The Sound Projector Third IssueOriginally published 1998

All uncredited articles and reviews are written by Ed Pinsent

This digital edition published December 2010Made available as a digital download under

a Creative Commons Licence(Attribution – No Derivation – No Commercial Use)

Entire contents © Copyright 2010 by Ed Pinsentand the respective writers and artists

THE SOUND PROJECTOR, BM BEMUSED, LONDON WC1N 3XX, UK

www.thesoundprojector.com

Ihe$ounil

ts98ffiHContentsEditorial - Too Many CDs p 2

American MonstersThe mystery of Raymond Scott (and even a little aboutCarl Stalling) pp 3-6

Simeon Coxe - Silver Apples live p 62

In thellrt Gallery: commissions,omissions, strange emissionsSteve Roden / In Between Noise pp 7-8; Conrad Schnialerp 8; Henri Chopin p 9; Remora p 9: Martin Archer andfriends p l0; Trevor Wishart, Pauline Oliveros p I I

The Touch Label - Ash International Trilogy p 13;Disinformation, Farmers Manual, Mika Vanio p 14; JoeBanks interview pp 15-17

Your Ears..Oh My Bag: tapCore, ExtremeNoise Madness, Sampling Virusahd Ethnic OrientalsGround-Zero live at LMC p 19; Merzbow - Scumtron andother travesties pp 24-25; Magical Power Mako pp 26-27;The Gyaatees p 20; Musica Transonic p 20; NeuKonservativ God Mountain sampler p 2l; Frieze magazinep 22; Yamada Chisato's Fantasy World p 22; Bi Kyo Ran p23; Mikami Kan p 23

Shades ofDarknessDont use the M-Word...Niblock Palestine and Wada,three great composer / performers in the one-note modepp28-29

The Crackling Bther: Ambient marshlandsand sleep-inducing throbsJames Plotkin (+ Mick Harris) pp 30-3 l; Narcosis comp p32; Flux p 3 | ; Tactile p 3 l; Solarus p 32; Driftworks p 32;Thomas Kciner o 33

Mephistophelean Beats! Drum'nf BasstheoreticiansDr Octagon p 35; Cypress Hill pp 34-35; DJ Spooky p 36

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

WarArrow's Skipload of TapesDevastating sarcastic wig nine home recordingmasterworks...and a competition! pp 37-40

AreyouaTree FrogThe A-Musik label and lsolationist Techno-freaks inCologne pp 4142

Ihe Mossbed of Improvisation:Krautroch and German Cosmische Musikof all stripeKrautrocksampler Movies evening at the NFT l/8/97hosted by Julian Cope pp 4445; Tangerine Dream book byPaul Stump pp 4647; Can - Sacrilege or Temptation forFools? p 45; Space Explosion - Krautrock supergroup p 47;La Di.isseldorf - their three matchless albums on properCD pp 48-49; Agitation Free p 50; Annexus Quam p 50;Xhol Caravan p 5l; Broselmaschine p 50; UnknownDeutschland p 5 |

HeldonFrench 70s rock-experimenalists given the once-over, byDavid Elliott pp 52-53

The Phantom of Liberty: UK ImprovisedMusicDerek Bailey p 55; Evan Parker p 55; Spontaneous MusicEnsemble p 56; Guitar drums n bass p 56; Solar Wind p57; Dislocation p 57; Tony Bevan p 57; The Xlll Ghosts p58; Descension p 58; P53; Chris Cuder and Zeena Parkinsp 58..-and a short interview with Martin Davidson pp 59-60

Volume Control: Books and MagazinesThe Gravikords Whir.lies and |rophones box set -

Incredibly Strange Music has a lot to answer for...absurdoddities to tickle a jaded palate in a chocolate box samplerp 63...plus Resonance Retuning radio p 64

The Dlscuratorrs l)en: round up ofrecord-reviews, good and not so gfi)dAmber Asylum; Scanner vs Hovercraft; His Name is Alive;Barbara Manning; Charles Hayward; Spaceheads; ThurstonMoore and Borbetomagrs; Bob Drake; Broadcast; Total;Loren M:zacane Connors; Yo La Tengo; LaBradford;Aqueous; The Trial of Bow; Voltolux; rhBand; Atman;Electroscope; Sophia; Stephen Fellows; Krel; Piano Magic

pp 65-70

Lightweight but Likeable: E-Z Pickensfrom the string sectionsNiall Richardson digs up three favour.ite Sound ObscuriosppTl -72

tfl'WEg*

The Sonnd Proieetor Third lcsrre

HilllofialTooManyCDs!

Could this be the ralllng cry lor anyone even remotely

connected with music these days? This note arrived fromMartin Archer in a letter and appended to his owncatalogue, Since starting this magazine | find my mailboxawash with sample CDs from the four corners of thegobe. Record shops have mushroomed into amega-business; back catalogues are reissued wholesale;artists release home-made CDs. l'm not ungrateful friends,please keep sending them! Yet does anyone else share myoccasional ambivalence to this wealth of riches? SometimesI love to wallow in the excess of my collections, enoughmusic lining the walls of my cell to last me for ten lifetimes;so many unexplored regions, so many more still todiscover. Then, every so often, the futility of everythinghangp over me and I feel disgusted with this obscene pileof silver fripponeries; each CD seems an unnecessarydisraction, a plaything for a jaded ninny reclining on hischaise longue. I abase myself in sackcloth and ashes,attempt to curb my spending habits, all without avail. Thestrange guilt I associate with overspending (probablyinstilled by my thrifty parents, truth be known) ruins mylistening pleasure; music becomes as ashes in my mouth.

One phenomenon I used to enjoy was simply readingabout records - not necessarily reviews, just news of theirreleases was sufficient to get my mouth watering. To beginwith, reading is a guilt-free thing - you're just

window-shopping looking at the expensive toys there but'not spending your pocket money, Secondly, I always lovedthe idea of there being more going on than I could possiblyhandle, an exploding universe of endeavour which yourhandy music paper could attempt to navigate. Plus, ofcourse, you could use reading as a substitute for listening -

a yrell-informed opinion could h yours for the price of abag of chips, and save you actually having to listen to thestuff. Of course, this is one of the late 2(hh centurydiseases - the ubiquitous print and electronic media filtereverything through their refractive lenses, giving us allmore or less the same distorted perspective on the artisticworlds. We're over-informed, genned up on trivia about amovie which pre-condition our minds before we evenenter the cinema.

What rescues one from the Too Many CDs factor? Theactuaf process of listening of course. Art creates asituation where, as Jeanette Winterson puts iC thesmallness of life drops away. A good piece of music is arefreshing experience: the better it is, the more it willclear away the clutter of your brain and project its coloursonto a clean sheet, Even an indifferent piece of music cando this to an extent. For the 70+ minutes that the lasertracks the bits, you're in thrall to the experience.Whatever paranoid nonsense bothers you either side ofthis is your own business. The jewel cases become like somuch empty paraphernalia, spent cartridge shells litteringthe battlefield; but it's only through this apparatus that theart can enter your life in the first place.

There can never be too much music!

Ihe Sound ProiectorThird Issueis dated January 1998

It was written mosdy by Sd Pinccnt (Editor)

With contributions from:

Eorley ftieherdcon - musician and multimedia whiz

Nioll Bichrrdcorr - brother of the above,

connoisseur of E-Z lissning

Andrea B - Garden of Delights head honchessa

lleviit Efliott - friend to the Cosmische music stars

Wor Arrow - lndustrial music specialist, limner and

historian of Ancient Mexico

John Begnoll - shape-note enthusiast and

supernatural cartoonist

Pictureslan Middleton - untided works, used to illustratePhantom of Liberty and Shades of Darkness

Mark Robinson (cartoonist and teacher) - back coverand Silver Apples

Niall Richardson - In the Art Gdlery

Ed Pinsent - cover and various ink drawings / collages

Typewriter portrait of Henri Chopin is by RobertMorgan (1974)

Can Sacrilege photo is by Joe Dilworth

Disinformation (p l4 is byJoe Banks

Neger l'lemorial photo is by Dr Caroline Grigson

Entire Contents are Copyright @ I 997 by their nesPectivecreators

BacklssuesNumber | - THE MICROWAVE MANUALNumber 2 - BETTER LISTENING THRU IMAGINATIONThese can be had for {3.fl) each from the ditorialaddress. Please add 50p per copy for Postage (Overseasorders a bit more). Cheques payable to 'ED PINSENT'.

Advertising Rates{75 full page, {40 half page €25 quarter page' Write to geton the mailing list for next announcement.

Distributed in the UK by Cargo Records

Sold in London at Rough Trade, Compendium, HelterSkelter, Intoxica and These Records

Thanks this time to:Martin Davidson, Ed Baxter,Mike Harding Edwin Pouncey

Apologr from last issue: to Azalia Snail of NYC who isNOT the same person as Andrea B. Forgive my crassmistake.

The Sound Projector appears about twice a year.

ContactEd Pinsent @ The Sound Projector,BM Indefinite, London WC I N 3)O(

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The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

*nart cookies who went to the Meltdown Festival at theSouth Bank some two summets ago will have hard themusic of Raymond Scott as phyed by The Woodenlndians, a sextet of Netherlandish musicians from theDnch Broadcasting Orchestn. This writer missed theshow and had to have the 'mystetT' of Scott outlined tohim. hb still an intriguing tale. Remember the fac* thatdont quite add up...Raymond kott did not exist; he was acomposer who never put pen to paper; The Raymondkott Quintette never had five phyerc; and his music isbetter known today through Carl Stailingb cartoon scoresthan his own records. Letb invest@te...

f,aughingViolinsThe way in for most people is through the classic WarnerBrothers cartoons. lfyou ever payed attention to themusic for these cartoons, chances are you will have hearda Raymond Scott composition. Carl Stalllng was theuncannily gifted musical arranger whose work has beenbrought to wider amention since about 1990, throrlgh theremarkable efforts of Hal Willner, John Zorn and other

keen fans. Thoroughresearch and hardwork are thehallmarks of thisrescue mission, andtwo CD volumes ofThe Cad SallingProjecthave thussurfaced, This musicis now redeemed fromthe halfway house ofneglect - where itmight have languishedforever, perceived asmere'backgroundmusic'to the art ofChuckJones andothers, or due to its'lowbrow-culture'

connections. not takenseriously in the firstplace. Carl Stallingused what was in theair around him. Hisgenius lay not simplyin producing originalcompositions, but incollaging hit tunes orpopular classics -

known musicalquantities - andcondensing them

down into intense miniatures (a format dicated by thelength of the cilrtoon, the fast movement of the action),pressing as many buttons as possible for maximumaudience response. The music had to assist in conveying anidea, an emotion, a setting - and do it fast. Hence, a largenumber of 'musical quotes' - of which Raymond Scottwound up being one more ingredient in the stew. His backcatalogue of compositions had been licensed to WarnerBrothers in 19{ | . lf you want statistics, Carl Stalling made| 33 uses of Scott music in | | 7 cartoons from 1943 toabout 1960; 'Powerhouse'was used 43 times.

No denying theseStalling CDs are afascinating and at timesa diayngand alarming .Iisten - half of thesensation comes fromdivorcing the musicfrom its functionalsupport-structurg thectrtoon for which it wascomposed. lt seemsdoubly wild and crazy.The compilers are morethan aware of thisphenomenon. Inrestoring this neglectedgreat to the hall of famesome have gone a litdetoo fur; John Zorn Ithink wants it to besomething more than itis, reckoning Stalling a

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modern master composer on a parwith Charles lves. This says a lotabout Zorn's post-modernism.Personally I think the cartoonswere great, and that trash cultureof all sorts is entertaining and fun,and I'm not too concerned aboutslotting it into some hierarchy ofHigh Art - this is a sickness weinherited from Art Historians whoimposed a personality-based starsystem with the Renaissance at thecentre. But I digress - this isnt CarlStalling's story...

fiotlaznand Swing!Some of these ditties Stalling wasusing actually dated back to aslightly earlier period. TheRaymond Scott Quintetteproduced several hit records in the big-band era, the late1930s. These records sold phenomenally well (in thehundred-thousands, some say), in spite of the Depressionand record sales generally being slow. Thanks to theCofumbia CD compilation Reckless Nigh* and TurkishTwilightswe can have the chance to stud these Scottrecords on their own terms. Here are 22nnymasterpieces, each one more astonishing than the last (ifyou play them in that order), They are so compacted as toappear to be fully formed, bearing an almost unnaturalperfection and polish, almost not composed at all. There'swhimsy and humour in the titles, and in the fast-pacedmusic itself. You can see how these items would lendthemselves to being used as cartoon music, even if theywerent composed for that reason. But they're more thansimply novelty records; there's intelligence and wit hereand all of this makes them very very enjoyable indeed.

Harry Warnow was a gifted Jewish youngster who wasborn in Brooklyn New York City in 1909. His olderbrother Mark was five years old when the family arived inNew Yor* from Russia. Their father Joseph was a violinist.Mark had become an esablished violin player with CBS(Columbia), when he encouraged Harry's precociouspiano skills, bought him a Steinway grand piano and paidfor a scholarship at the lnstitute of Musical An (later tobecome Juillard ). Harry joined the CBS radio orchestrathereafter, and seemed to have a rewarding careerassured, but after five years began to grow tired of therepertoire oftunes he had to play, and his rathercorporate-sounding role as 'staff pianist'. He had in factbeen working on his own compositions. Hand-pickingplayers from the orchestra, he formed his own combo offive playirs (plus himself), took the name Raymond Scottfrom a telephone directory, and called it The RaymondScott Quintette, retainint the'Quintette' componentbecause he liked tlre word.

ln a way these records derive from the raw material ofphrases and moments learned from Jaz. and Swing recordsof the f 920s. David Ewen:Ihq/ are at times brillkntprojections of hot-jazz styles and idioms vuhich, up to nowhad been conlined almost exclusively to dance music.Warnow Senior had owned a record shop in New York,where Harry was able to hear records from all over theworld. He listened intently and later was able to use thisvocabulary to construct something new. An intense

process of distillation; he could eatgrapes and spit out 60% proofGrappa. The humble gramophonerecord became an important partin a remarkable communicationsystem; Scott could seize theessence and suck out the marrowof a piece of musig just by geaingto it through the grooves. Learningby feeling and notjust by studyingthe rules of music...when you thinkof the other ways he might havedone iL he was certainly capableenough - reading sheet music,studlng a combo's playingtechniques, the conduction methodof the leader. But any of theconventional routes above wouldhave simply been boring!

