ZAFKA - Yong He

A few years ago, the first releases by Dajuin Yao’s Post Concrete imprint were remarkable proposals in the field of contemporary, and truly original, electronic/acousmatic music. After a long silence, Yao launched a sub-section of the label - Archival Vinyl - where the recent output can be downloaded for free. Pleasant surprises are in store for the snoopiest.

Yong He is an extremely mature and, in several moments, stunningly beautiful work by an artist whose name and music this writer had never met before. Treated reverberations of water and birds open the composition, entirely based on a subtle balance between environmental (preferably urban) emanations and transfixing electronic abnormalities. A smoggy figuration of cyclical electronics functions as the fire under a cauldron of both adult and young voices, the whole encircled by a background characterized by sounds and noises from a flea market, or whatever it may be. A seller’s chanting call becomes an essential element of the piece as the listener is subjugated by a veritable spell in mere minutes, crying toddlers and creaking loops surrounding us until puzzling echoes of what the ears identify, perhaps wrongly, as superimposed layers of shêng (the Japanese sho) lead to the next segment.

Obliquely unkind resonances enhance the coalescence, while another sexless voice seems to grieve over a failure and sing a lullaby at one and the same time, a moment of surreal enthralment rarely experienced in recent times by yours truly. Moaning inharmonious drones metamorphose the prospect into a landscape of rustling objects, engines and heaven-knows-what-else; this represents the preamble to an amazing section featuring a sweet little girl singing along a Chinese children song on the radio, apparently on a street given the blaring traffic’s interference. A cross of alienation and tenderness that acutely moved the grouchy reviewer, who’s still wondering why. Out of the blue, rarefied gongs and more birds welcome back on the pensive side of life: taped oddments of talking-and-chuckling elderly men remind of the great contrast - purity versus experience, early growth versus near death - which is the very axis of an existence that people keep investigating to no purpose, looking so foolish as so many points in their time are unavoidably flying away.

The ceaseless racket, a true metropolitan bellow, soon returns to save from the last illusion. We’re ultimately set free from the idea of an affected reconciliation with non-collaborative neighbouring beings. The winged creatures, the tolling of the bells, a coughing man, the heavy rain, a supposed civilization, nothingness, meaninglessness, futile words. Everything absurd yet existing, although destined to end sooner than later.

Yong He is an essential ingredient of 2008’s crème de la crème, an absolute work of art.

Post Concrete

DARREN TATE - Reflections On A Ceiling

Coming in a DVD slim case adorned with Tate’s customary artwork made of black moons and virtually nonfigurative paintings, Reflections On A Ceiling is a three-part work that buttresses and substantiates all the characteristics of the Yorkshire artist we have felt affection for throughout the years, that fusion of frankness and volatility which causes an effect of unsystematic gratification in the mind of the listeners, subjected to sounds that are as intelligible as unforeseen.

The start is immediately surprising, as Tate is captured while answering a phone call amidst a layering of tangential field recordings, mainly belonging to the “noise from the town” variety: passing cars are pleasing to hear, provided that they remain at a good distance from our immediate surroundings. After that, the music increasingly shifts towards a preponderance of electric guitar and oscillators/electronics, the former played without any pretence of technical mastery, just abstract swipes and resounding dissonance, the latter generating a constant seesaw of frequencies that nevertheless stabilize the sonic development instead of altering its symmetries. The third subdivision dips the same phone call and initial ambiences in a viscous solution of effects, wobbly echoes of far-sighted candour once again reminding that the man is a one-and-only creative thinker, an unambiguous shape among many bad emulators of his style.

Fungal

ANNETTE KREBS / TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA – Siyu

There’s no necessity of losing ourselves in the wake of mind-bending analyses when dealing with certain records. They work since the initial moments, provided that the context is right (in this particular juncture, that entails unconditional quietness: you just can’t afford to be bothered by kitchen noises or children at play while trying to make sense of Siyu).

The most interesting facet of Krebs’ attitude to improvisation is an absolute openness in regard to sound-generating activities and pieces of equipment. In her playing, the concretely acoustic assets of a manipulated instrument live together with the precious elusiveness of hiss-and-grind flotsam and jetsam, a touch of warped human existence added for good measure, possibly via micro-recorders and shortwave radio. The manifest distinction from the impassible (dis)connection of Nakamura’s subliminal pulses and ear-splitting frequencies is probably the winning card of this album. Music that pullulates of abrupt appearances, events lasting the span of a sympathetic nod before vanishing in the hush from which they had materialized.

How long, one wonders, we’ll have to endure disputes apropos the alleged frigidity of this type of expression? What many critics refuse to take in is that the mainstream listeners are plainly and simply not ready, still attached to self-related aesthetic laws which, for the large part of consequential contemporary art, mean next to nothing. It’s not about “I like it, I don’t” anymore. This music – when properly realized – appraises the effects of other sorts of feedback (no pun intended): the intellectual response of those who receive it, the transmitting properties of contiguous spaces. Try to consistently raise the volume level when assessing the record - especially the first track - then tell me that nothing’s happening. Someone’s going to be irritated, others will remain at a standstill in absorption – yet I’m willing to wage that no one would be left unconcerned. If that happens, those people aren’t actually listening; their channels are closed. They’re doing something else, although physically in attendance.

If you believe in EAI’s faculty of attracting through the sheer curiosity produced by sounds that aren’t even so “new” but hold enough magnetism to modify a person’s perceptive conditions, then Siyu is a fitting release for your trust to nosh.

SoSEDITIONS

SAWAKO - Bitter sweet

Looking at the impressive curriculum vitae of Sawako, which includes a Master’s degree in Interactive Communications and studies in “Networked Expression, Physical Computing, Post Linear Narrative and Audio/Visual”, one is almost taken aback by the tender greeting that Bitter Sweet, probably the most emotionally intense work she’s given birth to, reserves to the listener.

A polymorphism of warm textures whose ever-changing nuances - best appreciated in two heartrendingly stunning tracks such as “Deep Under” and “Looped Labyrinth, Decayed Voice” - put our thoughts in that zone where childhood’s pureness of reminiscence and the candour of a vital ecstasy meet. A multi-chambered wintriness only rarely illuminated by traces of shimmering light, immediately dissipated by a copious leafiness of meshed melodies, rather simple but, in their intersections, projecting huge shadows all around the place where you’re standing. It’s without a doubt a splendid album, also for the reason that the composer wisely chose to focus the effort on the instrumental weaving, leaving her frail vocal tone appear exclusively in the final “A Last Next”. The whole gains both in concentration and grief, the Japanese girl returning to the highs reached in Yours Gray on And/OAR, making us care for her music with renewed fervour. Among the guest artists, Ryan Francesconi and Jacob Kirkegaard.

A modern ambient miniature masterpiece, with more than a fair share of highlights: play Tsubomi, Saku in infinite repeat at sunset and deliver yourself from the burden of an ineffectual mortal subsistence.

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