JOHN DUNCAN – Live Brussels

Recorded at Argos VZW Ways Of Hearing Festival on October 18, 2007, this performance comes in an extremely limited edition CD (50 copies autographed by the composer). As the label’s name implies, John Duncan’s ideas leave us asking questions rather than finding answers, this mysterious set being no exception.

The opening drone – a wonderfully wavering pulsation shifting in the stereo field with evident effects on the nerves – is suddenly cut short by a discharge of disposable sonic materials, abruptly interrupting the state of illusion created in the initial segment. From then on, the audibility level diminishes quite a bit and one is forced to turn the volume way up – provided that you’re not wearing headphones, of course – in order to presume (not really understanding) what’s going on.

At first, intangible appearances – the sound similar to a twister blowing through a hundred bottlenecks - maintain the atmosphere relatively static, although disturbed at last by a measure of electronic interference. This section works well also by mixing it with the sounds coming from the outside, but that’s not the point. What matters is the customary sense of somewhat anxious awareness of an implied deeper process, ever less than predictable in its cross-pollination of human expression and mechanical amorphousness. The muffled helicopter-like throb appearing after approximately 15 minutes introduces an even more impenetrable setting during which Duncan’s shortwave mastery shines of its very radiance, additional fragments of brain-stimulating frequencies mixed with urban echoes and a few whispered words to perplex the listener once again.

Remote explosions, contaminated air, biotic resemblances enhanced by processed vocal phonemes, humming mantras picturing a hardly bearable solitude, distant sirens, ill minds, suffering people, a desperate search for a solution amidst ominous reverberations highlighting the limitations of mankind. Duncan is neither a teacher nor a healer - or maybe he is both? - yet his performances always manage to elicit serious distress and important indications - which is what real art is all about.

Allquestions

MARINOS KOUTSOMICHALIS – Anasiseipsychos

A full hour of sine waves, the result of “late-night improvisations” at home by this knob-twiddling Greek man who knows what he’s doing. Let’s make it clear right now: Anasiseipsychos is a great CD, one of those releases made to be played endlessly, day in day out. For this writer sinusoidal tones represent something nearing cosmic perfection, therefore how could anybody expect a “critical” analysis of what’s just a product of interweaving purities?

OK, here we go, get a cheap description: permanent lines, slowly arching frequencies, decaying ellipses, intertwining glissandos. Wait a minute, I hear voices shouting, everybody can do this. No, sir: a person must possess a special kind of ear to set this type of resonance into a structure definable as “music”, and it looks to me that Koutsomichalis is up to the task.

Nothing here is designable as “unprecedented”, but these creations are peacefully beautiful in their crystalline minimalism. Not to mention all those deceptive geometric allusions that inquisitive ears find tangentially, or in some corner, or at the vertex of a virtual triangle…more or less everywhere. And what about the customary natural equalizations deriving from the different inclination of the head, and the non-existent pulses that an efficient cerebrum generates? Pure illusion, like everything that’s being told to keep believers docile and ignorant, as Frank Zappa would have it, until “enlightenment”.

Sound does not claim to heal people; on the contrary, it kills those who are talking nonsense around it, little by little. So be careful: what is functional for complex intelligences is instead lethal for hollow-minded followers of alleged deities that, in turn, encourage psychological illness, the whole inevitably causing the rational (and possibly physical) collapse of both creators and adorers in a reciprocal sucking of vital juices.

When losers are left alone with the purity of real vibration – that which a creature is (or is not) able to resonate within from the birth, and nobody can teach - the inconclusive bitterness of loophole living becomes really hard to swallow. You are what your brain and body eat, you are what you say, you die for what you are. And you didn’t learn to listen.

Entr'acte

ISOBEL CLOUTER / ROB MULLENDER – Myths Of Origin: Sonic Ephemera From East Asia

Environment-based editions are a dime a dozen these days, trying to discover a special item a pretty hard assignment. Fear not, though: just walk towards Dale Lloyd’s ever-impressive And/OAR to come across a catalogue as diverse as the various facets of human activity, not to mention the level of touching intensity shown by some of this label’s records over the years. This splendid work by Clouter and Mullender was originally conceived in 1999, year in which they decided to gather sounds that “would serve to illustrate how precious the sonic environment can be, and to act as founding materials for a soundscape collection at the British Library Sound Archive”. All the pieces of this CD borrow from original recordings made in 2001 in regions of Japan and China.

The sources of these impressions are traces of urban life and organic reverberations perceived in different settings including temples, private gardens, deserts and beaches. The team-mates appear to be principally interested – as confirmed by the extremely detailed notes of the accompanying booklet – in the phenomenon of booming sands, which they frantically tried to capture in several occasions, mainly during a stay in the Mongolian desert. Indeed the sounds recorded amidst the dunes characterize the vast majority of the second half of the program - the one where a distinctly droning nature, which renders the acoustic landscape ominous at times, seems to prevail as opposed to the more variegated expressions – sea waves, children at play amidst talking folks, metallic thuds, kitchen-related noises, squeaking objects, traffic and other assorted symptoms – that are mostly found in the Japanese files, but also in the conclusive episode taped at the Labrang monastery in Xiahe, largely characterized by the creaking spinning of Tibetan prayer wheels.