You know the great blues musicians can always confoundpeople who do understand the rules of music, CharleyPatton's music is subjected to analysis by Stephen Calt andGayfe Wardfow in King of the Delta blues: The Life andmusic of Charley Patton these scholars marvel at Patton'sability to play an irregular number of bars withhalf-measures, switching between time signatures, orachieving a 'descending cadence from the dominant to thesubdominant to the mediant (major third)'. Of course,Patton (a self-aught guitarist, playing mostly by ear, feelingand song memorised aurally ) wouldnt have known whatthey were alking about. A Radio 4 Desert lsland Discsguest (if I remember rightly) agreed. A slightly stuffyacademic, he admired the barrelhouse boogie-woogiepiano music of Meade Lux Lewis, and admitted defeat withthe words 'Of course, this music is impossible to play-.'

An extr:avagant way to composeScott did not write any sheet music for a single one ofthese pieces. Each was composed mosaic fashion, workingcheek by jowl with his musicians. He would play a fragmentof music on the piano; the horn player would learn it, thenpractise it until it was memorised. In jigpaw-p"zzle hshion,an entire tune could be built up. From then on it was acase of the musicians rehearsing and practising it -

relendessly - until completely learned. In the 1960s, DonVan Vliet would teach his music to The Magic Band inmuch the same way. Once learned, no variation from thepiece would be permitted; similarly soul king James Brown,who would dock the wages of his backing players if theyhit a single wrong note. Only the e><quisite works of S JPerelman (the American humourist who is little readtoday) exhibit the same obsession with polish andperfection; his elaborate confections seem to have rolledstraight from his sardonic tongue, yet they were the resultof endless, agonized-over rewrites.

Although called 'kittenish pseudo-jaz'by one critic andusing instruments associated with jaz, Scott's musicdenied the heart of jazz - improvisation. Even if.improvisation had been a determining feature at a moreembryonic state, even that fleeting testure of frdomwould end up cast in bronze. Not a shred of writtenscore, charts or cues at any stage; everFhing was in theheads of the players.

This mosaic technique of composition is something Isutgest, very suited to the age of magnetic tape, the

4

playback. Other great'naive'talents - Brian Wilson, TheResidents - have e><hibited their talent for using playback asa compositional element. How else but through aconstantly repeatable medium (a gramophone record)could Scott have taken to heart the little seconds ofpleasure that so tickled his senses? His technique likewisemade machines out of his players; he was using them as alive tape recorder. He was also using them as an extensionof the piano. In the same way, Ornette Coleman 'played'

The London Symphony Orchestra (on 1972's Skies ofAmerica with the help of David Measham) as though itwas iust the world's biggest saxophone - since that was theinstrument he mainly composed on.

Why has sheet music become perceived as 'necessary'to

creating a work of music? Chris Cutler's theory (in Flleunder Popular) is that sheet music isnt necessarily a godthing; iCs been around since the Middle Ages, but throughmechanical printing it developed as a communicationdevice in the l8th and lfthcenturies with the spread ofwhat is now called classicalmusic.'Notation cannotorganically adapt', says Cutler;he champions the oraltradition, songs rememberdand passed to the nextgeneration by singing memoryand word alone. This traditionis what made Folk MusicEngland's pride (and to acertain extent, it spread toAmerica in the early part ofthis century). ls Raymond Scotta sophisticated Folk musician?

Cuder goes on to link sheetmusic to the commodificationof music (reducing it to anownable, sellable physicalentity) which is a Marxist tackof no concern to us here. Ofmore interest is Milton Babbit'sview on 2(hh centurycomposidon generally:

This music employs a tonal vocabulary which is morelefficient' than that of the music of the pasg or i*derivatives. This...make[s] possible a greatly increasednumber of pitch simukaneities, successions andrelationships. This increase in efticiency necessailyreduces the 'redundancy'ofthe

hnguaga and as a resuhthe intell@ble communication of the wo* demaqdsincreased accuncy from the tnnsmitter (the performer)and activity from the receiver (the listener).

Machinery was also an int€gral tool in the whole Scottprocess. He learned music from records, and studied therecords of his own music so he could make changes andcorrections, He built a prototype music centre whichcould make tapes from records for his home use. Hedevised a special tape recorder so he could recordone-minute bursts of improvisation at the piano, and usethe instant playback facility to form compositions. His loveof tinkering with elecronic equipment would pave the wayfor his later innovations in electronic music, and partlyassist in the creation of his unusual sound on the 1930srecordings.

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

Skip the Eyes...The original Raymond Scott Quintette was Louis Shoobe(bass), Pete Pumigilo (clarinet), Bunny Berigan (trumpet)soon replaced by Dave Wade, Dave Harris (saxophone)and Johnny Williams (drums). Scott himself played pianoand celeste. Also heard on the Columbia CD are RussCase on trumpet and Fred Whiting on bass; and twotracks from the later New Orchestra. As jobbingprofessional musicians, these men were not entirelycomfortable with the Scott method. Learning the pieces by'head'arrangement is not unheard of, but no band inhistory was called upon to memorise as much as they did .The rehearsals took up an inordinate amount of time, andthe leader's insistence on accuracy and perfection wasincredibly demanding. Many of Scott's ideas werepiano-based, and not always easy to translate onto a windinstrument, which uses a different scale and a different wayof playing.

Any difficulty was likelycomPensatd in some way bytfie financial successes. For thetime of their Greer the recordssold well (Al Brackman, aproducer for lrving Mills'srecord label, spottd the appealstraight away); and the bandwas in demand: there were liveshows, radio appearances, andlucrative work in Hollywood.CBS gave Scott whatever heneeded in terms of studios.engineers, arrangers ormusicians. And there was fun.

'The 'silent music' rowine waswhere each player mimed themovements of playing theirinstruments without actually'producing

a single note. Somehave seen this as a precursor tothe infamous silent piece of

John Cage; 1930s audienceswere keot in stitches.

The visionary artist /composer at the centre; this patternis so similar to other manifestations in American music, forexample the Sun Ra Arkestra or any incarnation of FrankZappa's studio and touring bands. Not wishing toperpetuate any romantic'God-Artist' perfect-creatormyths, but one notes that the players - alented as theyare - tend not to do quite so well when removed from theorbit of their avatar. Shoobe said: 'l dont think you coulddo it underanother conducton After I left Scott Iwo*ed under another conductor who tried some of thatmusic, and I couldnt even do my own panl Some of theoriginal Mothers of Invention were superlative players, bwoutside of a few fringe projects why are there so fewmemorable solo records?

The original Quintette lasted for two years, then Scottformed a big band; this later incarnation was a bit moreconventional. This time it was music you could dance to(unlike that of the Quintette), although Scott continued todemand the same level of commitment and perfectionfrom his players. This combo stopped in 1942 after aseries of tours. Still bubbling with success, he became amusic director at CBS where he formed the very first

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integrated band in Amerie - black musicians and whitemusicians together in the same gig.

StyHsed miniature moviesEach Raymond Scott miniature is a picture in sound. Froman early age he had been thinking of music in visual terrns -

I'd see a cow and think How can I poruay that cow inmusic? But unlike the tone-painting of say Duke Ellington,Scott's approach is eccentric and strange. An elaboratetitle clues you in and sugests an incongruous image -

YVar Dance for Wooden Indians'. 'Dnner Music for aPack of Hungry Cannibals', 'Square Dance for EightEgyptian Mummies'. This was a continuous process,whereby'Scott would dream up an unlikely situation,compress it into a tide and then describe it in numbers' -

inventing the music to 'draw' it. David Ewen: He hastried to express in music the Teel' of a thimble atelephone, a hot ear of corn, and a bumpy air joumeyover Newark This is an interesting sense-swappingphenomenon (a pre-Acid version of the rave light show,or amplified guitar solos approximating the LSD effect)and a very cinematic one. Who hasnt been e><cited bythe possibilities of putting the right music with the rightfast-moving visuals? (Ask any bloody MTV director).Scott's little game would be to visualise his own imaginarymovies in miniature, with featurelength tides, and themusic would do the resc Unsurprising to learn that Scottworked in Hollywood for one year (in 1937), signed byDavid Selznick to do film music for 2(hh CenturT Fox; hiscompositions grace the films Happy Landing Ali kbagoes to town,and Rebecca ofSunnybrook Farm-'foyTrumpet'was written for Shirley Temple to sing andbecame another hit record.

Another later musician who liked elaborate titles wasCharles Mingus, tre-nt jaz'. composer and arranger whoachieved remarkable story epics of his own such as'Pithecanthropus Erectus'whose theme was nothing lessthan the evolutionary progness (and regression) ofmankind. A favourite title was The Shoes of the Fishman'sWife are some Jive Ass Slippers', although you have to bea pretty imaginative listener to hear a story like that goingon in the crazy music.'Free Cell Block F, Tis Nazi USA'was a protest tide Agged onto an instrumental whichappeared to have no specific protest component Mingus'music is the main course, a hefty T-Bone steak mel withall the trimminp, for which Raymond Scott's tasty canap6swere the oPeners.

The World Music'aspect you can pick up on in the'Turtish' and Eastern-sounding melodies is something thatseemed to come naturally to Scott, accessing theserecords as soon as they hit his father's record shop(important capital cities were often sites for excitingmusical developments, as they got more records andsooner than anyone else - Liverpool was once a thrivingpoG hence they got more Motown records before therest ofthe UK - hence Merseybeat and The Beades).Scott's interpretation of international music was essentiallylightweight perhaps, but nowhere near as dire as thekitsch-ified schmaltz dayglo worlcs of 'Exotic'Arthur

Lyman in the 1950s. And the phenomenon of my owngeneration (when the ghastly term World Music'vras firstcoined) isnt much better, a combination of politicallycorect chest-beating (anything of the 'Free NelsonMandela' school) and the wretchd and wanton

culture-clashing of Bjork or Vanessa-Mae. I'm sure an essayis waiting to be written here...

Thank you for you kind attention. Ne><t trip we hope totell you something about Scott's electronic music, hisinventjons the Clavivox and Electronium, and the SoothingSounds for Baby QD if I can find a copy...

more huslc froh Wern€r Bros

certoons l9a9-1457."QuJ,g

Records mentioned above:

The Carl Stalllng Protech Muslc fromWarner Bros Cartoons 193G1958WamerBrothersl[lB 9 26O27-2 (1990)

Greg Ford E<ecutive Producer, a Deep Creek ProductionsInc item from Hal Willner. A classic essential purchasgwith the famous slidingintro to Merrie Melodies, a RoadRunner episode in toto, and the disressing AnxietyMontage'.

Reckless Nights and Turklsh Twlllghts:The Muslc of Raymond ScottttS Columbla CK 5302t (1992)

A US release only and a bit hard to find in the UK forsome reason. Produced by lrwin Chusi4 with Hal Willneras Executive Producer.

Sources for this articlg kindly provided by

Irrin Chusid, PO Box 625t, Eoboken,NI 07030, USAWrite to him regarding further treasures from TheRaymond Scott archives

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The Sorrnd Proieelor Third Issue

lnilefitGallGnt

Steve Roden / ln Between Noise, EumningBndlessfirin the Eashl iSA. New Plasf ic Mrrs ic NPIR-2 r l Qal l

Spllnt (The soal ofwood)USA, Interior Sounds (19971

Brandon Labelle, Hma MateriaUSA, Unique Ancient Tavern (1996)

Roden and Labelle are a couple of Los Angeles guys bothinvolved in visual arts, performance, installations and suchlike - their work has passed me by until this point (thoughRoden was at the ICA in London). In the last 5 yearstheyVe taken up music. I was detirmined these CDswouldnt appeal to me (it all looked a bit precious) yet Iwas won over in time. The soul of woodis a 3"CD ofmusic generated by playing a piece of wood, although notjust any old lump of teak; it's a 1943 Eames splint. Rodenbows ig scrapes it and amplifies the resulting soundwavesthrough electronic devices. Calling attention in a veryspecific way to the object he uses, it's almost a surrealistact, a Marcel Duchamp ready-made being pw to anotherpurpose. Also the insistence on its concreteness, rather

than just using any old piece of two-by-four (as I have seenused by Emma O'Bong in Organum recently); this remindsme of Edward Gorey's insistence on polished, ocactingwriting.

The medical uses of this splint set my fertile braina-fantasising - why you can practically hear some echoes ofkeening cries of pain in the music he wrings from i! asthough all that physical agony of an ampuated airmanwere somehow embodied in the very soul of wood' - allhe need do is release it. A wonderful supernaturalish storyI remember (in Punch magazine of all places) involved anurse looking after an old man by the seaside; hesomehow damaged his wooden leg and she searched thebeach all day until she found a piece of driftwood thatwould exactly replace it. By the end of the story, she hadended up replacing the whole man with driftwood; thesearch for his head was a particularly difficult task. Whilenot suggesting that Roden should set up an entireorchestra of body-part simulacra (that sounds like an ECTales from the Ctypt story) | endorse his approach. l'msure Roger Ruskin Spear ('Noises for the Leg') wouldapprove also.

