. On top tapes of highly obscured sounds move around in a bunch of
sound effects and the outcome is actually quite beautiful. The cruelty
of beauty that is. Vast and spacious in the first movement, earpiercing
in the second movement, rattling like snow and ice being crushed in the
third. The final track has a oscillating drone and some nice vaguely
vocal loop on top, making this the most ‘musical’ outing of the four.
Four
excellent
excursions that fit the snow white world of the Vital headquarters perfectly. Released at exactly the right time: winter music.
In 2006 Dilloway released a double cassette in an edition of 30 copies,
which now gets a re-edition of 200 copies, along with fifteen minutes
of music not on the previous release. Like the title implies, Dilloway
uses hiss, along with feedback and loads of tape-delay. Now this would
call cassette music. Five relatively simple pieces, derived from one
idea, exploited for seventy-five minutes. Tucked away in my lazy chair
with a book, I was thinking of the 80s, when I loads of cassettes like
this. I was studying my books and play this kind of music on end. Based
on loops, hiss, feedback, some delay pedals, maybe the occasional
synthesizer in play. This afternoon I looked at my CD player and
contemplated a few things. One was that this isn’t isn’t the greatest
CD ever released, that is was quite long, but it was also a journey
into the past – the world of twenty-five years ago, me as a young man
falling in love with crazy music. Maybe out of those kind of
sentimental reasons (I’m not
allowed to say, I know, but the age, the age) I thought this was quite an enjoyable release. (FdW)
Address: http://www.hansonrecords.net
CARLOS BOLANOS – PERUVIAN ELECTROACOUSTIC AND EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC 1964-1970 (2CD by Pogus Productions)
Electronic music from Peru? Pogus boss Al Margolis goes with his search
for some of the exotic, unknown composers from the most obscure parts
of the world. Carlos Bolanos was born in Lima, Peru in 1931, who also
composed for piano and chamber orchestra. In 1963, while in Buenos
Aires he was introduced to electronic music, which he continued to
compose until 1970. After 1973 he was back in Peru, but without any
further means to continue this line of work and devoted the rest of his
time investigating pre-Hispanic instruments. Now for the first time his
electronics appear on compact disc. Only the first piece, ‘Intensidad Y
Altura’ is pure electronical piece; all the others combine electronics
with other, ‘real’ instruments. About one hundred minutes here of what
is best called ‘difficult’ music – the germanic ernste music. I must
have written this before, but I am not the most right person to do this
music any justice. This is a highly serious mixture of avant-garde
classical music in
combination with electronic sounds. My favorite is ‘Cancion Sin
Palabras, ESEPCO II’ for two piano’s and tape, which is intense at
times, soft at times and has a great touch to it, including some
scarping and bending sounds. The other pieces were not bad either, but
not all the time worked for these classically untrained ears.
Definitely an interesting release, but perhaps I wished for some more
electronics. (FdW)
Address: http://www.pogus.com
S.E.T.I. – CORONA (CD by Loki)
LAND:FIRE – SHORT WAVE TRANSMISSIONS (CD by Loki)
Over the years I lost track of Andrew Lagowski, sometimes (such as
here) known as S.E.T.I. I have no idea why I lost track, but perhaps he
was busy playing concerts, or just not as active with releasing music.
I learn that ‘Knowledge’ from 1994 was his first album (and perhaps I
should add ‘a classic’) and ‘Corona’ is only his fifth album as
S.E.T.I. until now. Space is still the place here. S.E.T.I.’s music is
based on the cosmos, space, stars, and everything else connected to
that. It takes a look at that vast empty space from within, but also
from a distance. Lagowski uses recordings from Nasa which he cuts into
his heavy drone based music. The novelty of that is long gone –
‘Knowledge’ is a classic – as it is done by him and by others after
him. That is perhaps, after sixteen years the downside of this music.
Its all a matter of heard and seen it all. But with so few S.E.T.I.
releases out there, we may not mind about that little progress that has
been made. The music here is
excellent. On a grey winter day with darkness starting half way through
the afternoon, this is just the perfect ambient soundtrack for the cold
season. Highly atmospheric, no rhythm in sight, just slow evolving
patterns played on a bunch of analogue synthesizers, sound effects and
some radio transmissions. Ambient music may be a dead end street, but
this is a damn beautiful work.