Leaving details aside, what actually strikes is the way in which Clouter and Mullender managed to seize and subsequently organize the inherent musicality of these flashes. It’s right here that contenders get separated from pretenders in this particular area. One thing is sticking a microphone outside a window and finding an excuse to release whatever happens in those sixty minutes; another is embarking in a project of such extent and significance, a trip that is not strictly geographic but touches the essential aspects of the reactions that humans have when confronted with aural occurrences that do not belong to a daily familiarity. Those responses are fundamental in determining who we really are, as the behaviour in front of sound is the perfect gauge for a soul’s depth and, at large, the real value of hypothetically “sentient” entities. The amazement of the two partners, clearly expressed at the end of “Dune 3” after having heard marvellous murmurs, is an indicator in that sense. It shows the degree of love for existence that is necessary to individuate a quintessence, something that was achieved completely in this case, unpronounced mysticism and earthly manifestations blending in physical radiance.

And/OAR

NIKOS VELIOTIS – Cello Powder

I’m not annoying everybody by repeating the whole concept and the almost ritual procedures behind this work (just Google the artist’s name with the record’s title and get what you need). On a strictly musical sense, something must be said, though. Veliotis subdivided the cello’s tonal range in 100 quarter tones and – from August 26 through December 6, 2008 – painstakingly recorded a sixty-minute drone for each pitch. The daily diary of this operation appears in tiny print on the sleeve and it’s quite interesting - if a little hard on the eyes - to read, had someone believed that making droning music is easy (try without a keyboard, then come back weeping). Following this Via Crucis, the resulting 100-note telluric mantra was placed in a single audio file called “The Complete Works For Cello”.

The sonic outcome is extraordinary: a huge wall of sound that might be described as a cross-pollination of Phill Niblock, Glenn Branca and Iannis Xenakis occurring during the Chernobyl disaster. Familiar with the very long silences typical of this Greek cellist? They’re gone: this is a colossal, monolithic mass whose stillness reveals thousands of disguised micro-movements. Listen carefully and, especially when wearing headphones, superimposed orchestras, indecipherably singing choirs and lone vocalists are distinctly perceived. It is only a fruit of the imagination, grown from the accumulation of upper partials, notes and noises comprised by this amassment. Superlatives - and the will of totally liberating your head from everything else – are definitely required.

A fantastic CD that’s going to be enormously valuable in a much needed process of isolation from the rest of the world, at least for a hour, and – more than ever – from all kinds of endlessly pontificating schnooks. Nikos Veliotis rules.

Noise-Below

TARAB – Take All Of The Ships From The Harbour, And Sail Them Straight To Hell

A claimant for the top spots in the artistic area where acoustically stimulating communiqués exploit the interaction linking a specific environment and the objects that furnish it, Australian Eamon Sprod (Tarab) recorded the basics for his new record in regions of the globe that are both pretty close and very distant from where he’s based. In the latter case the zone in question is Angel Island, in the bay of San Francisco, which initially used to lodge an immigration center, then became an American military base, and today is managed by the US National Park Service. The remnants of what once were buildings stuffed with anguishing truths are decaying in silence; that’s exactly the kind of setting this man needs to create.

The lack of human presence is a too-heavy burden for the average soul to resist to, and I’ve often wondered what people who usually talk ad infinitum might receive from an opus like this, in which the most recurrent incidence is a sort of hushed resonance, in between a ghoul-infested hall and an abandoned warehouse that only a desperate somebody enters, expecting to unearth something “useful” amidst dumped materials and rotting debris. Past glories gone, nonexistent future, worn-to-shreds existences, yet a still strong dignity imbued with a special type of holiness. Concepts that quickly find their way across the psyche as one listens to these forlorn echoes, a crushingly desolate aural ambiance just rarely pierced by ruthless clanging abrasions, or enhanced by other kinds of crackling and hissing matters; sounds that progressively discover an accommodation in the deepest meanders of the brain causing an unusual intoxication, not obeying to the desire of distancing ourselves from a contemptible reality.

Is it the wind, or a poisonous gas? Are those whispering insufflations the last calls to observe the world’s leftovers before they definitively disappear? As soon as a powerful rumble is heard from a long distance we hold our breath, trying to virtually grasp the nature of that place and blow that vision away, ashes of meaning in the sea of ignorance. The sensitive listener remains silently waiting for more of those moments, in the vain hope of being led through a path of comfort. It doesn’t work, the frequencies of tarnished rational mechanisms and the reverberations of individual negligence sticking painful needles in the flesh of illusory beliefs.