Humming Endlessly in the Hush uses field recordingp andsamples; and on many tracks, vintage toy instruments - egthe 1963 Kenner toy'scottie bagpipes'. One is reminded ofThe Residents using Toys-R-Us instruments on-Goosebump, although that was for the sake of conceptualunity - nursery rhymes played on nursery instruments.Agai n, everything is specifi cal ly name-checked, indicati ngthat each item was carefully chosen and notjust setded onas the nearest'found'object. Marcel Duchamp wouldsurely approve; the heathen cast aside his works as beingsomehow'irrelevant and random', y* Founain (the

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arrived in a plain red cover. This very welcome CD issueendeavours to reproduce the original package as far aspossible (red spine on the case!). The'truth to materials' isin his planning of the pieces and working with hiselectronic tools, based not on whether it'll end upsounding good as a piece of music or noise, but on theinherent propercies of how these devices behave whenyou plug them in and manipulate them. Modifications involume, pitch, wave form, compression etc, are allpermissible, provided one does it in a logical, almostalgorithmical way. Schnitzler eschews any traditionalmusical notions of what constitrJtes aesthetic development,and, through a severe materialist approach, proceeds withsound as sound.'Meditation'accordingly consists of some 4 or 5 unique

floors so as to use natural :- : aPed sound events unfolding

inverted urinal) remains an indelible statement to this day;the very act of selection was highly deliberate, and thecontextualisation of this choice within the perameters ofart gives it its lasting classical status. The audible results ofRoden's deliberations may not strike you as eventful oreven particularly challenging at first listen; but there aremany layers at work carefully organised and edited soundevents. Playing it really does have an effect on yoursurroundings; it's not a mere baclqground hum.

lf however this sounds a bit cluttered to you and youwould actuaffy likeabaclcground hum CD, then BrandonLabelle's efforts come highly recommended, He'sattempting to take installation commissions that stagefurther, actually 'playing'the art gallery like an instrument.This is done by placing microphones on tfie walls and

sound events as they arecreated (so the visitors becomepart of the piece). Sometimesso unobtrusive as to barelyregister, yet always gentlyasserting a palpable presence,this one's a weirdie. I guaranteeyou will come away from it inan altered state, and probablydo something absent-minded asa resulg like feeding raw steakto the goldfish. Brandon hasstuck on his back cover an oldlTth century printed bookillustration of a gardener whohad clearly learned his lessonsfrom Farmer's Manual; he hasbecome a Green Man, He sheda leaf from his skin and postedit in the envelope of this CD.

Steve Roden @ PO Box 36816,Los Angeles, CA 90036Bnndon Labelle @ PO Box931 124 Los Angeles, CA 90493

Conrad Schnitzler, f,ofGermany, Plate LunchPrl\TE Or (1997)

Conrad Schnitaler, OO/7 06Germany. Plate Lunch Ptr-NCH O2 tl997l

We had a mad art historT tutor at college, whose lectureswere only reported to me thankfully, but she apparendyonce backed herself into a corner defending'truth tomaterials' in modern art. She wound up claiming the onlyway to do it would be by exhibiting huge blocks of castaluminium as arq absolutely nothing else would do. This isnot a concept lVe really understood, but I guess ifRenaissance sculpor Michaelangelo is trying to 'fool'the

viewer into thinking carved marble was to be perceived asflesh or drapery he is not being true to materials; whereas2(hh century Carl Andre, with his non-sculpted steel platesor arranged housebricks, is.

Conrad Schniuler is however, I would surmise, being trueto materials' on the classic electronic LP Roc one of thevery desirable privately pressed LPs, originally issued inviny' in a limited edition of 5fl). Two side-long pieces madeup Conrad's first proper 'solo' LP (after Kluster) which

simultaneously in a highlyschematic, organised plan; anyvariations are based not onintuitive,'feeling' decision, butmaterialist, mathematical rules,In case you're expecting aforeboding noise, let me pointout there is rhythm going onhere - a recognisable pulse beatforms a structure, and some'dub mixing'effects on thetapes lend it a strange dynamic.As to the second piece'Krautrock', here be primitivetreated drum machines goinginsane with slightly irregularrhythms, offset by huge vectorsof completely arrhythmicelectric twittering patterns andferocious swoops and shrieks.lf you think there's nothing newunder the sun, just rememberConrad recorded this in 1972when most around him werebent on forming rock bands andtouring Germany with theirwarped Pink Floydimpersonations.'Krautrock' just

might be his sarcastic riposte to this situation, but it wipesthe floor with any piece of laughable 'techno' dribble andRot sands as a classic of e><perimental electronic music.

00/l05was recorded in 1997 and shows that Conradappears to have purchased more and better electronicequipment, is in even tighter control of his unique soundsculpting technique, and most imporbntly that he has lostnone of his harshness or intensity. Few concessions hereto conventional audience pleasure, although for my part Itake great pleasure in exploring this particular mindgarden, with its stainless steel flowers and barbed wiregrass. A continuous hour ofaudio-fracture-abstracto-mindmelds, indo<ed into 23user-friendly stabs, shining forth with utterly bfilliant soundquality - the years have not been as kind to the RotmastertaPes.

The cartloads of Ambient' music I've been swimmingthrough have a dubiously facile quality; they slip down thegullet like a tub of melted banana ice cream. Schniclerresists, and continues to resist, familiarity; I havent evergot used to listening to these CDs and dont expect I ever

B

shall. This man isimportant; you reallyare running out ofexcuses to ignore himand his music whenthere are CDs like thison the racks not astone's throw fromwhere you are.

Plate Lunch. PO Box1503, 53585, BadHonnef, GERMANY

HenriChopin,treCorpshis&CoItaly, Nepless PS

ry-g2gglA recent issue fromthis Parisian veterangenius of audio poems.Chopin has beenworking in his uniqueway since 1955 atleasc All this hauntingwork is produced justusing his mouth and amicrophone, with theadded help of echo andother electronic effectswhich speed up orslow down phrases.For the principal36-minute work'Le

: : : : ; J * " ' a i " ! "i ; ; : l ' " " : i : : " " : ;;ll;::qi::l:s;

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

::i:;"":;:iii::l':#

' o e r n s a u d i

e m s a u d a F

m s a us a

Corpsbis' Henri yawps his vocal escapades in a variety ofinternational locations. recorded between 1983 and 1989.One of them is recorded in a cavern where his lip andtongue movements become increasingly juicy throughoutthe impassioned performance, and his saliva becomes apoetic equivalent to an underground stream runningthrough that natural underground cave. The titles oftheother pieces, which translate roughly as 'Fresco of thelntangibld Voice', 'Ephos of the Mouth' and 'Major Frescoof the Lips', may clue you in as to what to expect from oldRubber-Lips. Chopin has developed convincing theoriesabout his entire approach, based on the potentialities ofthe whole human frame as a sound-maker and resonatingdevice; although not unsympathetic to the Dadaists, hefound Kurt Schwitters' Ur-Sonate somewhat restrictive asit was based on the limits of the written alphabet - andthe human tongue's approximation of these ciphers.Chopin is more interested in the far greater range ofnatural noises that the mouth can generate; inserting themicrophone into his 'oral cavity' is an act as 'ritualistic asthe multi-tonal chants of the people of Tibet and Siberia'.

Chopin edited the magazines Cinquieme Sarbo4 a reviewfor concrete poetry and theoretical texts for soundpoetry, founded in l?58; and OUfoundd in 1964, whichwas the first (only?) such publication to include recordsfeaturing spoken word pieces by William Burroughs, Gysin,Novak Heidsieck, and the Belgian poet painter andfilm-maker Paul de Vree. He has also produced typewriterart, some e><amples of which appear in the booklet to thisCD, and had a couple of retrospective exhibitions in thiscountry in the early 1970s. Look out for Audiopoems, a

e m s a u d is a u d a o

a u d i o Pa d l o P od , i o P o e

d i o P o e md i o P o e m si o P o e m s a

p o e m s a uo e m s a u o

o " a t a t d r

e m s a u d i om s a u d r o P

1974 LP on the Tangent label, which is probably super-rareby now, although a retrospective CD Les NeufesSainte-Phonies was around a couple years ago.

Nepless, CP 1 597, 20 1 0 1, Milan, ITALY

Remora, The Clochwork Ammonite SheIIsWorry @ (19971

Home-made electric noise recordings by solo artiste lanMiddleton, comprising seven truly wonderful therapeuticdrones, echo, voices and modified amplifier hum. Sevendifferent shades of black. Many have tried to follow thepath mapped out by Steven Stapleton but few havemanaged to progress beyond releasing bedroom cassetteswith grim photo-collage covers. Remora may use similarmethods but has his own voice and vision, and backs it upwith some of his deliberately Outsider Art-styled pen andink drawings, some of which are reproduced this issue. Arefreshing change from repellent abstract noise orsoft-centred Ambient vibrations, the tension throughoutmakes this compelling listening. Somehow there's atouching transparency about its simpliciry; given theequipmeng I suppose almost anyone could set a series ofdrones going in like manner, but then would they manageto sustain the interest as long as Remora?

I 7 Fisherc Green, Bridge of Allan, Stirlingshire,Scotland FK9 4PU

:it:i:"'il i:m s a u d is a u d l oa u d i o P

u d i o P od i o p oi o P o eo P o e m sp o e m s ao e m s a u

e m s a u dm s a u d l os a u d i o ' 9 o

i : i : ; : : ; : :: ; ; ; ; e m s a u di o P o e * t " : : :; ; ; . * . " o t lpt " " "191 . f i

I

Various llrtists, Soand GaIIerrVolume One

Discus 9CD (1997)

A showcase comp for Martin Archer and hiscronies, and a somewhat variable package but onethat will either cater to many listeners, or thechanging moods of a single pair of ears. Tim Risher'sthe best for my money: he grabs your attentionsoon enough with his ingenious pieces, 'The OnlyRealiry is lnside your Head'and the translucentbeauty of 'ln hradiso'. ln his trio Paragate, Tim isjoined by fellow composers Tom DePlonty and TedStanley, who set outto perform and recordelectro-acoustic music but restricting themselves tothe simplest possible set-up and equipment. Tim'sunderstanding of acoustics and the recordingprocess are admirably demonstrated by thesebeautiful cuts. Michael Szpakowski on the otherhand is a fairly dull sub-Erik Satie piano player,rendering in sound 'Three Paintings of EdwardHopper' - an uninspired opener to this gallery. NikBizzell-Browning's 'These Hands Arent Mine'is a collaged /sampler mess that made me wish these ears arent mine -jumping about from one novel sound effect to another, likea kid who got a Korg workstation for Christmas. Pluscomposer Dal Strutt with a tasteful clarinet piece, andArcher's eleccronic work for an installation by visual artistHelmut Lenke. Tolerable.

Transient V Resident, Elecfuical ShroudDiscus 7CD (1997)

Chris Bywater and Martin Archer slug it out with rheiranalogue machines with generally rewarding results. Theyrarely lose themselves in the pleasure of their own sounds,or allow submersion in the synth bubblebath, preferringinstead to stay awake and keep the moment moving alongall the time, according to a very unprogrammed agenda.Whenever things get too polite, they're always preparedto throw it all in the melting pot and dirty up the sound,or simply derail the smooth passage of the train - even atthe expense of losing the thread (and that's my day's quotaof mixed metaphors out of the way). This atritude isadventurous and good. Assuming that these are real-timeimprovisations, it has to be said they sustain interest well,

The Sound Proieetor Third Issne

l0

particularly on the lirst long rack - although this fades anddwindles sadly away after achieving many moments ofabstracted drama. Not every track pulls it off; track 6 hasArcher fooding with his 'amplified objects' (which could beanything from a Korg electrical egg-slicer to a bag ofRoland digial marbles) against a bog-standard drone. Still, amean quibble - you've only to play this against any givenslice of experimental techno vinyl and you'll likely findTransient V Resident win every time, scoring full marks forinspired and dangerous chaos, illogical sudden stabs ofnoise. and creative use of drum machine. Fantasticrecorded sound quality; you can almost hear the machinesthinking.

Martin Archer. tS EnemiesDiscus lOCD (1997)

Solo works produced with sequencers through a Proteusgrand piano, resulting in a completely bonkers stream ofmusic filled with overlapping sounds and ultra-fastarpeggios which no human could ever play. Very. akin toFrank Zappa's rather cold experiments with the Synclaviermachine, eg Civilisation Phase lll. Not a great success forme, and as for the musical peers he claims have inspiredhim in this direction...well Conlan Nancarrow maybe, butMorton Feldman? Still, it's Archer's 'personal favourite' soyou should give it an au'dition and stay with ir

All Discus CDs are best mail-ordered direct fromPO &ox 558 Sheffield Sl0 3YR. They cost tl2 each.

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

Trevor Wishart and Frlends, Menagerle /B each SInSBIarity / VocallseParadigm Discs PD O3 (1997)

Three rather variable pieces for the price of one.'Menagerie'is about the best for my money, although notexactly a satisfying listen. lt was planned as an art galleryinstallation event, with sound pieces by Leeds-borncomposer Trevor Wishart to match up with strangeassemblage obiects by some English artists. Photos ofsome of these are thoughtfully provided in the bookletMick Banks'Still Life'pirches his precariously balancedteacup on top of a stack of paperbacks about to fall over,against a worrisome soundtrack of a housewive apparentlyscreaming herself to death as she listens to TonyBlackburn over domestic sound effecrs of boiling kettles.Michael Scott's 'Musical Box'is an old broken recordplayed by a phallic Gurot to entertain two Barbie dolls;guess what innovation Wishart devised for thatcanard...that's righC a skipping old broken record! This isprobably making'Menagerie'seem more interesting than itis; a visit to such an installation might have seemed radicalin 1974, but now seems merely quaint. The artists need togo back to theirJoseph Cornell cribs (they have none ofthat wounded US surrealist's pathos, humour orinvention). Wishart's tape-collage sounds are divertingenough, but dont really stand up bythemselves.'Beach Singularity'we had best drawa veil over - or at least a whitecanvas tentflap. Wishart went downto the seaside to per{orm onbeaches in Lancashire in 1977 alongwith his hlm Beach Orchesra - avirtual German oompah band

Ouba sax, clarinet, horn) of hisfriends dressed in funny shorts andlittle bowler hats. The resulting'avant-garde' versions of 'Surfi n Usa'

F _._.:-_

and 'A Life on the Ocean Wave', reated with live tapecollage mixes, are ghastly; it's a bit of English whimsy tryingto say something about English whimsy, and I suspectdeeply patronising to its intended audience. Only thedreadd Promenaders come close to this ironic'serious-hilarious' pomposity.

Vocalise' is Wishan solo having a steb at ttre HenriChopin style of making mouth music in an e><tended vocalimprov performance; a leftover from Howards andAndrewJacques' l99l Recommended Records shop gigswhich I dont think made it onto the These CD Release.

For what it's worth these pieces are rare, originally onlyavailable on a 1979 privately pressed LP.