With a title like ‘Short Wave Transmissions’, you could perhaps easily
think that the album of Land:Fire is along that of S.E.T.I. That is
only partly true. There is indeed a lot of talking on this record,
snippets from the radio, but the music is somewhat different. Land:Fire
is an alter-ego of Herbst9, and it has been five years since he last
released a record. This is all about radiological warfare, nuclear fall
out and other somewhat unpleasant things in life. Here too we have some
analogue synthesizers, computerized effects but also rhythm machines,
which create a cold clinical and mechanical sound. That may seem like
something negative, but its not. The music is very dynamic, moving back
and forth between blocks of synthesized sound and soft spoken ambient
textures, all spiced up with radio talk. Its not easy to say wether the
music really reflects the radiological/nuclear holocaust theme (would
you be aware if it wasn’t told?), but there is certainly a spooky
atmosphere
surrounding this record. Excellent soundtrack to an imaginary film about these kind of subjects. (FdW)
Address: http://www.loki-found.de
CHRISTOPHER MCFALL & LUIGI TURRA – TACTILE.SURFACE (CD by Unfathomless)
The second CD on the Unfathomless imprint by Mystery Sea is a
collaborative work by Christopher McFall, whose work we came across
already a few times and the for me unknown Luigi Turra. In this series
the label is "trying to illustrate artists’ personal fascination for
specific locations, either natural, human built, or fictitious, as well
as other pregnant related environmental experiences impacting into
memory and onto our senses.” In this duo work we have the living room
and windows of Turra, as recorded in Schion in the North of Italy and
from McFall recordings from Kansas, through the western lands of Kansas
up to Colorado (I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore). Turra
also uses bits of a shakuhachi flute here and there. I have no idea how
all of this was merged together by these two men, but they did. And the
results are surely quite nice. One piece, that lasts about forty-two
minutes and has quite a desolate feel to it: the empty room, the window
clapping, the vast open
space of Kansas. Yet this is not a work of total silence, as there is
always something happening. Sounds are heavily processed through the
use of extensive equalization, bringing out, mainly, the deeper end of
the bass spectrum and occasionally high pitched tones. Quite a nice
work, I’d say, but the problem is that the fact that this is cut as one
track, which leads us to think this is meant to be a single
composition, but unfortunately it doesn’t work as one composition. Its
bumps into various places (excuse le mot), which are then cross faded
into another part, and then another one. Why not make distinct endings
to a piece and then start another one, I thought? Even without too many
changes in the actual piece, but just the mere change into various
pieces, with an occasional full stop here and there would have made the
whole into a much stronger work. Otherwise I think this is a great work
of microsound and field recordings, all according to the big textbook
of the genre. (FdW)
Address: http://www.unfathomless.net
NOMMO OGO – ACROSS TIME AND SPACE (CD by Record Label)
The title of the album gives a clue: This is indeed a very trippy
journey from the band with the strange name "Nommo Ogo”. The music is a
blend of electronic music and acoustic psychedelia. The style is always
kept on a relaxed downbeat pace, both rhythmically and with the overall
instrumentation. The acoustic part of the album draws associations
towards early krautrock (Amon Düül II, Faust, Can) though this is
exclusively instrumental. Also the acid-style of earliest Pink Floyd
shines through as well as newer approaches to psychedelia as from
Legendary Pink Dots and Subarachnoid Space. Consisting of nine pieces
the length of the intersections exceeds 8 minutes with the Esoterrorade
sounding like a mixture between early IDM of the Warp label but still
with the acoustic interference. Field recordings and spoken words also
are part of the expression on this very interesting album. (NM)
Address: http://www.recordlabelrecords.org/
CORDAME – MIGRATION (CD by Malasartes Musiques)
AMY HORVEY – INTERVIEW (CD by Malasartes Musiques)
NOZEN – LIVE AU UPSTAIRS (CD by Malasartes Musiques)
The continuity of interesting releases by Ambiances Magnetiques is also
the case for the sublabel Malasartes Musiques, that was started by
Damian Nisenson several years ago. This time Nisenson presents his new
group Nozen, a quartet by Pierre Tanguay (drums), Jean Felix Mailloux
(bass), Bernard Falaise (guitars) and Nisenson himself on (alt and
tenor sax). They interpret 12 compositions by Argentina-born Nisenson
that move between jazz, new music and musical traditions of Jewish
Eastern Europe. After the revival of klezmer in the 90s, it was also
embraced by jazz musicians. Just think of John Zorn’s Massada or Burton
Greene’s Klezmokum. Nozen is also exponent of this development as
Nisenson also strives above all for a combination of jazz and klezmer.