Probably this is the best documentation released by Tarab until now: marvellously unsolvable, deeply affecting, incomprehensible for the populace, evolutionally constructive. Set aside a good chunk of your time and concentrate when listening, prior to even attempting to speak. It takes a while for this 56-minute piece to sink in; when it happens, a small fraction of enlightenment has been achieved. It corresponds to the awareness that the end is near, right behind the gate many herds are confidently, pretentiously, anticipating to traverse, childish victims of an absolute joke. There’s no need to be afraid, though: when the mind is not working anymore having reached its expiry date, hollowness suddenly stops spreading, and the cosmos breathes a little better. Transformed energy does not rant about god, but contributes to the propagation of a massive vibration.

23Five

IRR. APP. (EXT.) – Kreiselwelle

Wilhelm Reich used to hypothesize about the interrelation of energy, life forms and the universe at large. Kreiselwelle – final chapter of a trilogy, Ozeanische Gefühle and Cosmic Superimposition being the preceding instalments – is Irr. App. (Ext.)’s imaginative portrayal of what Reich defined as “spiral wave” (that’s the album’s title in English), a recurring shape that the psychologist had observed in several systems, not necessarily restricting his analysis to biotic issues.

The improvement of consciousness via abnormal sonorities is an aim that many composers have tried to achieve, with mixed results. Matt Waldron excels in the creation of extremely affecting soundscapes based on the concurrence and the management of sonic objects – on occasion, even ordinary ones - in contexts where urban or natural environmental factors and a general vibe of amorphousness exemplify a critical incidence. For this album, Waldron utilized found sounds whose origin or character can be associated, more or less directly, to the same configuration that inspires the whole concept. Springs, whirling air, washing of fluids, soil noises, someone’s steps: everything seamed in an organic continuum, gradually losing its quintessence to establish a sort of spontaneous pattern, the crucial resonance of these elements merged in a synthesis of hypnotically cyclical, bottomless pulses featuring human echoes, bewildering electronic intermissions, gargantuan breathing, stifling vapours derived from liquefied compatibilities.

The corrosion of faith, the dissolution of confidence, the determination to identify with “what comes after” way before the moment is due: this excursion through the meanders of psychoactive mutability causes these and other reactions, working much better than thousands of inadequate words, involuntarily succeeding in depicting the frenetically unsystematic activity of the brain during the REM phase, the instant in which a huge quantity of data appears, memories from current and past experiences jumbled in a typically disjointed hotchpotch.

The collaboration between Irr. App. (Ext.) and Nurse With Wound didn’t crop up by chance: there are indeed a few sections that vaguely hint to Steve Stapleton’s tortuously nightmarish impenetrability. Still, behind Kreiselwelle lies a manifestly individual logic that only a rigorously open-minded inspection is going to disclose in full. It’s a record one could easily get lost in; subsequent to the decoding process, though, we find ourselves incredibly close to the essential core of what sound and its connection with non-standard mental procedures represent for our existence to keep flowing without excessive traumas. A difficult yet imperative conception, indispensable for detaching a fundamental reality from those self-constructed psychological shelters that inevitably lead to an early end or - at the very least – to unintelligent behaviour.

Finding a middle ground at all times is far from the best possible option for a complete development. And compromise, especially when your main beliefs are implicated, is a slow-but-sure assassin.

The Helen Scarsdale Agency

JGRZINICH – Phase Inversion

Among the genuine masters of this game, acquired Estonian John Grzinich gives a showing of his strength with a gorgeous accumulation of drones and found objects, the latter mostly verging on the softly metallic/distantly clattering side of concreteness. The record presents exactly what was expected, this commentator well acquainted with a good number of the artist’s past releases (published on the best labels in this field, from Cut to Sirr, to Elevator Bath – you name it, he’s been there); yet there’s something distinguishing his work which is called class. I don’t know how to explain it, this has probably to do with a deeper perception of the vibrating particles of a particular source, or the shape of a chosen environment, or maybe just comes from a highly developed inner ear. A Jgrzinich drone sounds dissimilar from a regular buzzing hum: it appears more like the layering of a thousand desolate murmurs bathed in amniotic liquid.

The static façade hides hundreds of inherent movements, muted throbs, sub-harmonic changes that nevertheless make the whole sound as an immobile stifled choir, silently spreading resonances which, in conjunction with the dissipating energies represented by those faraway rattles and clangs, represent a memento of how to behave ourselves in front of the vague, a symbol of the unconcern we should always demonstrate when the worst is approaching, be it the fear of an uncertain future or the sheer notion of death. Perhaps a record like Phase Inversion could help someone to get in touch with that inside dimension which is inevitably left aside when one is intent in “living” by filling the brain with figments of imagination and innumerable illusions, only to be given a final bill at the end, still ill-equipped and even more frightened.