Pauline OHveros, Electtonlc WorhsParadism Discs PD 04 (19971-What interests me about any early-ish pioneeringelectronic music is the very difficulty of effecting it. Lookat Stockhausen hand-splicing hundreds of pieces of tapefor t}ree months to produce the jigsaw prrzle ofKonakte...Edgard Varese labouring over his tapd'f nterpof ations' f or Deserts in 1 954...Tod Dockstadercompiling a library of taped sounds...any INA-GRMmusique concrete pioneer working only with magnetic

tape and a Revox. Which isnt to try and make a fetish outof the limitations of 1950s equipment and hardware, norto promote a Protestant hard work etlric - but havingsomething you have to push against can often spur thecreator onto greater heights. Despite the fact that thosenamed above had good ideas, there was an elaborate anddisciplined struccure behind their music-making whichdistinguishes it from the swamplands of modern Ambientdribble. A medium that doesnt challenge you can result insoft-centred, lazy work; modern music computer banksbecome like Sony Playstations.

What then of Pauline Oliveros, coming to terms witfi sinetone generators, oscillators and tape recorders to producesome of the most beautiful music man has ever heard?These pieces, dated 1965 and 1966, come from a timebefore binary algorithms were commonplace, in thetwiligfn zone just before the commercial availability of theMoog synthesizer.'l of lV'is played in real time usingamplified tones and tape loop repetition...a moresophisticated version of Frippertronics, given that thesound sources are quite elaborate tone generators. Mostimporant is that she did it'live'without using overdubs ortape splicing; no after-the-fact tweaking and correcting forthis plucky elglorer. The piece is dramatic, a true battle ofwits, a split-second decision making process involving a

massed army of unpredictable,intractable sound events. For MsOliveros to pitch her talentsagainst these machines is anunequal struggle of Julie Christievs D emon Seed proportions

; (there is something innatelymasculine about electronicequipment, dont you think?).Pauline wins, re-educating thismonstrous configuration offorbidding humming boxes tospeak a musical language withoutit even understanding what it's

doing and at the same time reinventing its machismo

:;c;]" into somethint more feminine, compassionate

'Big Mother is watching you' is a piece you owe yourself tohear before you check into the funeral home. This is awork of terrifying beauty, of primal forces barely undercontrol. lf you are comforted by the rain outside yourwindow bw find thundErstorms alarming stay well awayfrom this recording. Otherwise by all means tune in to araw and elemental composition. The fearsomeness easesoff eventually, to glide into a soaring flight over a lunarlandscape, only to recur in the closing passages of giganticinhaling and exhaling. Like 'l of lV', 'Mother'uses

techniques which Oliveros worked on at the San FranciscoTape Centre, but recorded in Canada (TorontoUniversity).

More than merely an imporant electronic composer,Oliveros is a writer and philosopher and (like film-makerMaya Deren) has worked with myth and ritual, withperformances spilling over into areas of choreography,music theatre. She is also founder of The Deep Listeningband, developing a meditative approach to all aspecrs ofmusic. A number of recent recordings are availablethrough the Lovely Music label in America. She alsocontributes to the Driftworks CD set which I havereviewed in The Crackling Ether section.

III

l t

IquchSongili1Orychiky(a)a@ScatterAsh International #3.5 (1997)

DecayAsh International #3.9 (1997)

lnvestigate this Trilogy or Triptych of compilations as soonas possible. A tripartite electronic and field recordinginternational suruey, mosdy new artists from (respectively)

Japan, America and Europe..all extremely strange andworrying sounds, and even if you like droning Ambientnoise you may find some of it a bit too far-out for yourtastes. As a listener, youVe got to do some of the workyourself. Litde of it is actually 'musical'at all, deriving fromother sound sources. The project almost comes acrosslike an antidote to music.

Chitky(u)u is a series of environmental recordings with atwist",.'all material used in the sound pieces is gatheredfrom the eanh (stones/water erc) or activity resultingfrom movement in the earth (earthquakes etc)'. Starcingoff on this rather traditional Japanese premise - respect forthe mother planet, landscape art like Hiroshige woodblockprints in sound - the technologr whisks us into thetwentieth century with tape treatments, layers ofoverdubbing ocreme volumes and stereo panning effectsthat even the most stoned out psychedelic recordwouldnt dare experiment with. The listener becomes aworm in the ground, a spawning salmon leaping up awaterfall, a wood-boring beede disturbed by a suddenearthquake. Ten new works byJapanese sound artistsunknown in the UK. and one hidden track - includesYVater Margin' by Tamaru, who atached electrodes to thebanks ofihe river Arakawa; 'scenes 4'which is a fieldrecording from a National Park in Osaka; and AkiraYamamichi's Topography l-V described as 'sand dustlimestone cave dead in crysal frequency magnetic field'.Not a record to sit down and listen to. so much as anorganic thing to live with: plant it in the CD player andwarch it grow over a long period.

Scatter - the second in the trilogr showing our MotherEarth theme is taking off in a big way. Agriculture is onekey; the first part offers the sounds ofthe earth crying inpart two the furmer plants his crop, 'scatters' his seed. Forfurther detail, perhaps the secret blueprint is anotherTouch-distro release Farmers Manual, see below. Natureallusions are evident in the titles of the five tracks here,

John Hudak's Sketch of a Field'and Daniel Menche's'Unholy Cricket Fuck', and the tJrird artiste is simplynamed Earth. 'Cricket Fuck' sugests a crop failure on apar with the disaster in Days of Heaven, as a swarm oflocusts invade in a beautifully photogr-aphed vignette.Menche's visceral power is no less persuasive.

But our final stage is the most pessimistic, Decay - theultimate end of our harvest kept too long in the grain silo.

IB

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

No joyous hymns about bringing in the sheaves here,brothers. A finality underscored by the fact that this is thelast-ever Ash International Release, and official release datetallies with Armistice Day. The manna from heaven shouldbe eaten and enjoyed today, while you still can (Fxodus,Ch 16). This CD is still being investigated in the SoundProjector house; it gave me nightmares the night after itsarrival. A selection of extreme and unsettling sound artistsfrom Europe, of which the unremitting loop structure of 'l

Saved M,l.T (Yes I Did)' leaves you with one of the mostindelible stains in the brain. Decayis DARK the so-calledDark Ambient comp Narcosis is a bright August day incomparison...the trilogy turns into a Hieronoymous Boschtriptych, most probably The Garden of Earthly Delights.Chiky(u)u is the Japanese

'Heaven' of the riprych's leftwing on the right it's clearly the 'musical hell' delineated byDecay...btx what can kattertell us about the state of theworld today? Listen and learn...it's not a palatable message.

Music nowadays is becoming invasive. lt projects its wayinto your life and pushes aside everytlring else to makeroom; listen to any record with an 'ln Yer Face Bass'andyou'll get the picture. Or simply enter any pub, shop,restaurant or building on the high street and see if you canescape the loud in-house radio or CD jukebox. (What'snexL..Government sound trucks in the strets playingmandatorT purchase Elton John singes?) This AshInternational trilogr is an alternative, it presents musicianswho barely intervene in the world; their sound offers us aransparency, like a floating OHP slide or a microdotsealed onto your eyeball. A prism through which we mightinterpret the world anew,

In today's arena it's becoming increasingly easy to suggestthat the sounds of nature alone can be music. This trilogyseems even more subversive to me, posing a radicaquestion as to whether we actually need music at all. In awodd of too many CDs, perhaps we need more like this,perforated with the healing balm of silent rest-periods,presenting a paradoxical conundrum about ourconditioning and listening practices. This slight of hand isreflected even in the throwaway remark in the pressrelease to the first item, 'comes in a ptefold plastic walletwhich comfortably fits into your hip pocket for. easyaccess' - undermining through satire the conventionalpresupposed notions of CDs as useful consumer objects. Isuppose this argument does collapse if you actually go andpurchase these CDs, but blow it - you really have to hearthem. Probably viewed as little more than an 'interesting

side development'elsewhere, but I care very much for thislittle set

:13ct_c.o.ct

The Sound Proieetor Third lssue

Disinformation, AntiphonyAsh International ASH 3.4 2 x CD (1997)

Joe Banks hasnt been listening to music for the last twoyears - in fact he's been trying to avoid it. His interest asDisinformation probably lies outside music altogether, andeven the recording process itself seems to disappoint himas it cannot faithfully capture the extraordinary soundevents that he alone knows how to locate and monitor.His sophisticated radio equipment monitors electricaldisturbances in the national grid, emissions from the sun,or lightning bolts happening on some other part of theglobe. These are naturally spontaneous, or man-madegenerated events, which when registered on these devicesdo produce some sort of sound, although even that wouldseem to be incidenal to Banks'purpose. Angels passingoverhead. He flies like an Angel over the globe selectingwhat he may from the air. A live event at Disobey gavehim the chance to generate, in a completely 'non-musical'

manner, a naturally-resonating approximate G chord andplay it over a rock-sized PA system; his ears still haventrecovered (and acupuncture was the final resort), but whatof the helpless audience whose bones were shaken totheir marrow?

Early records of Disinformation were documents,reportage of his research. Titled Stargate R&D and GhostShells, they have sold out and there is no possibility of arepress. Antiphony purports to be 'remixes' of thesematerials, although there are cases, such as the version by

John Duncan here, where virtually no interventionwhatsoever has taken place. Other tracks feature noDisinformation source material at all. The graphics, mapreferences, photographs and other materials on the sleeveinserts here pose a conundrum to any visitor toBanks-World; there is definite encouragement for us to goand visit these sites ourselves, Richard Long style, and find

another piece in the jigsaw puzzle. Inany case, here are two CDs worthof abstract noise, featuring suchartistes as Beekeeper and CDmutilator Bruce GilberL extremeper{ormance artist John Duncan,Chris and Cosey, RLW KapotteMuziek et al. Despite all theapparent'nothingness' involved,there is a tremendous amount goingon; at times it's almost too much tolisten to. lt is also profoundlyspooky, atmospheric, mysteriousand wonderful. All the things in factthat so many young contemPoraryelectronic manipulators are aimingfor, and often failing miserably.

Farmers Manual, fisclr

WZ)More plalul and even at times trivialthan the above related releases, thisis a clever little CD which mayultimately beguile you. You need anexcellent memory: each succeedingplay cancels out the previous ones.Swatches of changing techniques runthrough it: a ludicrously clunky formof techno background musig with all

the nuts and bolts of its construction laid bare; near-emptyminimalist burrs and buzes: seconds of 'tasteful'chord

changes; chaotic noisy fragments of hospial equipmentbeing thrown down an escalator; andrandomly-programmed silent passages. lf this music wereactually used as a Farmer's Manual, agriculture would gomad- the world would be transformed into a gigantic fieldof cherry orchards transplanted with bean-shoots,hemmed in by a garland of evilJooking weeds. On theother hand, the booklet photographs show only tooclearly what a mess we've made the world grow into:reaping a bimer harvest of the wreckage of old aeroplanes.

MikaVainio, OnkoTouch # TO:34CD (1997)

Mr Vainio should be farhiliar to you as half of Panasonic,the great Finnish electronic extremists - if so you mighthave an inkling what to expect, a soothing pattern ofvibratlons and tones. Abstracted to infiniq/, no worrisome'hidden meanings' to tease out of this particular release,one of the most enjoyable and approachable ever to havebeen recorded in the name of minimalism or digital noise.lf we can indeed compare this to 'cellular pafterns as theyface the sciutiny of a high-powered microscope', thenperhaps the sound somehow aligns itself with a veryfundamenal human rhythm - the inner pulse of aminoacids, or something. This is the best way to acc'ount forhow this music is able to enter your bloodstream tentimes fuster than a dose of Nurofen - it vibrates its wayinto the very grain of your being. Take more olive oil inyour diet; one reason it's not fattening is because the cellsof its carbohydrates are a very close match to thosemanufactured naturally by the human body. lf so, Onkois abottle of supreme quality Extra-Virgin first pressing!

t4

There seems to be a deal of technicalbaclcground information - be itmiliaty histoty or elxtricalphenomena - associated wkh yourwork ls it necessary for the audienceto know about it to underctand orappreciate the work? For yourcelf,were you always interested in thesethings, or did the sound-events comefirst and intrQue you enough to wantto study them in greater deaill

Hopefully Disinformation is directenough for people to able toappreciate it without knowing anydeails beforehand. This is certainlythe impression I get from playing live.Normally little flyers or explanatorypamphlets are available at each gi&but in some cases when noinformation has been provided [eg -

Audiomeria @ The 12| AnarchistCenre, National Grid @ TheMuseum of Insallationl the responsehas still been very good.

I had no interest in radio sciencebefore this project - myenthusiasm developed as theoossibilities of radio noisestarted to become clear. Iinstinctively regarded radioenthusiasts as boringtrainspotters, and so still feelthe sense of amazement firstexperienced when I realisedwhat extraordinaryphenomena they sometimes deal with.There are a bunch tweed-jacketed,cloth-capped, pipe-smoking ex-MFelectrical engineers, who worked inradar during the war, and have spenthalf a century or more quietlylistening -to what would once havebeen desiribed, not withow reason,as the voice of God - with, apparently,little or no concept of the culturalsignificance of what, they have beendoing.

Although the INSPIRE [NASA-funded]space physics organisation I joinedused to ground-monitor thespace-shutde SEPAC experiment

[Space Experiments with ParticleAccelerators], these kind of particleaccelerators laser beams as virtualantennae] fired through thematnetosphere are quite unlike thefamous ground-based accelerators atCERN [in Swieerland] or SLAC [inCalifornia]. They don't producemeasurable collisions or sub-atomicparticles, so far as I know they dontreveal, and I unfortunately dontpersonally know, anything aboutquantum physics. The INSPIRE radio

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

was used to record 'Ghost Shells'and'R&D Track l'.

Where do you study for yourresearchl ls your research plannedand methodical or simpf cumulative?Where is it leading?

I hoover up fragments of informationwherever and whenever possible - butit has to be said that to some e)centinformation finds me, For instance afew months ago I was racking mybrains about how to find informationabout Dani Karavan - designer oftheMonument to the Palmach NegevBrigades, the world's greatest soundsculpture - | went for a walk intoMitcham and found a book with aphoto of it in a skip. When I waslooking for information about theghost town at lmber in the fublicRecord Office, opening an index atrandom revealed a reference to lmberimmediately. There are maybe 10,fi)0text references per inde><, 200 oddvolumes of indo<es, and maybe half a

dozen references to lmber burid inamont them.