He does so very successfully. Their playing is modest and inspired. The
music often starts very calm but gradually effervescent passages takes
over and climaxes are reached. Very satisfying are the few tracks where
guitarist Falaise
impresses with fine solo work and dissonant, like in the opening track
and in the fantastic "Spread the News”. They counterbalance perfectly
with the pieces that pass by relatively unnoticed because they are
built around klezmer-like themes that sound to common and therefore
insignificant. Like the closing track "No Milk No Sugar”. However after
the short silence a new piece begins that is added as a ghost track.
This is by far the most experimental track and was probably produced in
the studio.
Mailloux is ready for his second record by his group Cordame (Marie
Neige Lavigne – violin, Julie-Odile – violincelle, Remi Giguer –
guitares, Ziya Tabassian – percussion, vibraphone, Pierre Tanguay
-drums). "Migration” draws inspiration from Persian, Indian and
Armenian music, and modal and improvised music. In this respect it is a
similar project as Nozen, as both integrate eastern musical traditions
in a western context. In contrast with Nozen Mailloux moves further
east, not only geographically but also in the music he composes.
Jazz-influences, as well as other western idioms are less obvious then
in the case of Nozen. Mailloux is not interested in opposing or
confronting these influences with western traditions. He brings an ode
to eastern musical traditions, leaving behind all the ornaments that
characterize this music often in its original form.
Of course one can hear immediately that the music is played by western
players, who – that is also very evident – are very dedicated to this
music. It is evident that Mailloux is very fond of eastern music.
However the compositions are not always satisfying or engaging from
beginning to end. A bit too spun out from time to time. The music often
moves along in the same slow – walk like a egyptian – pace. If you can
surrender yourself to this it is a very pleasant slow journey. Very
organic and pleasing chamber music. Constantly in the same relaxing
mood but played very spirited.
With "Interview” something else is going on. This is the fist solo
effort by the young trumpeter Amy Horvey. She works mainly as a
contemporary, orchestral and Baroque trumpeter and appeared as a
soloist with numerous ensembles and orchestras. On her first solo-album
she interprets works from very different composers. The CD opens with
"Quatrro pezzi per tromba sola”, a beautiful composition by Scelsi. It
is followed by pieces from unknown contemporary composers: "Musica
Invisible” (Cecilia Arditto), "Interview” (Anna Hostman). In "Apparatus
Inconcinnus” (Ryan Purchase) a story of the Russian writer Charms is
read by Horvey, interrupted by instrumental parts. "Overture to The
Queen of the Music Boxes” features Jeff Morton on music boxes, toy
instruments and electronics. It sounds like an improvisation, but I can
be wrong. To conclude I can say that Horvey made the right decision in
including a wide variety of compositions, showing that she feels at
home as a trumpeter in very
different musical worlds. (DM)
Address: http://www.actuellecd.com/
PAUL DEVENS – INK SUMMIT (LP by Moab Records)
So far I thought of Paul Devens as someone who was mainly interested in
noise music. Loud noise music based on computerized transformations of
whatever field recordings. But over the last few he toned down and let
the field recordings speak and keep whatever process down. His latest
work, I believe his first LP release, was presented at Experimental
Intermedia in December last year. It has eight pieces, all based upon
field recordings, from air ventilation systems, branches, heating
furnace. All of them are fed through digital processing and modular
sound synthesis. No longer the pure noise is at the forefront, but
whatever process is applied in the computer its there to serve the
sound. The original field recordings seem to be main point of focus.