In actual fact, life itself is a phase inversion. On the contrary, many people are convinced of giving lessons to others, not realizing that what they believe to have “invented” is just the chewed-up remnant of a truth that everybody sees in a wholly individual way - all of them completely wrong - and that will finally rape everyone’s abstruse beliefs concerning human evolution and a presumed afterlife - not to mention reincarnation - except for the obvious transformation of the corporal matter into food for worms (or ash, if you’re sophisticated enough) and energy into some substance that might be useful or less, according to the quintessence of that erstwhile “being”.

Mystery Sea

CELER – Capri

During a residency in the Italian island of Capri, Will and Danielle Long found the time – as they always did – to transform the experience into mesmerizing aural pictures which we now have the opportunity to get pleasure from, thanks to a new label from Berlin headed by Christian Roth. The sources utilized by Celer for this particular outing were piano, strings, horns, acoustic guitar, field recordings and “the warm breeze of the Mediterranean sea”. The latter constituent - which used to surround and energize yours truly over the course of ever-remembered adolescent summers spent in contemplation of that very marine environment, only from the shores of Tuscany – encircles the music in combination with a thicker-than-usual aura of recollection, embracing us all along 77 minutes flowing with nary a moment of tiredness. The calming effect of these short pieces equals the sense of silent yearning experienced in those tiny fragments of infinity in which levelheaded beings put the finger on a dolorous understanding of the invisible mechanisms regulating their internal temperament.

Capri’s tracks, taken as physical phenomena per se, confirm the amazingly rapid evolution of Celer’s artistic vision. What had started, years ago, as a not-completely-convincing assemblage of loops that could or could not work depending on the choice of the raw matters and the audience’s transitory inclinations, today has become the steady reiteration of a process of metamorphosis: personal experiences into sounds and, in turn, melancholically stirring emotions. It is not easy – except for a recurring piano-based “theme” – to individuate the original instruments under the haze of quiet resonance that the essential substances create, yet the value of this album lies right there: a series of blurred memories, vague images and formless reverberations contributing to deepen the regretful feel of another praiseworthy record which - after Dani’s precocious ascent to the sky - is even more aching to listen to and evaluate, although she remains clearly visible amidst this resounding fog.

Forced to designate a “darling release” for 2009 in the sphere of meaningful ambient/meditative electronica, this would definitely be one of the nominees, and the fact that this is a 400-copy limited edition should persuade the hesitant. You must learn the difference between those who were born to identify with vibrations and frequencies and the ones who invented a job for themselves without the necessary underpinning and, especially, profoundness.

Humming Conch

ANDREW CHALK & DAISUKE SUZUKI – The Shadows Go Their Own Way

The time-honoured alliance between Chalk and Suzuki is enriched by a new episode - typically sheltered by a tenderly refined sleeve artwork - where aspects that sound a little more “present” or concrete, if you like, are explored preferentially as opposed to the wraithlike qualities of previous releases either by the duo or Chalk alone.

In general, the sounds and the overall mix are uncooked in a human way, showing an inclination for the material features of the surroundings: closely recorded motors, voices of people from the streets, cans, scraped metals giving shape to irregular drones. This is counterbalanced by quasi-oneiric sequences of organ/synthesizer and crickets in the sixth track, among the masterpieces of this fine disc, and rudimentarily poignant string melodies in the ninth and eleventh (all the tracks are untitled).

Sections characterized by the emblematic wonderful frailty expressed by these artists’ visions are not missing, though, and one welcomes the presence of gritty pictures of traditional instruments and a timidly humming woman like a comeback to the birthplace after many years, scents, lights and memories blurred in an indescribable sensation of belonging that is contrasted by the confirmation of the elapsing of existence, the distress deriving from the sureness that nothing will be back as we remembered it. These men are the rare possessors of a gift which allows them to reveal the purity that’s left inside sensitive beings, and that too frequently is forgotten in favour of opportunism and façade by the others.

It might take various spins of this apparently uneven record to understand, but the beauty that it irradiates is physical and often dolorous. You should remain overwhelmed in complete loneliness, as speaking with someone while this music spreads its wholesomeness in the air equals breaking an unrepeatable spell.

Siren

ASHER - Miniatures

A double CD containing short looped fragments of past-time music for solo piano (with very rare exceptions), captured by Asher by having a recorder handy as the radio was on, in order to gather the segments that sounded more interesting for potential further manipulation. Two main characters emerging: the almost mournful, nostalgic unhappiness of the pieces, and an omnipresent sibilance that surrounds the whole, nearly claiming the attention on itself rather than the actual playing, a fundamental constituent of the record.

The risk of accustomedness is not present in Asher’s art, as it offers alternatives in an apparently immutable context, maintaining the bewitching qualities that have affirmed his style as distinctive. The listener is free to choose the direction in which interest should be focused. Are we going to be fossilized in deterioration together with the sound’s tendency to decay? Do we concentrate on the permanent hiss? Shall one try and determine what the original source is (in my case, unsuccessfully)? Is the cutting-and-looping technique our primary object of interest? There are lots of elements to consider for the guessing of crucial meanings. And - as usual - there’s underlying humanity throughout, in this circumstance explicated by the mere imagine of the artist’s readiness, perhaps at late night, to snatch these snippets when the moment is right. What were the thoughts he had in mind during that particular day? Were there grief and melancholy involved, or it was just an idea for experimentation? How did Asher manage to locate so many sweetly reflective spots in stylistically coherent pianistic performances?