There is a lot of research involved, itisnt systematig and I have no ideawhere it is leading. After nearly tenyears of professional work my 'career'

has done its utmost to leave mealmost completely braindead. lf itachieves nothing else Disinformationhas provided me, by way of anantidote. with a self-education it isunlikely I could have achieved byother means.

Could there be a spiritual /meaphysical dimension to your work,or is it more materhlist?

This is a very good question for thesimple reason that I do not have aconsistent answer. There is a greatdeal of anthropomorphic projection inpeople's interpretation of radio noise.I have lost count of the times peoplehave asked me if l'm interested incrop circles, aliens, using radio to pickup voices from the spirit wodd.'Experimentation' - using the termloosely - into these kind of allegedohenomena has been an establishedfeature ofthe New Age / StrangePhenomena scene for decades. often

based on a fundamentally inaccuratesentimentalisation of the forces ofnature. lt is, almost withoutexception, total rubbish - and this canbe easily and unambiguouslydemonstrated, Electrical engineeringisnt the kind of profession youUthink had a lunatic fringe but it does.Titles like 'Ghost Shells', 'Theophany',

and the 'Angel'artwork in Antphonyrefer to these projections as cognitivephenomena rather than metaphysicalrealities, to undermine the influenceof accumulated cultural precedent byreducing them to physical evidence ofmanifestly simple electrical processes.The term 'antiphony' itself is adeliberately misleading allusion to thelanguage of religious music, Evenlightning - which is one of my all timefavourite experiences - is onlyawesome in ratio to human scale, atone level it is no more impressivethan the spark you make flicking alight switch.

I am interested in these kind ofprojections - but ase><amples of comparativeanthropologi/ rather thanan objective truths. By wayof contrasq your readersmight like to look at anarticle compiled for issue 3of lmmerse maEazine called'Rattling Thunder', which

demonstrates the influence of similarprocesses in Arabic folklore.

Another practical e><ample is tocompare Disinformation's'Theophany'

[the voice of God] withthe composer John Tavener'srecording of the same name, whichare two rival interpretations of thesame theme (Disinformationpublished first). One manifestsshort-wave radio statics produced bythE local recording of intenseelectrical storms - which is acompletely inhuman sound, and apretty good candidate for an'authentic'voice of God. On theother God is represented by, surprisesurprise, a very deep human voice -

demonstrating the truism that mancreated God in his own image andnot vice-versa. However it is also truethat with material like Sargate', thenature of this work - type 2 radioemissions from the sun, also knownas the'seashore effect' - instinctivelymade me think about all my farnilywho have died and the emotionalopportunities that have been havemissed. Whatever I think intellectuallyI am subject to the same emotional

lli$informationlnswerclrom foc Brnls

l5

pressures as anyone else - and I

approach these issues from the point

of view of a participant rather than a

cynical outsider. I played the two rival

Theophanies on top of each other for

Scanner atthe ICA -John Tavener's

music hing shattered and riPPed

open by these overPoweringnoise-peaks from lightning strikes,

which, personally speaking was quite

a cathartic exPerience.

Given that records to You seem to be

a me$od of 'reponage'of event that

are happening more or less constentt/- how do you phn the length ofa

recorded piece?

I dont plan the length of recordings

at all, but live performances and DJ

sets are planned'

Do you know anythint about the

so-called'Numberc Sations' on the

short wave supposedlY used bY

mitiary intelligence?

According to Akin from lrdial

Records the last track on

Disinformation's R&D is a numbers

station broadcast, although I wasnt

aware of this when it was recorded.

lrdial are the expems in this

departmeng but even then, in the 72

pages of the booklet published with

their (4xCD!) numbers stations

release I couldnt find anY evidence

substantiating the alleged connection

beween numbers stations andmilitary intelligence. My hvourite use

of Numbers Stations is in [the film]

Orpheusby lan Cocteau.

For AntiPhon)'. were the remixerc

given any instructions, advice,

sugestions! How is it Possible to

remix a Disinformation piece! Do you

have any comments to make on the

resul*?

The sound side of AntiPhon)/wasmostly organised bY Mike Harding -

he didnt issue any instructions that

I'm aware of, so the remixers had a

free hand to let their imaginationsroam. I chose the tide desigPd the

graphics and packaging and invited

Evan Parker, Chris and CoseY' and

Peopfe Like Us to remix Sargate.

Evan Parker was very keen to

participate. His suPerb record

Monoceros refers to a constellationclose to Orion and Canis Maior, and

Sargatewas per{ormed bY our own

Sun. However the plan entailed the

record company providing some

money for studio time and this seemsto have been spent on recordingEnan's Solar WindCD instead' lt's

very hard to know what to saY about

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

Antiphony, some people love it, other

people hate it, and I'm hardlY bestplaced to comment obiectivelY.

Letb hear some more about Yourgallety insallations. How many have

there been? Also live performances -

can )/ou s4/ a bit about the DisobeY

evenL

National Grid at DisobeY was

fantastic, buc very, very stressful. The

venue was absolutelY Packed' with

queues going out into the street

Obviously only a handful of punters

were there specifically to see me, but

nonetheless I was being paid and had

a responsibiliry to Perform. I was

standing there with a dodry old radio

and no confidence that this ridiculous

idea was really going to work. Of

course I leftthe antenna at home, so

we had to improvise - Mick from

Disobey skinned a guiar lead for me

with his teeth! The principle is that

the radio set-up allows me to Pick uP

the sine-wave of AC electricity and

then tune it iust like a musical

instrument - using an upper and lower

side-band filter desigred for

interpreting morse-codetransmissions. lt went absolutelyperfectly - from e><cruciating highs to

real heart-stopping infrasonic noise

crashes. I was microtuninginterference patrerns of 1 I, maybe

even 0.5H2 with easg and controlling

the radio by waving mY hands around

in the electrical field or walloping ic

The strangest side-effect of that

episode was that afterwards Disobey

/ Blast First / Paul Smith approachedme as intermediarY to brokering a

collaboration with the KLF - Paul is

now their business manager. TheY

t6

were very interested in Ghost Shellg

and particufarf y National Grid and

Paul told me theY'd actuallY gone out

and bought an electricity py'on! | was

told tfrey wantd to emPloY mq the

architect Charles Jencks, and Stuart

Home to help realise what has since

evolved into their millennium pyramid

scheme. You have to remember this

lot spent €,m,000 aking the Piss out

of Rachael Whiteread, and also threw

about the same amount in cash onto

a fucking bonfire! NaturallY lwas

prepard to susPend iudgement on

the suspicion that theyVe sunk into

being a bunch of criminallYostentatious egomaniacalcocaine-addled tossers' in the hopethat they might be prepared to investsome serious moneY in mY ideas.They weren'c He offered me f,l(X)0plus e><penses to, as I saw ic replenishtheir efrausted ideas. I ary.red thatthey already owed me hr more tianthat for nicking my ideas about soundweapons, and if he didnt substantiallyimprove the offer I wasn't interested.Falling out with Paul was deflnitely abad move - he seemed to be PrettYmuch the only person in themainstream media with the foresightto take proiects like Disinformationseriously - but I dont think I had anychoice in the circumstances.

At the Museum of lnsallation themain area of the gallery was virtuallyempty, I set up the National Gridapparatus in the basement, tapped theambient electric field for powerlinenoise and fed the sigPal to twosub-bass speakers with integrallow-pass filters [B&W 856 ActiveSubwoofersl. The sound was like an$cremely low musical note with adistinct 2Hz interference Paftern '

low enough not to inttrferesubsantially with normalconversation, but intense enough tomake two whole floors of the buildingshake. Afterwards dre curator gaveme a couple of kilos of brokenmasonry, bearing the words 'danger

electricity', which he reckons wasdislodged by the vibration and fell offthe front of the building. Other soundworts by Bruce GilberU JavierMarchan, and Dave Clegg were eitherintermittent and / or sufficientlYhigh-pirched that nofrequency-masking occurred. TheMuseum of lnstallation show wasartistically l(X)% successful and veryenjoyable indeed.

What kind of eguipment do you havel

I use the Interactive NIISA SpacePhysics Ionosphere RadioE:rperiments' RSt Natural RadioReceiver - which picks up electric-fieldVery Low Frequency radio. lt isn't very easyto use (in the countryside, at night, inwinter), it's very badly constructed (by me),and now broken (also by me). A trowflequency En gineering f, 5OOmaglretic-freld VLF receiver withloop antenna, is very small, robust, andmuch easier to use than the RS4.

A Datong VLF oDnverter.

A Phillips DCC recorder, thepoor-man's DAT machine, which can beeasily converted by anyone to work as anionospheric I space phy:ics radio. Al2-year old Tascam * trac[ which Iuse as a mixer for DJ sets, with sliders ascrusty as the undercarriage of a chocolatehob-nob. Mike Harding's 1970 Laf,ayetteshort-wav€ radio, complete withelectric shocks. Various conventional radios.contemporary and antique - which I eitherowned anyway, nicked off skips, or In onecase actually paid for - a lovely Cosfor all

Wave Snlrcrhet I got for {30 in a localjunk shop.

A Cossor CSPI25O IonosphericSimulator, so far unused. This is a digitalsampler and multi-€ffects unit for trainingmilitary radio operators to interpretdistorted communications traffic. lt's listedin )ane's Defence Electronics and l'd guess itoriginally cost around { | 0,000 - BarryNichols bought it at a car boot sale inNorthampton for f 3.50. I did hare ascanner but I sold it when I wasunemployed.

t7

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

lltomoilGBurcnGrGround-Zero, Consnme Redkoject: Consume /Consame Groand-kro Volame IJapan, Creativeman Disc CMDD-OOO46 (1997)

lAlsol uK, ReR GZ2 (1997)

Words fail me...the Revolutionaty Pekinese Openwas more than enough to keep my senses reling for years, but thenalong came the May 1997 ReR catalogue update. Oh no, not another Ground-Zero CD to buy...Chris Cutler's review ofConsume Redwhetted dre appetite: '..,a monster structure that starts screaming and gets more and more intense andmassive until you dont imagine there is anywhere else to go. Then it gets bigger.,.' Reading this, I had that terrible feelingthat a date with destiny was in the offing. I knew if I ever heard a CD like that l'd go completely over the edge. Later thatmonth, Ground-Zero were bookd to appear at the London Musicians' Collective Sixth Annual fustival of ExperimenalMusic. Altered States, another fineJapanese guitar and sax ban4 also put in an appearance two days before theirconfreres, and everTone was struck by the superlative clarity of sound at the Conway Hall venue - and the excessivevolume. These signs augured well for Ground-Zero.,.when they took the stage Bank Holiday Monday I was more thanready to face the dentist's drill,..'lt's easy and maybe even cool to say "to hell with copyright". But of course things arent really that simple,' statescomposer and turntable artist Otomo Yoshihide on a webpage where he briefly discusses the haclground to ConsumeRed Sampling is the core of the whole project. Kim Suk Chul is a Korean musician, a 'national treasure', and a fewseconds of his hoiok playing are the first thing you hear on Consume Aed Otomo is more than aware of the issues;Revolutionary Pekinese Openwas a hornet's nest of 'stolen' snatches of musig some of which were samples to beginwith: and Otomo knows this CD has been sampled yet again by Stock Hausen and Walkman! Otomo is asking us - wharprice ownership? '...how can anybody say for sure who created what?' Balanced against this creative side of the argument,there's a pecuniary one: payment of mmhanical royalties, and samplers 'stealing' someone else's ideas to get rich. There isonly one copyright organisation in Japan - JASRAC. A TV company can steal Otomo's music and it's declared 'legal' solong as they pay a fee to JASMC, yet Otomo never gets a bean. As to Operl that never made any money either...

Consume Redblows away the dust that fills the eyes of pettifogging men. Kim Suk Chul's music is sacred; says Otomo,'his superhuman plalng is without question a product oi tri. orn n cieativity, but it could also be that he is in fact a vesselfor the voices of gods or ancestors.' By using this sacred music as a foundation stone, Otomo brings the samplingargument back to ar9 to the spirituality at the centre of great music. But then he goes one step further and pushes thewhole thing into total chaos again. The next two proposed volumes of Consume Redwill be further remixes; Volume 2will be a rehash of Volume I by 'five of the wodd's most shocking and unique artists'; Volume 3 a further mincing bymembers of the public, based on Volumes I and 2 - an open competition. 'Go ahead and burcher this with your ownhands', urges Otomo, 'we can talk later'...

Live, the terrifying and ear-splitting hojok blast (l have no idea what a hojok may be, but I dont want to meet one ever)is played over and over again on a Fairlight or other sampling keyboard by Matsubara Sachiko, and the remainingmembers of Ground-Zero calmly walk onto stage when it's their turn, and gradually'drop in'to the piece. The first ofthese is .l-anaka Yumiko, a traditional shamisen player, followed by electric guitar, bass, two drummers (the two drum setsound is particularly satisfing on the CD), saxophone, and finally Otomo himself wreaking physical vengeance on themetal trestle table supporting his wheel of steel. His performance was manic; the slice of viny' offered up as sacrifice tothe Great Red God finally split in two beneath his pulverising assaulc The Ground-Zero players are astounding betralnglitde sign of emotion in their collective countenance, yet delivering fanastic performances; supreme mastery of theinstrument is a prerequisite to allow this gigantic madness to take over and pour forth in a magnificent o<plosion ofnoise. And, as Cuder had predicted, the piece grew and grew like the monster in Forbidden Plane; susaining power andregenerating itself to even greater heights with every second. As if hearing Consume Redwerent enough, we had acondensed Portion of Open as an encorg followed by their version of what I think was announced as a classic piece ofToko psychedelia from the 1960s (but by whom?) This piece was simply transcendental, heavenly music.

ln the context of much of the stodgr White European music at LMC in l99Z Ground-Zero and Altered States stuck outlike exotic birds at an Ugly Duckling parade. All credit to whoever managed to book them on the programme (it wasprobably Ed Baxter), in the hce of opposition from dissenting voices; perhaps Otomo is too experimenral for somepeople. l'll never forget seeing a gentle welliressed couple in their late 60s, sealing down to the start of Ground-Zeroafter an otherwise tasteful acoustic and semi-jazy evening of music; then politely making their way out as they realisedtheir horrible mistake. Shordy after t}le performance the gloomy rumour was circulating that Ground-Zero were to bedisbanded. The hints ar€ there anyway in the proclamation 'Consume Ground-Zero' - if that cycle is played out to theend as planned, it'll be a conflagration of nuclear war proportions and should put the final cap on the sampling debate. Ashame that Otomo had to sacrifice his own band in the flames. With this record and live performances, Otomo hasestablished himself as a titan of music, and for my money one of the most important people on the planet today!

r9

Gyaatees, fIanan, Captain Trip CTCD 063 (1997)

For the first three tracks, this gives the impression of afree-for-all jam session involving much drum-banging andvocal wailings, as though the band were attempting toupdate The Red Krayola's 'free form freakouts'with TheFamiliar U$y. lt then segues into an ethnic instrumentblurting ay'vay over a calming synth figure, which ends thisvery short CD. All tracks are performed live by anine-piece combo, playing synths, saxophones, guitars, aDidjeridoo, and lots of percussion instruments. Three oftfrem also wail mysteriously, using tfieir larynxes. Gyaateesare a combination of free style musicians and Sei-soupriests. Sei-sou' in Japanese means 'a clean priest who isintellectually handicapped'. (A note to the PC brigade -

that's their chosen phrase; we would probably use'intellectually challenged' in this uptight country). lt isundoubtedly the presence of these Sei-sou priests whichgive Gyaatees their distinaive voice.