Mechanical humming versus irregular sound events are spiced up with
bits of computer work. They add an extra layer to the music, and not
take it over. The result is a very vibrant record of musique concrete,
based on electro-acoustic
events
with bits of electronic processing. An excellent record, in a beautiful fold out poster cover. (FdW)
Address: http://www.pauldevens.nl
EVOL – TEN CANISTERS OF PRESSURIZED TETRAFLUOROETHANE OVER THREE WEEKS (7″ by Alku)
The title of ‘Ten canisters of pressurized tetrafluoroethane over three
weeks’ describes the record’s contents astutely, believe it or not. You
see, the titular chemical happens to be the high-pressure substance
contained within gas horns, and it is the blaring of these very horns
which comprises the entire unprocessed duration of this crimson disc.
EVOL’s Roc Jiménez de Cisneros has been using these canned noise-makers
in his live performances for years, but this recording — the ninth in
Cisneros’ ‘Punani’ series — is the first to employ them to the
exclusion of any other sounds. As can be imagined, the resulting
performance is a challenging one to behold at times, but it also proves
to be an interesting study of the parameters of sound native to an
unconventional instrument. Since gas horns emit a tone oscillating
around 440 Hz, the apertures of several canisters were partly clogged
with epoxy to produce a wider scope of sounds. The recording, as a
result, sounds sort of like an
ineptly mistuned brass section warming up — Cisneros’ blaring canisters
trumpet along discordantly, producing a curious range of textures, from
a wheezy gasp to a last-breath sputter to a full-out bellow. It is
definitely musical but freely improvised, and largely about concept and
spectacle. Played loud‹ — the horns themselves scream out at nearly 120
dB on their own) — ‘Ten canisters’ makes for a cacophonous little
confrontation; it’s a brief record that catches the listener off guard
with its pseudo-musical, unpredictable nature. Beyond that, it’s likely
to be the lone gas horn single in any discriminating record collector’s
library. (MT)
Address: http://alkualkualkualkualkualkualkualkualkualku.org/
MARTIJN HOHMANN – EQUIVOCAL GENERATION (7″ by Universaal Kunst)
2009 was not only the year of Charles Darwin and his evolution theory,
its been also forty years since Alvin Lucier composed ‘I Am Sitting In
A Room’. That piece of music is also about evolution. Lucier speaks a
short text and then records the sound of him speaking in the room,
feeds it back to the room, records that and repeats that process for
about twenty or so times. If you ever need a simple process to
transform any sound, then this is the way to do it. Perhaps Martijn
Hohmann did this? The record is pressed as a lathe cut and comes in two
edition: one standard in an edition of 50 and one in a red linen box as
a picture disc (which in lathe cut terms means they are glued
together). It looks great, a small art object. There is only one side
to this record, oddly enough. Hard to tell what it is… some sort of
scraping sound, perhaps a church bell? But also there are insect sounds
in there, which ties this to the world of Darwin. The lathe cut is a
perfect medium for a record on
evolutional processes of music: unlike real vinyl, the decaying process
is quicker and one can almost get a new piece of the evolution every
time one plays this record. A pity that its all a bit short, this
evolution.
Address: http://www.universaal.nl
ERIC CHENAUX – WARM WEATHER/LE VIEUX FAVORI 4 (7″ by Eat, Sleep, Repeat)
Strictly speaking there is no a or b side to this record. Which of
course seems to me the right thing to do. None of these two tracks is
more important than the other. on ‘Warm Weather’, Chenaux (of whom I
never heard) plays a nylon guitar and sings. Multiple channels of
guitar playing, although I don’t think more than two or three. I must
admit I am not a coinnaseur of this kind of singer songwriting, but it
seems to me damn close to Nick Drake, this piece. Intimate, up close,
and very personal. On ‘Le Vieux Favori 4′ we have electric guitar,
melodica and ’spinning speakers creating a classical cinematic sound’
and no vocals. There is a nice drone layered element to this piece of
music, with an odd rotating sound, like multiple violins (which I guess
there aren’t any) shimmering away. An entirely different piece, but it
has a similar not too outspoken quality to it. Nicely private music.