What this man most importantly does is avoiding those clichés that, somehow preposterously, materialize when artists decide to utilize impracticality to push their work forward, typically ending in deplorable failures. This record gives a sense of firm ineluctability and tender frailty at once, eliciting doubts while confirming certainties. Its flimsy structure sounds evocatively irrepressible, a blurred sight that never disappears. It doesn’t help to disentangle from the inevitable, throwing the receiver in a mental state of confined childhood, admonishing about the excesses of enthusiasm. Invariability permeated with timid inhibitions and hopes ended in tatters that one’s still trying to recompose.

Sourdine

MECHANIQUE(S) – Logos

The components of this group share a proclivity to confounding the listeners in regard to the origin of the sonic matter they bring into being. Dafna Naphtali’s voice is processed by a computer running custom Max/MSP programs, its fundamental nature and a gazillion of refractions – altered, intermingled or just obsessively repeated – weighing exactly the same in the overall context. Martin Speicher’s alto sax and bass clarinet appear as pretty normal on a first approach, then non-conform wickedness and idiosyncratic impatience gradually become essential traits in the improvisational setting. As far as the “endangerment” of Hans Tammen’s guitar is concerned, much has already been written; suffice to say that one gathers very different interpretations of concepts such as “virtuosity”, “harmony” and “open-mindedness” after hearing what an instrument originally born with parlour purposes can do in the munificent hands of a bright manipulator.

Interested in “the overlap of various elements of their technical and aesthetical practices”, Mechanique(s) recorded this great disc in 2001 at Logos Foundation in Ghent, Belgium. That’s right, eight years have gone away meanwhile. But make no mistake – this music proudly shows no wrinkles, sounding as if taped two weeks ago. The musicians wander around structures that glitter as pure diamond and sound absurdly periphrastic at once, pretty distant from certain liturgical behaviours currently found in the reductionist faction of EAI. The improvisations exploit the single members’ total attentiveness in relation to the procedural possibilities, accomplished contortions crowded with sparse culminations, stomach-churning sneering and breathtaking apogees. The only way to escape the logic of rambling transparency shown by the trio is abandoning ourselves to a fantasy of timbral spitefulness, decomposed protocols and, ultimately, extraordinary complexity defining the absolute gratification of organisms ready to accept and swallow hundreds of consecutive contrasting messages that, miraculously, make the whole work like a perfectly oiled machine.

Emotions are hidden everywhere if we only want to find out - even behind warped sounds. There’s an urgent need to launch a repulisti of all the convention-derived encrustations of the intellect to realize what’s actually possible. This is much better than letting someone dictate the rules of your knowledge - in the name of an aim that does not exist – tracing a depressing trail according to which one arrives at the end of life without having done nothing meaningful or at least intelligent. Wasted time is not returned to anyone.

Acheulian Handaxe

GIAMPAOLO VERGA - Fadensonnen

Giampaolo Verga - an Italian composer who is also actively involved in the encouragement of artistic creativity during the recovery processes of psychically disadvantaged persons – seems to be genuinely aware of the value of silence. With violin, voice and electronics he reveals what his mind is made of, meditating with semi-closed eyes at the farthest fringes of audibility, utilizing indistinct radiations, feeble reverberations and also acute frequencies to concoct electroacoustic settings that seize our concentration, often veritably enthralling in their mixture of profundity and legitimacy.

The rarefaction of the materials, the whispered straining of the sources, the timorous comparison between voices that we imagine deriving from lamenting ghosts and elongated percolations of frail instrumental sketches are just blurred suggestions of the essential traits of something that’s both unmistakably perceptible and manifestly indefinable, glimpses of silent commitment looking for liquids in serious acousmatic drought. With my windows open in a peaceful afternoon, remote urban presences and ever-singing birds making themselves heard from long distance, Fadensonnen sounds just perfect, at least until the sudden breakup of the final “Limbisch, Limbisch”, a startling – but not less interesting - departure from the general subject.

As opposed to certain Mediterranean tormentors who would like us to walk through interminable corridors of vacuous blessedness hiding bestial deficiency, this man discloses the hand and shows a few coins in the palm. It’s all he has, yet those little riches command respect, and could constitute the opening deposit for a future of insightful observations and, hopefully, significant intuitions.