The band spent some time developint this music. lt beganwith Tairyr Kakua and his musician cohorts meeting theSei-sous in a Koganji Temple to perform 'ascetic exercises'on a daily basis. I dont know if these exercises involvedmusic at this stage; perhaps they were religiousceremonies, or else they simply sat in dark cells eatingdried roots. Kakuta, however, saw he could learn, lt wasclear these intellectually handicapped priests hadsomething important to san but could e><press it bestthrough music (rather than through literature or language).Informal rehearsals began; composed songs were triedfirst, but the Sei-sou, enlightened visionaries though theymay be, were unable to memorise their parts for longenorlgh to per{orm them more than once, From necessityit would seem. the music grew into a different thing a'memory of the original songs' - the Sei-sous contributedvestigial ghosts of their original learned parts. This resultcould have been a success, but still something was notquite righq the notes say 'it was not our wishes and lifestyle', and I think there is a suggestion that the musiciansfelt they were e><ploiting their brother priests:'handicapped people were associated with normal'.

Finally, Gyaatees understood that'rules are nothing'. Theytore up the original plan and decided on go-for-broke freeplaying 'even if it will not be music'. The results are here, ajoyous half-hour of simple, colourful fun. Find out foryourself if their risk paid off.

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

, t t : i , : i

' - : i ' ' , i i l

Musica Transonic, A lh)"yprpo Eo).auelapan PSF, PSFD 76 (r996)

Give yourself a couple of plays to tet Past the extreme

volume and density, then you can start to aPPreciate what

a complicated masterpiece is Musica Transonic's second

LP. A concept has been tackd onto it, in which Asahito

Nanjo's power trio rediscover their roots with the Old

Catholic church. A voyager themed LP to outdo anythingYes managed to produce it offers balm to a weary Pilgrim

throughout his life's journey. All track titles transcribefrom Greek script into Latin, each associated with an

aspect of the Pilgrim's journey, including the 'OQ$t1tup

Ae{uvltopup' ([Officium Defunctorum]: a prayer for the

dead?), 'fpcr.6uod.e' [Graduale] and 'Hoe1 Areo' [Haec

Diesl. A Graduale is a Psalm and response associated with

Catholic liturgies; Haec Dies simply means 'This is the

Day', referring to Judgement Day, the Great Day of God'swrath. Naturally, our oriental Holy Triniry here are morethan equal to the task of pe#orming a suiable soundtrackfor that apocalyptic evenc

Two outstanding tracks continue the theme,'Xov$eooroveo'

[Confessiones] and'Aupect' [Lurea]. Inthe confessional box of the former, lead guitarist KawabataMakoto unburdens his soul in a litany of echoed andsustained weeping guiar lines. 'Lurea' boasts the weirdestsound the trio have yet managed to record, a numbingly

insistent liturgy of power chords with an added electronicSnake in the garden of Eden weaving its way over the top.

Each track is too complex to be listened to, a taut anddeliberate construction offering maximum informationoverload. An indelible record you can keep reading for

ever, like an illuminated manuscript. Their most beautjfulCD box to date, every millimetre of space afforded by thatcramped design format has been utilised; designd byKawabaa using a nariant of the colour-print technique ofTadanoori Yokoo (almost the same as traditjonal Japanesewood-block printing just using modern technology) and

samples old engravings and symbols, to suggest a newWorld Religion with pagan, Buddhist, lndian-Mexican andCatholic elements all mixed together with alchemical andmagick devices. The cover showcases a more sober,'Classical' labyrinth of Dedalus. Verily, this 'Contemporary

lmprovised HevT Psychdelic Group'ane a titanic combothat virtually demolishes any opposition in sight.

20

VariousArtists. NeaKonservafrYFrance, God Mountain Europe(Les Disques du Soleil et de

WHoppy Kamiyama sounds like onescary guy, a bona fide fin-de-siecletransvestite decadent leaping acrossthe stage dragged up to the armpits,before cracking your skull open withhis fiendish violin or keyboard liveperformances. He also oversees thisinsane record label God Mountain(Kamiyama translates roughly as GodMountain) in Tokyo, of which thisessential compilation is a Europeanrelease.The epicurean mix of musicalstyles herein further reinforces hisdecadent status - he's like the

The Sound Proieetor Third Issne

' . ' # ' - - : i ' i h

Huysmans character Des Esseintes,stimulating his jaded senses with hiscollection of exotic perfumes andunguents. lf you're seriously into

Japanese noise by this point, buttoday it so happens you're not in themood for the high art-seriousness ofthe PSF label, or the harshness of theMerzbow-Masonna e><treme noiseaxis, then whack on this samplei foranother slant on the riches of theOriental Underground from the earlyto mid-1990s. Sure. there's noise.madness and excess aplenty, but alsomelodies, songs and musical craft, aninterest in actually playing the guitar ina new way, exploring impossible timesignatures and weird dynamics.Altered States embody this approachto the max executing acrobatic feats

of musicianship yet never oncedegenerating into self-indulgent flashytechnique, and P.O,N, feature a 'Super

complicated and illogical sound thatseems to jump over the human'sability'. They more than live up to thatsleevenote boast! OpticalxS give usHoppy playing keyboards with thatexceptionally fi ne drummer MasafumiMinato and sampler virus king /guitarist Otomo Yoshihide, who's alsohere in an early-ish Ground-Zeroincarnation. a section from the CDNull and Void wirh several big nameguests- that band has evolved intoauto-destruct extinction so fast thiscut is almost like ancient history noqyet only recorded in 1993. HidekiKato's Bass Army - two bassists plusdrummer - take no prisoners with thehardcore 'Sneak Attack'. Plus there'sthe'barbaric, unstoppable' GodMountain house band, all heavy bassand drums with monster-movieparanoia in the panic attack synthsand breathless vocal. Other cuts herefeature the'Hoppy' genre-hoppingthat our Japanese friends do so well:I've quoted some of Hoppy'senthusiastic, pithy one-liners from thesleevenotes. 6-piece Tipographica arevery like a 1960s varispeededMothers of Invention cut from UncleMeal6ut played in real time -'unique

humourous music and is like ajointless body!' E-Trance come out ofthe NYC club scene, and boast acharacteristically eccentric KramerNoise New York production. EmiEleonola performs a'sensual eroticvoice improvisation' with Demi Semi

Quaver, evoking a weird inversion ofa Serge Gainsbourg sleazoid 45 rpmspecial. lchiro Tsuji 'combines shoutand noise'as Dissecting Table, and hisname and mid-80s origins confirm theNurse With Wound influence. Whilewd cant claim that every track's atimeless gem (Denis Gunn's 'Porky's

Out to Lunch' is a bit of a clinker) thiscomp is redolent with the humansweaty excitement generated by thatgreat paradox - making possible whatis impossible. In a way Hoppy Kachieves this himself, earning most ofhis money as a well-paid popproducer in Japan (eg for corporatemonsters Epic-Sony, the real'Konservativs') yet finding expressionin his extreme cross-dressingimprovising lifestyle and sinking oodlesof Yen into poor-selling avant-gardemusic projects like this. I'd suggestyou buy this CD and participate;forget Blair's New Labour, join the'Neu Konservativs'.

2i

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

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Friez e rnagazine Issue 3 6,September-October 199 7+ Three inch compact discBFFP143CD(p)

I just scared myself out my own skinby having the volume way too loudfor the opener of this 3" CD, a trulyterrifying{'lasonna aural assault. Alsohere are Merzbow and yet anothertrack from the Manchesterperformance of Otomo and Eye asMC Hellshit and DJ Carhouse (somealready out as BFFP l26CD and aResonance single.) Masonna's cw is'Ejaculation Generater 2 (remix andedit version)'and his violent shockattack makes Merzbow seemapproachable; Masonna plays forkeeps, he's after your blood and thevery marrow of your being. Dont lethim into your life! Friezeis a fine artsmagazine based in Denmark Street, solavishly produced you cant really tellthe articles from the adverts. Thathard-working Blast First paragon ofvirtue and Disobey co-host RussellHaswell compiled a brief survey of the

Japanese Noise' scene, secured somevery colourful photos and sleeve artreproes, and managed to get this CD

secured to the cover with cow gum,He situates the noise explosion withincertain perameters, which effectivelymeans the usual suspects from thehistory of recorded noise arerounded up. The appeal of noise,reckons Haswell, is due to 'a

fascination with the e><otic and theunexperienceable'. Edwin Pounceybought his copy at a cercain artbookshop in London; the proprietor(who knew about fine art butJapNoise was a bit out of his line)warned him, 'Dont bother playingthat free CD...it's rubbish!'

Yamada Chisato, FantasyJIorIdfapan, PSF, PSFD-73 (f996)

A total corker of a CD, bristling withtension and starl< minimalist beauty.Leaning more towards the ethnic

Japanese mode (if I may use sopatronizing a term) than theoverloaded electric noise atrocitiesmost of you purchasers demand fromthe Poor Strong FactorT, this oneshowcases acoustic and mosdy I thinktraditional Eastern instruments. Nooverdubs, no effects, just a sound

22

PUre as mountain water; theperformances are as hot as a dish ofsteaming noodles with raw chili. Turnit up as loud as you can to savour thefull impact of the bass drumbawoomph resonating in your heartcavity; I genuinely urge you to go forthis peak volume strategy, as it willalso enable you to pick up on thedelicate timbres in the quitermoments, the percussion instrumentsof various gauges, a xylophone /mqrimba device, bamboo flute,woodblocks...through ZenJikesimplicity, vast imaginary spaces aredelineated. The stringed instrumentplucking its monotonous way throughthe LP is, l'll wager, a koto orsamisen: as it's the star instrumentthroughout, it's probably YamadaChisato tuggrng those strings for allhe's worth. Virtually everfthing isprinted in Japanese here, so it's beenimpossible to draw out muchinformation, but Keiji Haino iscertainly a guest on the magnificentTsu.Ga.Ru' parts I and 2, pitting firsthis lungs, then an acoustic guitar, andfinally a percussion kit againstYamada's stringed workouts. Thesecuts document an electrifying

performance, avant undergroundsuperstar meeting demented ethnicgenius. Nothing else like it. l'm surethis music is so steeped in an alienculture that Westerners can only digabout 5% of it, if we're lucky; some ofthese passages are redolent with apalpable ancientness andunknowability. Nonetheless, by allmeans acquire a copy and learn whatyou can.

Bi Kyo Ran, Go-Unfapan Belle Antique BELLEggerr22tlFast-paced, heavy progressivejazz-tinged rock-pop tunes ahoy; BiKyo Ran are certainly not of theunderground caste, and show howthe Japanese interest in UKprogressive rock abides. lmmediateobvious influences have to be KingCrimson - they can't get enough ofthat Robert Fripp guitar sustain -

followed a close second by FrankZappa Gnnd Wazoo period, as thehorn charts here are as tightlyarranged as anything the OldMoustachioed Daughter himself couldhave scored. Then there's the trickytime-signatures, redolent ofshuddersome stuff like Camel orWeather Report. Nothing terriblychallenging then, but there'stremendous 6lan in the per-formancesand a very, very polished studiosound. A small army of musos madeit; they're a pretty ropey lookingbunch, dressing young and colour{ulbut with a world-weary glint in theireyes, I hope they're making lots ofmoney. The nucleus of the band is an8-piece conducted by Kunio Suma,and features many singers pluspercussion players, synths, guitars,piano, marimbas, and recorders. Myfavourite song is '2lst century Africa'which despite its syncopated funkybass riff lumbers along like an oldelephant, and reminds you of the timein the early 1980s when so manyEuropeans and Americans werejumping on some kinda African musicbandwagon; heaven knows what BiKyo Ran's lyrics have to say about theDark Contineng but it's gotta be animprovement on Paul Simon. 'Famous

Japanese symphonic rockers' says anofd ReR catalogue; Madoromi (BelleAntique BA 9466) includes KingCrimson cover versions...

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

MikamiKan, MotoYoshizawa, Haino Keiii,trive atElrst Year ofHeiselVolumeIJapan PSF, PSF-D 5, (199O)

Mikami Kan strums a semi-acousticguitar and delivers fragmented,stran6ely moving songs in his nativetongue, accompanied by MotoYoshiwaza on the double bass andKeiji Haino adding his amazing leadguitar backdrops. Just in case youwere exPecting an avant-gardeversion of Neil Young and CrazyHorse or something, I should pointout these 'songs' are barely containedby any melodies to catch hold of - infact everything meanders with brilliantunpredictability, making it closer to animprov record perhaps. Mikami leadseach piece, declaiming and spitting outhis lyrics rather than merely singingthem, and caressing many choppylicks and near-bluesy chord figuresfrom his guitar. In terms of eccentricdelivery he is only just topped here bythe great Keiji Haino, who tailors andtones down his familiar all-out guitarattack to add the most appropriateand interpretative effects to eachsong. The guitar sounds like sixdifferent instruments, and Keiji is inmasterful control of all his effectsthroughout- The live venue (anunknown guantit/ again) clearly isn'tof Wembley arena proportions,rather perhaps an in-house for the

knowledgeable elite of the Japaneseunderground, a Yery avant j^77

cabaret setting, In a way theperformance also comes over like awarped reverso-version of a folkytroubadour trio in a GreenwichVillage coffee house, wanting only astring bass and a rubboard tocomplete the effect. The 4th trackkicks in with a burst of astonishingand piquant harmonica playing;whoever's blowing that harp is agenius, he virtually reinvents theinstrument and avoids any pitfalls offamiliarity. And there may be evensome protest dimension to Mikami'slyrics for all we know. The mutedaudience sure seem appreciativejudging by their polite whoops whichpuncilate a particularly telling phrase.Mikami has a number of releases onthe PSF labef, among them l'm theonly one Around, The Great Man of

July, Dune 963 and Merchant in thePass. This is one of the earlier PSFreleases which I found at somerecord fair ludicrously cheap; dealersare baffled when all the typographyappears in non-Western script.Here's my trick - look on the righthand spine of the jewel case, andchances are you'll find the namesprinted in English. I notice iCs on theracks in Tower Records at time ofwriting.