(FdW)
Address: http://www.eatsleeprepeat.com
ELEKTRIK UNDERGROUND 2009 (CDR by Motok)
Originally this was planned to be a lathe cut record, but somehow
turned out to be a CDR. It comes from the world of Nico Selen, who is
best known, for many years, as O.R.D.U.C., but who also works as E.M.M.
and Nonotes (as well as many other names), each within a specific niche
of electronic music. On this short compilation (twenty-four minutes)
Selen appears three times under his own, and then once as O.R.D.U.C.,
E.M.M. and Nonotes. His three pieces as Nico Selen are more like tunes,
as the are all quite short. ‘Faces’ by E.M.M. is a minimalist synth
piece of wailing bass notes from a digital synth. ‘Do’ by O.R.D.U.C.
takes out the triangle of the original and leaves out the synthesizers,
which create a strange atmosphere of almost emptiness. NoNotes
‘Tumultus (Aqua Mix)’ is with eleven minutes the longest piece here and
I must say its a bit overlong, as I think things could have been edited
a bit down. Not as short as ‘Guttae’, by Selen, in which he uses some
elements from
‘Tumultus’, but that’s actually a nice jingle piece. It seems to me
that Selen wanted to create a compilation here of music that is
slightly more experimental than on say the average O.R.D.U.C.
recording. It doesn’t always succeed – see the NoNotes piece – but in
the other pieces works quite well. (FdW)
Address: http://www.motok.org
ROBERT HORTON & SINDRE BJERGA & CAREN OHLSON – BROKEN WISDOM ON IT’S WILD LONE (CDR by Striate Cortex)
More music by Sindre Bjerga on Striate Cortex. Here he teams up with
Robert Horton (gong, boot, computer, filters, and gong microphone) and
Caren Ohlson on voice. I am not sure if this the same Horton as the one
I knew many years ago, but perhaps it is. Bjerga himself gets credit
for korg poly 61, tape player and filters. The music was recorded in
Stavanger, Norway (where Bjerga lives) and El Cerrito, California
(where Horton lives, I presume), between 2007 and 2009. I don’t think
Bjerga or Horton traveled back and forth to record a highly limited CDR
release, so its more likely that this is the result of some sort of
music through mail collaboration. I have no idea where Caren Ohlson
fits into this, as its hard for me to hear any voice, unless of course
(and no doubt that is the case), this voice has been highly
manipulated. The work is a thirty eight minute thing (sort of the usual
Bjerga length), of slowly changing drone music, built around the heavy
filtering of gong sounds. It
makes a nice drone based soundscape, of the more darker kind. It has
that trade mark lo-fi kind that is marks many of the works by Bjerga.
Not really grainy or hissy, but also not the most top notch recording.
A bit of rough on the edges. Quite a nice, solid piece of moving drone
music, nothing great or out of the ordinary in Bjerga’s vast catalogue,
but surely a fine one. (FdW)
Address: <arborntolose@msn.com>
THE GHOST BETWEEN THE STRINGS – DROWING TIME (CDR by Egocide)
LUSRUTA – TRANSPARENT OBSCURITY (CDR by Egocide)
ULV – HYPNOOTTINEN (CDR by Egocide)
The Egocide label has nice covers, which however do not reveal a lot of
information. The Ghost Between The Strings just note on their (his?)
cover: "e-bowed guitar. recorded april 24, 2009, mixed april-may 2009′.
Then there is just the music. In some forty plus minutes things unfold
about as exact and precise as these things should sound like. Dark,
atmospheric, isolationist. The rumble doesn’t go too deep below the
earth surface but stays on the surface, scanning the topography of a
some what hilly terrain. It moves a bit up and down (result of some
sound effects applied in real time, while recording this), and makes
throughout a nice listen. Nothing much new for the lovers of dark
ambience, but its not bad. Not top class either, but all in all quite
alright.
Dark and atmospheric are also the words that apply to the work of
Lusruta, of which we likewise know nothing. Instead of guitars and
ebows, I think its the extended use of synthesizers and sound effects
(of course I might be entirely wrong). Eight tracks at work here, which
last almost seventy minutes. That seems a bit much to me for the amount
of variation it has to offer. The dark textures are being played
alongside the use of sometimes crude, distorted effects, which makes
this at least a bit more angular. The twenty-four minute ‘Endymion’
could have been easily skipped and it would have made the release much
stronger. Think Lustmord of Controlled Bleeding’s ‘Golgotha’ and you
get an idea about Lusruta. Again, not bad, not great, quite alright
(although not my cup of tea, instead of The Ghost Between The Strings).