Creative Sources

THANOS CHRYSAKIS – A Scar In The Air

A Scar In The Air is a part of the “Inscapes Series”, namely music “based on the structural and aesthetic capacity of sonic matter”. Six tracks, all connected in a continuous flow, for a total of half a hour which shows the most ear-satisfying traits of this Greek composer’s artistic vision, occupying a well definite place between the (often exaggerate) seriousness of cultivated acousmatics and the kind of vibrations that should be associated with the concept of “space”: not in a celestial acceptation, more as anything associable to the notion of “propagation of sound in an environment”. Under this meaning, Chrysakis offers numerous moments of profound integrity and gratification, leaving the sounds activate our psyche in a state of self-determination despite the evident care behind the compositional effort.

The sources are not indicated, but there are several of them that are clearly intelligible and, although regularly exploited in this ambit, used in such a discreetly clever manner that those colours look just perfect for the segment in which they’re appearing. Coming to terms with the perception of interiority is a perennial struggle which sees human ignorance constantly defeated – here’s the reason of the flourishing of “extreme anxiety groups” sticking definitions to something that exists only in their mind's eye. Yet it’s doubtless that music like this - offering different departure points for the observation of phenomena whose resonance, both outside and inside, is impressively effective – might constitute a good start for inquisitive thinking.

One can decide: appreciating the pure magnificence of an obscure reverberation, recognizing the typicality of chatting people, being displaced in amorphousness when a voice is fused with a marimba which reproduces its same elocution patterns, or just accepting the whole as a mixed-energy macrocosm. What remains is the impression of an unexplainable deeper implication that’s better left undefined, unless you want to join the extended queue of those who sing “progress” to themselves while standing at the centre of a depressing miniature universe, their imaginary advancement a mere shadow elongated by the sun of someone else’s ideas (which in turn had been pick-pocketed elsewhere).

Aural Terrains

GÜNTER MÜLLER / JASON KAHN / NORBERT MÖSLANG – mkm_msa

Reconsider your endorsement of the mollifying aspects of electronic music, as Müller, Kahn and Möslang have returned to divulge another abundant hour of their aural calisthenics which also act as a stimulator without the need of a medical prescription. These six tracks were recorded in 2007 during a series of twelve concerts in South America, yet in their meticulousness they sound as if preconceived in a studio, such is the scientist-like charisma transpiring from the involving contraptions of this decentralizing trio.

This methodical analysis of a sweltering micro-world, where hypercritical expropriations of instrumental physiognomy and inviolable appliance-generated irritableness remunerate our distaste for the frivolous connotations of contemporary masquerades, causes the large part of today’s electronica to sound antediluvian. There’s substance here, that’s the difference. People who declare of having seen the light – while ignoring that “fractal” and “consonance” don’t belong in the same sphere, unless the ears are developed beyond doubt - could even find the nerve to proclaim that this is not really music, that these fabrications of polymorphous propagations, implacably austere investigations of an organic inanimateness, indicate the road to a place where nothing results as callous, excoriating and detrimental as a sonic process. Then, why does this stuff rejuvenates so much? What’s the rationale behind this implausible forthrightness? What idiotic dissertation should deny the only purpose for this biologically artificial combination to exist, namely symbolizing a fruit fallen from an unlikely type of tree?

The legitimisation of intolerance is nearer than you think, often rooted in what’s generally considered as an “open-minded” intellectual environment. It’s too easy to throw a record either in the cauldron of one-a-day-masterpieces that get forgotten after a week or in the closet of ignorable-because-they’re-not-my-friend brilliant releases. The probationary intelligence of these artists - not to mention Müller’s classic “whop-whop-whop-whop” always welcomed on these shores, a heart starting to beat again following a difficult surgery – won’t score many points for friendliness but surely pave the way for that sort of untidiness whose lineaments are nevertheless extremely alluring. Self-congratulatory artistic debauchery be damned.

For 4 Ears

CHARLEMAGNE PALESTINE / CHRISTOPH HEEMANN - Saiten In Flammen

The title translates as "strings on fire". While listening to this proudly droning, cataclysmic elegy to intimidating resonance we comprehend the reason beyond doubt.

Reshaping a sound that corresponds to a landmark of minimalist intensity – namely Charlemagne Palestine's fiercely obstinate piano strumming - is not something that many people even dream about, much less achieve. Yet Christoph Heemann shows how this mission can be accomplished, maintaining the American maverick’s original traits visible despite his subtraction of the most markedly percussive aspects of his relentless tolling.

What happens in less than half a hour is the birth of a new beast, a hybrid sonic warning where expert ears won't struggle in recognizing echoes of Mirror, Organum and Niblock disguised under the clothes of outrageous clusters and reverberations. It takes only a few moments - in both sides of this vinyl album - for the vibrating mass to take command, any restriction forgotten, hordes of aggressive upper partials putting the body through a storm of quivering roars and powerful oscillations. The whole is underscored by massive rumbles, Palestine's Bosendorfer (which for the occasion was taped in 2000 at the Ludwig Museum in Aachen) a dangerous machine capable of inviting the courageous ones to a thorough absorption by a weighty wall of sound - for this REALLY is, not Phil Spector's.