2B

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

Merzbow, ScumfuonBlast First BFFPI3SCD (1997)

Mer:zbow, Music tor B ondage PerfortnanceAustralia, Extreme XCD OO8 (1991)

Masami Akita , The ProsperiQr of Vice,The Mlsfortane of Virtue : Elecfro-Maslc for RomandcaChe Records, IRE2O22 (1996)

A mere three examples of the power{ul and disturbing force that is Merzbow. Masami Akita is Merzbow, a mad Japanesesurrealist terrorist of noise and producer of an insanely extensive number of CDs, cassettes, and slabs of vinyl in allpossible formats released on an untraceable series of international record labels. Besides his solo projects, there are anynumber of spfit records, collaborations and otherwise shared works, Scumtron is a recent-ish domestic issue which isrecommended for those wishing to find some entry point to the man's work; it isn't stricdy speaking a Merzbow solotrip, but mostly 'remixes' of his records executed by world-wide luminaries in the turntabling or production fields, Thehuge and complex sound of Merzbow (a hideous noise to some listeners) is open enough to enable this remixing to be avery worthwhile exercise; most remixing to me is like a futile reshuffling of elements into a slightly differentconfiguration. Here, those Finnish digital noiseters Panasonic assert their minimal electronic presence on 'Elephant's

memor/ remix'with a steady pulse of mechanical throbs; occasionally these are wiped away by the tidal waves ofMerzbow noise, only to resurface with more potency. They filter his noise (raw, dircy, ugly) through their machines(precise, clean, austere). A true battle of the titans. Bernhard GUnter's effort is remarkable for its quietness, positioned atthe end of an intense and violent stream of noise CD, aking only fragments of amplifier hum samples to build up anobsessive chamber of doom at the bottom of the sea.

Russefl Haswell compiled Scumtron, and for his 'Micromdley' contribution edits together five separate Merzbow horrors(including 'Fireploof Enema l'); the effect of this quintuple excess we shall leave to your imagination. Autechre add aboring drum beat and wonlgy phat synth of their own to produce a weedy, dribbly, non€venl lf you want the real thinghere's two exclusive tracks by Merzbow, 'Eat beat eat' #s I and 2, recorded in an ltalian studio using'noise manipulation,various filters, and metal'. These tracks alone should satisfy even the most e;lr-numbed Metallica freak; they could also beused to put out forest fires.

Active since 1980, Merzbow has built up a tartantuan back catalogue to match Sun Ra, The Grateful Dead, Frank Zappaor even James Brown; it's enough to give anyone a headache. The very selective discography with Scumtron lists 24releases for 1996 alone. Most of them are probably quickly deleted or sold out, although it's often possible to findsecond-hand copies of recent CDs as nobody in their right mind keeps these anti-social monsters in the house for verylong. I found Music for Bondage Performance in this way; probably an 'oldie' by Merzbow's lOOmph release standards, itwas issued on the Australian label Extreme. The Extreme guys are also in the throes of assembling a 50-CD set ofMerzbow's early, cassette-only releases; sounds like another Farouk-sized issue along the lines of the John ZornlEye l@CD set. Music for Bondage Pet{ormance was made specifically to accompany performances and videos by Kinbiken, asmall circle of Japanese bondage enthusiasts; and Right Brain, a similar pack of gonks who preferred to take that specialistpursuit further with gas masks, rubber and hara-kiri. Bondage is one area of taboo activity that Masami is quiteknowledgeable about, but sometimes refuses to discuss it with non-initiates. The music here is quite unearthly, shotthrough with the bittersweet tastes of alienation, very beautiful and droney in places, although I feel sure it would takeon a quiqe different tincture if accompanied with the strange images it was designed for. lf your imagination fails you,simply turn to the video stills and drawings in the CD booklet.

I think Masami wants to align himself with the Dadaists and Surrealists; the name Merzbow is a variant of KurtSchwitters' Merzbau collages. The bondage thing above is one area of sexual liberation that Andre Breton would likelyhave approved; other hints are embedded in Merzbow titles like 'Steel Cum', 'Neo O6gasm', and 'History of Child Pornoin 70s Rock'. As Roger Cardinal puts ie The erotic content of Surrealism.,.is also the ocpression of something positive, ofthe Surrealist faith that through erotic experience, which is so vital a factor in men's lives, one may attain a clear vision ofa free and more meaningful world. Eroticism thus becomes a medium of higher understanding, synonymous with desire asthat which guarantees liberty.'A Pierre Molinier collage or Hans Bellmer drawing wouldn't go amiss as visual aids,although it's my guess Merzbow has by and large forsworn such imagery on his sleeves. A website quote: \ly'here for thegroups who may have influenced his first ventures into noise, like Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Volaire, Whitehouse, theassociation with taboo or shocking imagery was almost compulsory, with Merzbow the reliance on nothing other thanintensity of sound allows the listener the freedom to explore the sonic extremes he presents, without thepseudo-intellectual baggage of his forebears.'

Prosperity of Vce'likewise has an erotic component, being created for a theatre play based on stories by the Marquis deSade. Judging by the photos of this per{ormance reproduced inside the box here, I'm glad I stayed in that night. Theintense white-noise tape loops adequately suggest all the ritual pain being enacted by the performers (the RomanticaTheatre group). Recorded in 1996, this features a few more 'musical'elements such as an Et"lS synth and a Therernin;there are even major chords, and recognisable sound sources like voices played backwards or otherwise distorted intosome queasy emetic. On this record at least, these devices tend to leaven Merzbow's noise filterings, and Prosperityisthus likely to appeal to lovers of atmospheric and ambient music everywhere.

25

(Continued)

ryra,gica,l PorrrerIUfa,Ixo

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

Magical Power Mako, Maslc from EeavenChicago Atavistlc, AP97CD (19971

Magical Power Mako, BIae Dotfapan Belle Antlque, BELLE 9513f (f 995)

Blue Dot is insane continuous guitar and drum music, a world to lose yourself inside...you have never felt so completelydisoriented, it'll send your mind spinning up the Amazon to the darkest depths of the jungle with little hope of return.This power{ul hallucinogenic psychedelic trip marches anything that the best musicians of the original psychedelic periodcoufd hope for. The Grateful Dead managed something close to it on their second LP Anthem of The Sunthrougir acombination of ability, ineptitude knowledge, ignorance...and drugs. They made the studio do things that should not bedone. Similarly, Magical Power Mako uses the studio like an isolation chamber. There is an intensity of focus on theinherent properties of amplified electronic musical instruments, and more emphatically on studio effects, which are usedfor their own sake and not as some decorative enhancement device. The possibilities of reverb and echo are exploredand e><perimented with relendessly, setting up hypnotic trance mantras in sound. There is such single-mindedness herethat Mako becomes a Holy Man, like Robert Crumb's Mr Natural mediating oblMously through the ages while acivilisation springs up around him, then selfiestructs to the powerful vibration of his OM chant. MakJ here seemsalmost unconcerned with results; 'My Goal's Beyond' may well be a phrase he lives by, intent on the processes ofexploring the depths of inner space. There is even a form of personal exorcism involved, witness the last track 'UkawaMiming', a free-form vocal rant filled with images of corruption, worms, anal penetration, and Saanism; these chants ofcraziness are dribbled out in the hermetic echo chamber, like some ritual form of confessional box or primal therapyexercise. Mind you, this track is also fucking hilarious to listen to...Japanese...Penis...like,..worm!', he declares, the veryinverse of a Rap artiste braging about his 'penis dimension'.

Music From Heaven is nowhere nsr as intense as Blue Dot;if Blue Dotis a bad trip on STB this one is probbly morelike a weekend at home on ecstasy. Yet it offers the same singularity of vision, like a fortnight spent on retreat in amonastery with some nbean High Priest (The imagery on the sleeve art however is more of an Indian/ BuddhistnaturE. By the end of it you begin to share Mako,s world view, start to dream the same dreams. There's also the play'ulside of Mako here, the childlike side of him that reats all musical instruments like playthings; he has fun with speeded-uptapes on 'Bells and Guiars', soars upwards in the richness of multitracked psych epics, and-even allows himself theindulgence of a John Lennon demo pastiche. The fact drat this was 'RecordJ at his Private Studio' sugests that like BevisFrond he can afford the luxury of working on these sometimes inconsequential sketches; that said, nJoay else on earthsounds an)rthing like this.

l-4"k" 1t a bewirching and mysterious figure, not prone to'self-m)rthologising or even accruing unwanted mythology asKeiii Haino has done; he boasts of no 'concept' like Asahito Nanjo, no- op6 for the shockint malar*ey of boredJms. Heis an important figure in the Japanese underground scene, active since the early 1970s. He went his own way from thestart; there was a conscious decision to break away from the many bands who were at that time making derivativeversions of UK and EuroPean progressive rock, and Mako exiled himself to concentrate on acquiring skills with as manymusical instruments as he.could get his hands on. Byron Coley thought highly enough of Mako to relroduce a finepicture of him surrounded by stringed instruments, and plalng a sitar, on the Forced Expos./re Mail Order List #10 in1994. Magical Polrlerwas a 1973 LP recorded for Polydor in Japan, aided by friend Keiji Haino; a further 5 or 7 Lps forthe label followed. Original vinyl issues of these are probably what record collectors have delirious nightmares about,although the Mom'n Dad label in Japan has been hard at work bringing our CD reissues, including RvJCOs of MakoPrivate qpes (from 1972-75) issued as Harmonium Volumes l-V. As even these are limited, you h"r. to be pretty sharp ifyou ever see them. 'Curious collections of events, songp, styles...in the reaches of the off-the_map,, says the ReRcatalogue, where both these items can be purchased. Like I said...prepare to be disoriented.

Menbow(concluded)I am often surprised that a gentle and unassuming soul like myself finds any interest in Merzbods music. All thewaming signs tell me it should be a brualising experience for the listener, potentially damaging to mental health.I can imagine there are some listeners who welcome being brutalised, but not l. Masami,s declared aim is tofocus in on the most extreme parts of rock musiq feedback destruction of equipment, and noisq butdispensing with those dumb elements which gave it some apparent meaning to the mob (like silly song lyrics,melodies, rhythm) and proceed to wort only with the Violent, noisy, brutal, sick part of rock'. In hct there's atreat deal more to it" He deserves to be taken as seriously as any modern composer. That stuff about rockmusic is probably a bluff; he does not play like a strutting conceited rock musician, for live performances heuses a lump of metal with lots of wires, clunkyJooking homemade effects devices, and octreme amplificatjon. Ihave no idea how it is possible to 'play'a piece of metal, but he does it (probably just inducing feedlack). Hestands there calm and meditative in the midst of the raging storm. Despite all the apparent te-chnical limitationsof his palette, the records dont all sound the same; cloie-attention is ilways paid to dynamics and structure. ltis not unlistenable; it draws you in with a bizarre and compelling fascination. A live pe*ormance is somethingelse agaiu you have n9 co1trol over what happens. The Disobay 22nd June 1997 event in London (which Imissed) was a classic by. all accounts; one snigering informant told me of strangers snoging and paralysedonlookers; old Velvet Underground anecdotes, in fact, but it is clear peopte caribe affeJed-physically andpsychologically by the dangerous power of pure noise. Let's be careful ota there...

27

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

ShilmotlfailmffiBELOW are three important musicians whose wo* you should hear immediately, and as no decent musician

approves the term 'minimalist'(who can blame them!) itb safer by hr to say they have absolutely nothing incommon. So let me relate a ale. At An College we had to do this exercise where we were told to cotour alarge sheet of paper solid black in as nany different ways as possible - magic marker, india ink charcoal, 68pencil...then the tutor gathered the pages in and said, see how many different shades of black'you've allcreated! Well it may not have aught me much about dnwing, but it did kinda help in listening to 'minimal'

music - thereb much more ta a'monotone'than you think.

Phill NiblockA New York composer, whose A Young Persons Guide to Phill Niblock is a double CD sampler on Blast First, BFFP102 CD (1995). Interestingly, the performances oritinate from acoustic insruments - for example trombones orsaxophones, but multi-tracked beyond all reason and amplified mightily. Volume is the key! The louder you play it thebetter it is. Unvarying notes generating fields of almost physical energ/. The aural equivalent of a huge abstractexpressionist colour field painting. Although each piece starts off identifiable (eg as played by trombones), after the firstten minutes the overtones are winning and something massive is resonating inside your inner core. Horrifyingly effectiveexperiments. Undoubtedly, hst listened to in the confines of a New York loft apartmenE the only urban spaceenvironment large enough to contain the massiveness of these acoustic blocks.

