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