The dam by now broken, waterfalls of misshapen chords denote the conversion from almost elementary gestures to a multiple refraction of the light emitted by two akin souls. There's no looking back. After repeating the experience over and over, we reinforce our intolerance against inferior music.

Rare specimens of creators own the gift of turning every move they decide to make into untainted art. Palestine and Heemann have reached a clamorous balance between enlightened grandeur and utter closure towards cheap-mindedness. This record sounds dangerously close to an exclusion of huge percentages of mortals from certain types of authentic harmonic comprehension. It has to be that way, though, and one feels kind of sorry for those who are left out.

But the sympathy lasts thirty seconds, before the survivors enter the dome of vibration once again to receive the ultimate blessing.

Streamline (distributed by Drag City)

ASHER / UBEBOET – Cell Memory

Certain collaborations are born from the core of inevitability: both Asher Thal-Nir and Miguel Tolosa belong to the rank of enormously insightful sound artists from which we always expect some degree of enchantment, thus wholly justifying a joint release. Cell Memory does not delude, although it is not exactly equivalent to what I was figuring out in anticipation before spinning the CD.

The first track starts with a wraithlike bewailing, repetitive laments wafted by strong currents, a desert sandstorm heard from within a tent. The tone is one of resignation to the acceptance of upcoming chances, regardless of the entailed consequences. The piece then evolves towards sonorities recalling a faulty turbine amidst low murmurs comparable to massive underwater bubbles, in which what sounds like slowed down feedback appears to place an additional element of reiteration in an already haunting soundscape.

The second episode shows a slightly different trait while remaining relevant to the general concept. Again we're greeted by a threatening rumble that establishes its authority on the psyche straight away, then turns into a somewhat comforting incidence. This foundation is soon enriched by a overwhelmingly choral superimposition of stretched emissions, halfway through alien baritones and a potent insufflation blowing transversely in a large fissure. The whole wraps us in a blanket of diffidence, yet we’re also thrilled to be encircled and finally engulfed, as an impenetrable throb dictates the pace of the composition and the ghosts return, worrying appearances that, on the contrary, are back to hunt the demons of unresponsive ignorance.

Well-known recipe, truth be told. But when the chefs are at this level of expertise, one gladly returns to the same restaurant. Translation: four full stars.

Winds Measure

SHINKEI / LUIGI TURRA – Yu

The bigotry related to reductionism is by now a surpassed phenomenon, especially since the “movement” has welcomed hordes of nondescript pseudo-Zen pretenders who built a career out of sitting mute in front of the audience for a hour of complete stillness, playing a single note then cashing the check.

Where’s the connection with Yu, one might ask. “Everywhere” is the answer, for this record by the Italian duo of David Sani (Shinkei) and Luigi Turra is an exemplary lesson on how to wrinkle intense quietness with significant snippets of sound. “Significant”, in this case, does not necessarily mean “new”: several choices applied by the composers are based upon elements already found in hundreds of neighbouring recordings (with particular reference to subtle presences of dripping water, birds and variously aged persons captured in a transitory phase of everyday life, everything rigorously Japanese from what I’ve been able to detect). But it’s the architectural assessment of the whole piece that makes all the difference in the world: Shinkei and Turra seem to have caught the exact formula for developing the inherent musicality of the sources more or less instantaneously, adding ear-striking frequencies that act both as stimulating counterpoint and enrichment of the basic material.

The commitment to the achievement of an open-minded state is manifest, the narrative resulting linear yet corrugated enough to render the listeners aware of their own fragility. There are instances in which the sheer subsistence of these adjacencies transports in a dimension of brokenhearted fulfillment, an example being the old blues mashed by the shortwave noises in the splendid “Nagoya Koen”, a track that sounds like a John Duncan/Akira Rabelais hybrid disrupted by sudden subsonic appearances.

The ensuing “Kin-Hin” exploits colors from another palette, intersecting rumble, harmonic resonance, whispered hiss and concreteness while remaining linked to the incorporeal aspects of creation. The stupor derived from this kind of listening experience - which can’t possibly take place in a less than silent environment, unless you want to diminish excellent music to the level of circumstantial noise – is exactly the mental frame that large portions of humanity are desperately trying to achieve.

Only, these people are just finding a way to erase the word “failure” from memory, incapable as they are of facing hard realities unaided. Yu, at the end of the day, is precisely that: a magnificent representation of solitariness. The core of a truthful existence, far away from the nonsense of spiritual futility and the affected pretence of “being one” with someone we don’t like, a pecuniary reward the real aim.

Nonvisualobjects

PHROQ – Half-Asleep Music

Francisco Meirino (Phroq) recorded this material at late night - he was barely managing to remain awake - not because of a lack of alternative timing, but to carry out a private experiment after having read an article about uni-hemispheric slow-wave sleep, a phenomenon that causes half of the brain to rest while the other maintains alertness. According to this approach, the resulting music should be guided by the subconscious and essentially identified by what the composer calls “raw intuition”. In reality, in one of those peculiar circumstances subverting the expected order of things, this project appears carefully planned and lucidly executed, which we unquestionably prefer to the inconclusive out-of-tune drowsiness of many drugged idiots worshipped by certain publications.