The final release is by one Ulv. It’s almost an hour long track of some
highly alien sounds that have no direction. Its hard to say what kind
of sounds they are, maybe something slowed down, maybe with some sound
effects, maybe without. Again the atmospheric card is played here, but
of the three releases its the least interesting one. The sound moves
sort of without any idea up and about, down and out, but the real
hypnotic ambience is not reached. Maybe if it was half the length, and
with some more dynamics, or something of a composition, things could
have been saved, but in its current form it just doesn’t work. (FdW)
Address: http://egocide.wordpress.com
ANASTASIA VRONSKI – THE DROWNER (CDR by Date With A Corpse)
Alright, I am going to guess here. I think this is Anastasia’s second
release, and perhaps its also released by Date With A Corpse, just like
‘The Spell’ (see Vital Weekly 686), but its not on the cover or the
information. There is nowhere an address or website to be found either.
I am not sure how Vronski wants to get rid of her CDs this way. ‘The
Drowner’ is what she calls her musique concrete record, using sounds
from the kitchen sink, closing doors and her noisy apartment. It starts
with the dripping of water, and slowly moves over into a territory
where we find tapeloops of some ‘dirty’ kind of noise, feeding off into
some delay pedal. It takes a bit too much time to develop, whereas they
could have easily be concise to half the time. Just the same problem as
with ‘The Spell’. Not much of musique concrete I’d say, but a bit
better than ‘The Spell’. May I ask for some better presentation next
time?
Address: none given
ZEBULON KOSTED – NOVAYA ZEMLYA (cassette by Haute Magie)
The core of Side A’s lone track, "Novaya,” features Rachid Abdel
Ghafour’s deadpan recitation of some line about God and suffering —
it’s an emotionally bereft performance, somehow sounding like one of
Conet Project’s numbers station recordings — fittingly matched with an
endless procession of rapidly transforming and re-calibrating noise
layers which shift abruptly from level to level. These roaming segments
skip from grating harsh noise to gentle ambience to the tiny thrush of
a rainstorm, all in mere seconds. According to the track
listing, Ghafour’s noise is produced solely through samples and
electronic manipulation; at times it seems as if the recordings were
collected by throwing a tape recorder into a host of different
conditions — under a highway overpass, next to a train, into the heart
of a prairie duststorm… But it’s hard to decipher each noise’s origins
– partly because Ghafour moves so impulsively from one to
another, allowing limited room for reflection. Still, it’s pretty solid
stuff; owing to the shifting layers of sound, this A-side turns out to
be more spastic and interesting than lots of sheet-noise efforts, and
the deadpan vocal line adds an esoteric and alienated sensation to the
recording. Curiously, side B’s "Zemlya” is an abrupt departure from its
predecessor. What formerly was a vocal sample and diverse quantities of
noise is now a continuous, hollow, metallic timbre which pulses and
cycles over the entire side’s duration. This track is significantly
less enrapturing than "Novaya,” although it has a curious sense of
emergency to it, almost like a distant, marred air raid siren blaring
forth. Over the course of the track, the original, repeated cycle
becomes gradually modified and changed. Taken as a beast of two
disparate sides, ‘Novaya Zemlya’ is an intriguing little nugget worth
inspection by free-wheeling ears. The first side, however, is
ultimately the more intoxicating of
the two. (MT)
Address: http://www.heofthehouse.com
THE PATRIOTIC WINDOW KINGS – GUITARGUMENT (cassette by Speed Tapes)
Those kind people of Speed Tapes, supplied me with a cassette of their
release by The Patriotic Window Kings, as well as a CDR of the
material, always handy for putting some in the podcast. "Guitargument”
its called and it deals, quite naturally with the guitar. Not much
information otherwise to go by here. So I ‘think’ this all to deal with
an electric guitar and a few stomp boxes. The Patriotic Window King is,
again assuming here, one guy, who improvises on the guitar in a rather
lo-fi manner. String torture which only occasionally leads to
interesting results I think. When its on the fringe on drone and
improvisation its pretty good, but when its a random play of strings
than I don’t think its particularly good and sometimes down right
tedious. Typical music for a cassette release this music. (FdW)
Address: http://www.myspace.com/speedtapes
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