Mystifying snippets of pragmatism and bewitching sonic pictures of seductive stimulation form a somewhat disjointed narration, where both condensed fragmentariness and surrounding spheres of nerve-tickling frequencies have the same right of citizenship. The high quality derives from Meirino’s capability of shaping the fruits of his research into something that sounds like a consistent totality which, at times, becomes consuming to the level of near-debilitation. Yet the juxtaposition of opposite kinds of source, such as superimposed and manipulated electric hum and human mumbling, penetrates the ears without damage, any aesthetic judgement banished in favour of the pure enjoyment of a now alarming, now hospitable chain of events. Inconveniences in the compositional building are entirely absent and even the most radical episodes do possess a sturdy logic, which is what renders the overall process almost faultless. As far as the timbral relationships are concerned, let’s just say that Phroq is a noncompliant musician and leave it at that.

Definitely ineligible for the soundtrack to nocturnal quietness – indeed one wonders how Meirino managed to avoid trouble with neighbours whilst working on these pieces - Half-Asleep Music is a gutsy exploration of the semi-unknown aspects of transfixion bordering with illuminated edginess. A highly recommended, rewarding listen from every angle.

Entr’acte

JASON KAHN AND TAKEFUMI NAOSHIMA – In A Room

Despite all the talks about “new silence” and its derivates, this is a surprising album - not the least because the title is as self-explanatory as one can get. In fact, the CD contains an exact hour of contemplation between activity and nonbeing, where the environment is not only host but often claims the role of principal character.

The piece is entirely centred around a fundamental parameter, a refrigerator-like hum which remains constant the whole time. Upon this fixed presence, external urban noises (typically, engines of vehicles in transit) and somewhat far-off human presences punctuate an otherwise silent background. The shoes of someone who walks across the room are heard, most probably from the protagonist(s). At times we distinctly detect the subtle breathing of one of the two, characterized by an equally typical micro-whistle of the nose.

Instruments do appear, if extremely sparely: Naoshima slices the air open with mixer board-generated frequencies usually moving in the over-acute regions of the aural range, Kahn alternates stillness and restricted emissions from a collection of unspecified percussions, the whole appearing more as a series of ritual gestures than a “performance”: the closeness, the intensity, the innate introspection of the act are mind-relieving. Describing how these timbres materialize is rather senseless. Some gently snapping wooden cluster, short ringing bursts, small portions of metallic scraping. This music deals with “existing”, not “playing”.

A work whose bareness will keep superficial listeners at a safe distance, In A Room doesn’t present inaccessible complexities yet necessitates of absolute concentration and awareness of where we stand in a particular moment. Learning to listen to the inherent qualities of apparently extraneous factors – and to be even more thankful for quietness - is the name of the game.

Winds Measure

MIGUEL A. GARCIA – Subsuelos

Spanish sound artist Miguel Angel Garcia, also known as Xedh, recorded Subsuelos during a number of “intense nocturnal sessions taken inside a 200 meter squared abandoned pavilion, with the initial intention of making an exploration of this sound-space”. The results have been issued on MP3 and FLAC files by this very label in May 2008; this is the “physical” version of the album.

Garcia utilized sounds exclusively coming from within the large room, adding a series of typically suggestive, if unsettling electronic tones which he proceeded to recapture via the same microphones. At the beginning of the CD – a minute and a half of scarcely perceptible presences welcoming the listener - one would be justified in thinking about yet another specimen of environmental examination in a vain attempt to give a musical voice to the menacing quietness of the night. Instead we’re in for a chain of events that surprise us quite often, abruptly shifting the focus of the piece over various sonic settings – some of them extremely beautiful, others less uplifting but stimulating nonetheless – which contribute to place the music in close proximity to acousmatic sharpness rather than cause an obvious “installation association”.

The malleability of the materials processed by Garcia is evident and superbly exploited throughout, unfathomable halos, echoes of forlornness and devastating excrescences succeeding in consecutive scenes amidst traces of loaded stillness. Although there’s nothing exactly innovative in this kind of notion I didn’t manage to locate stereotypes, frequently discarding the rational approach to simply put my perceptiveness in abandon mode for a sheer enjoyment of the states of trance that several episodes generate, with a particular mention for the breathtaking throbbing that certain subsonic emissions produce and the reiterative reverberations at the opening of the final track “Ipurtargik”, a magnificently remote resonance that defies any tentative description.

A commendable work from a composer whose maturity will hopefully bring additional juicy fruits, Subsuelos comes in a 50-copy ultra-limited edition. It should be attentively considered when appraising the next future of nowadays’ ambience-based electroacoustic perspicuity.

Bremsstrahlung