Charlemagne PalestineStrumming l'lusic New Tone NT 6742 2 ( 1995) is a 40+ minutes recording of a piano solo. Like La MonteYoung Palestine opts for the luxury of the full size Bosendorfer grand, and again like Young he explores theinner-space worlds of harmonics created by resonating strings. Palestjne however opts to do it by using twonotes only, which are single-mindedly repeated as a bouncing strum figure for the better generation of theseharmonics, The sustain pedal is depressd throughout And yes it's all true - you can hear all manner ofcomplex sounds, notes and rhythms that aren't'really'there, arising in a ghostly presence.,,as Palestine puts it,'comple>< mixtures of pure strummed sonority and their overtones'. Palestine is an extremely complexpersonality with his own unique and personal history for wlry his music has become what it has, linked tochildhood experiences of singing long drones in the synagogue and playing church bells using the carillon. Hismusic is e><tremely physical: you need strong arms and an iron constitution to perform Strumming Music.When you're dealing with the sheer intensity of his trance piano works, you have to tace facts and realise thathe's the only man in the world who could dare to play it. Only Cecil Taylor comes close in rerms of pureenergy and marathon endurance sessions at the old 88. Elsewhere I have tried to describe the kinship of oneman with his keyboard to be found in the intense work of Mike Ratledge and Sun Ra. With Charlemagne thereseems to be even more at stake, a real matter of life or death - you receive this quite frightening image of aman fusing with the workings of the piano, flesh and wires weaving together, like some David Cronenburg /Rob Boaing cinematic monstrosity. Dont forget to look out for Four Manifesations On Six Elements, BarooniBAR 014, which is quite another trip; 1973 art gallery commissions for the Sonnabend Gallery New Yorhthese are both electronic and piano pieces.

YoshiWadaI know of only wo vinyl issues, and good luck finding them citizen! Lament for the Rise and fall of the ElephantineCrocodile (lndia Navigation Company lN 3025, 1982) rewards the listener with a series of awe-inspiring vocal chants,a sideJong marathon for your ears that comes close to delivering the power of a shamanistic trip. In fact Yoshi himselfdescribes something approaching a hallucinogenic state as he stood there wailing his baritone drones against the tiled wallof an empty swimming pool for hours. Just the thought of a man doing this keeps me awake at nights - it seems to knockextreme performance art into a cocked hat, with the possible exception of Stuart Brisley. Good Heavens, can youimagine the vibrations set up in your inner ear and the chambers of the human body through performing this act ofchanting? lt's a wonder he didnt fly away like a helium balloon. lf you dare to play this monster at home alone in thedarh I would recommend strapping yourself to the armchair first,

He also produced a bagpiping masterpiece cr;lld Off The Wall (Berlin, Free Music Production SAJ 49, 1985), whichsimilarly celebrates and emphasises the bouncing of sound off a solid force - the physical nature of sound reverberatingin a sPecialised environmenc And let me say folks, it's an experience that transfers to vinyl pretty damn effectively -crank up the volume to the nine o'clock position and you'll find out what I mean. He built these unbelievable huge.bellows which you pump with your feet to play the pipes, whose dimensions were more on the order of organ pipesthan regular chanters, You wouldnt want to meet tJre Scottish chiefain who could actually lift such an instrument. Thisrecord is not as frighteningas Crocodile in fact I find it quite soothing but the uninitiated should prepare for the fullforce of a massed angry wasp artack.

29

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

3r l \ l / t . \ t

...An Ambient Sloshy Quagmire.,.Hosta these CDs have all been grouped together in the following notes, as to begin with I couldnt tell them apart.Centreless, abstnct drones. This Ambient music is all melding into one at the moment...tty me againlater and see how I feel Etectronica these days is just too easy for the performers; not to say the machines doeverything now, but they seem to do an awful lot of it. You just get so sick of all these textures' - textures are forinterior designerc, tistening to music shouldn't be like flipping through a book of hbic samples. A clutch of CDslike this is to me like a Siamese twin on a gnnd scale - say about thirty-six individual human beings, all fusing intoone grotesgue monstrous body. I dont know if this is a process aking place in the womb or on the opentingable. lf the former, perhaps humans are now becoming like amoebas and splitting cells to form weird new genes,thus the warping of flesh into something resembling a Chapmanworld sculpture. lf the latten no [ess hideous, but aVctorian sewing-together of body parts like Fnnkenstein's monster; but the work was farmed out to a team ofurchins labouring in a grim hctory with soot-caked walls.

Musician James Plotkin has infilrated this Crackling Ether barch in a big way. He is an avant-garde guiurmanipulator with his star in the ascendant if you believe all the press cuttings, who churns out hiseffects-heavy drones very often resembling some latterday Robert Fripp. He's been associaded with JohnZorn, Japanese arch-fiend KK Null, Michael Gira, Justin Broadrick (of Techno Animal); and frequently withMick Harris who used to be the drummer in Napalm Death but later became one half of Scorn. Plotkinrequires an arsenal of effects before he can even get of bed in the moming; the Korg A2 multi-effector, theDeltalab 8-second delay and the EMG loaded Steinberger are all humming merrily away before his breakfasttoast is done, and he spreads his marmalade with a E-bow. Naturally, the actual sound of the guiar iscompletely transformed and rendered unrecognisable by the time it reaches us poor souls, like perhaps thedying light from a super-nova hundreds of thousands of years ago. Not that this is a bad thing at all, even ifthe rise of the Midi-unit has spread a certain saminess r:lrrough the recorded music landscape of the 1990s.When I was l7 the height of wild and crazy guiar outrage to me was Jimmy Page's electronic experimentsdocumented in the film The Song Remains the &me. Whatever device he used it's doubtless rqarded asprimitive and ' steam-driven'these days, yet it transformed side two of that ghastly soundtrack album ('Dazedand Confused') into a virtual avantgarde guitar noise that Keith Rowe wouldnt have been ashamed of!

t ft \ t

,1

t0Trrnu0Ax

ot{r{IIrtI00TF(

r0. tt r )

30'

tq , c11 1 )

fames Plotkin, The foy otDlseaselapan AVANT AvAli O28 (1996)

Pretry damn occellenc..Plotkindemonstrates to the satisfaction of allparties that he is the supreme masterof his effects and studio, and tums intrack after track of very convincingand entertaining ditties, showcasinghis guitar noise. Razor sharpproduction values you'd somehowassociate with a product of thisquality, a bright and shiny surface (asopposed to the ambient murkiness ofother CDs that we must wadethrough below). Everything isbolstered up with drum machine anddrum loops and that big guitar soundis opened up wide, like a Montanaskyline. One thing that helps is hisvery attractive melodies, quite simpleguiar solos that actually never sfiiryoutside of a very limited modal range;they're given added authority by theeffects. But I'm sure you'd rather

The Sound Proieetor Third Issne

the torch from the first LP by M (youremember. 'New York London ParisMunich, everybody talking'bout...PopMusic!). One track even features avoice vocoder, use of which in thiscontext verges on Buggles teritoryfor me. Heaven knows I'd be divertedenough if something as well-crafted asthis actually appeared on Top of thePops instead of some teenagedninnies bopping about to theirmechanical sequencer, but that'sprobably not going to happen. Collins,speak-singing her ill-fiming vocalinterpolations, reminds me of DanielleDax's'Hamsprachtmusik' on the firstLeague of Gendemen LP from l98l(yet another Robert Fripp connection,amazingly), although Collins soundsannoyingly prim and pleased with herabsurdist observations. which are infact simply pretentious guff. MickHarris co-produced, again in the lavishsplendour of his Birmingham-based'Black Box' house of tricks.

guys who are starting to look veryhumourless to me,'Collision', with itsCyberman voice effect, is one stepaway from being a Dr Who soundeffects record. This CD exerts acertain presence now and again, butyou have to be prepared to listen intoto for it to weave its cunning spell;given that these 5 tracks are all whatused to be considered 'LP-track'

length, I suggest you bring a packedlunch or you too will 'Collapse'.

Tacdle, InscapeFrance Sentrax S|.{TX 3OO3CD!1229)Intellectually at least, Inscape join the

dots between Lucifer, Panand TheWind in the Willows (ie The Piper atthe Gates of Dawn; yes, Syd Barrettalso spotted it); they photographpaganJooking reindeer horns on theirsleeve; they thank'the goat-footedballoon man', and they namecheck

Coil whose members Ilisten to this than say,some fusion showoffcramming a billion notesinside an impossibly cleverchord sequence. lt cantreally be claimed that anyof these tunes reallydevelop very much, but atleast they never outstaytheir welcome for theminutes that they inhabitthis earth. Some of 'em,

like'Euphoria Passing', areactual ly al most evocativein a clinical kinda way.Plotkin is aided here byFranz Trqichler's'ominousguitar loop', Ruth Collinswho did some annoyingbreathy vocalising andpretty pictures, and oldbuddy Mick Harris whoalso co-produced.

believe have some passinginterest in Satanism. Tactileare an 'Unholy Three' ofperformers, who want tofrighten us with their sinistermusical atmospheres, Isuspecl'hnoleptic' at leastin name would aspire tocross the alarming sensationsof a panic attack with aGrand Mal epileptic fit, but allthis track delivers is a reallylimp choppy helicopterrhythm like some bloodyPink Floyd rack played at 16rpm.'Caged Light' is alllowest note on the organ andsinister strange insectsdashing from speaker tospeaker. Play it loudish andyou might frighten some tenyear-olds at a Halloweenparty. Otherwise you canprobably live without this

Elttx, ProtoplasmlcPennsylvania, Release RR69sr-2 (o99nThis is El Plotkino again, credited with'music, instrumentation and voice'while Ruth Collins adds yet more ofher lyrical contributions. Musically thisis only about as good as a B-side toThe/oy of Disase nowhere near assatisfring; layered guitars actuallysounding like guitars, very poppydrum beats and danceable timesignatures. ln a way he's trying tocreate some kind of heavyprogressive pop record, picking up

James Plothn and MickEarris, CollapseNew York, Asphodel O963(1ee6)

Compared with the above two, thisone is a simpler proposition in thatyou dont have to put up with anystupid lyrics, drum beats or poptunes. Instead, your resistance isground down by heavily abstraccidentikit featureless Ambient drones.Created 'through use of loopedguitar, natural and unnatural sound,processing'by these two wearisome

all-process and few-ideas moshfesc

Tactfle, RecanenceandIntervendonNew York, RawkusEntertainment / Sentrax. RWK

lllglModerately more engaging than theabove as this features a bunch ofguest artists remixing Tactile's rawmaterials. Some of them actuallysucceed far better in suggesting theworrisome atmospheres that Tactileare trying for, alluding in sound to

3l

Lucifer's armies on the march in theircampaign to overthrow man's domain.This martial aspect is furthersuggested by the combative nature ofthe credits: Coil VS Tactile, Scorn VSTactile, erc...each remixer is pirchedinto an antagonistic strugele with theirmentors. Coil play the devil's ownhurdy-gurdy, while James Plotkinplucks the dark lord's stolen celestialharp. Zoviet France hint at the criesof a choir of fallen antels, thenunleash a division of demons in theshape of crawling black insects. Scornfind Satan plalng a backwards churchorgan in the disco. Solaris and Eyelessin Gaza also add in boring drumbeats,to not much effect. Blood From TheSoul close the record and manage totease out some 'screams of themassed damned'from the electroniccobwebs. l'm not an experq but isntthis 'unsettling drones with magickeffects'the sort of thing that certainCurrent 93 and other United Dairiesreleases were aiming at in the l9&)s?Again, play it loud for maximumeffect...any effxt-

Solarus, EmplyNatarePennsylvania, Releas€ RR6965-2 (19971

Solarus are breaking away from thegene pool with their drum machinesand near-melodies to produce aspecies of moderne pop music forairbrushed-robots in a souped-upMetropolis landscape; the sort ofnightmare Duran Duran were hintingat, in shorL Sadly they already sounda bit dated with the rather obviousdefault Hldi-sounds, and especially thecliched use of voice samples; theseare supposed to inject narrag'vetension (references to workingsweating and dying) and lead thelistener to hope for some son ofresolution in the plodding chordsequence, but nothing actuallyhappens. Solarus is Kipp Johnson withhelp from Bill Yurkiewia. Theubiquitous James Plotkin, who seemsto be doging my life so much,contributes guitar.

Various, Narcosis: A DarkAmhientCompllafronNovateklr/Credo NTD 9$fi2-241199?)Give your brain the day off and justget lost inside this one for a while.You'll be glad you did. This budget-ishDouble CD costs less than the priceof an ecstasy trip (l d imagine) and

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

delivers the same numbing resultswithout after effects. No trackdescription this time fact hns: it hasnot been possible after even threelistens to really distinguish any onepiece from the next; tJrey're all equallyslow moving weighdess astronautslost in spaca mounains getting up tostretch themselves and setding downagain, proceeding at the same rate asthree day-old porridge being poureddown the sink...and all egually pleasantin a way that one wonders o<acdywhat constitutes'Dark' Ambient?Well, there's one piece here towardsthe end of Disc Two which cuts in avoice sample yawping our'God isDead! Saan Lives!', which is prettyfucking dark all r€hL and for amoment might return us to theTactile threesome and their invidiousdevilry; but I cant find much to theactual content of the music thateither affirms or denies God, orSatan, one way or the other.Content-free, noncommittal ;near-music for people who are fed upwith trying to use their ears, This is asgood a compilation as you couldmanage given the state of the worldtoday; put together by Neil Gardner,it's mainly harvested from previouslyreleased albums; but contains twounreleased tracks, I recognise none ofthe artistes, apart from Coil andHilmar Orn Hilmarsson, whose verygod Children of Nature LP is a nicetasteful and atmospheric lilmsoundtrack. lf you remember mewittering on about the 'virtual womb'imagery aff over lsolationism last ish,it's revealing to ga:ze into the frontcover of Narcosr photograph. Amouthful of nails? A beech nut?

((tGfinre ;1r{olrpE3raintlreDa;r off>>

Driftworls 4x CD setBig Cat Records, ABBfOOO(ree7lCompiled by Kevin Martin, this setmight just glve you a positive pictureof the sate of Ambient andexperimental music today, Fourpremiumnuality artists have beenchosen for this milleniumdome styledissue, each demonstrating a differentaspect of what it is possible toachieve musically with volume,intensity, slow-moving development,and the luxury of a solo CD to do itin. Top of the range is Nijiumu, one of

Keiji Haino's quieter musical hats, andfor sheer pathos this live recordingworth your entry money by itself; tocall this slice of sheer emotiontear-inducing is not enough. You willweep! No faulting thepremiumnuality tont work ofThomas K6ner's Nuuk nor PaulineOliveros with Randy Raine-Reusch (/nthe Shadow of the Phoeni$ playingsome beautiful long accordian tonesto match Gordon Mumma. PaulSchUce's Satr'lr.ss is busier tfian theother three contributions, although Istill remain to be convinced by themusic of this Australian composerliving in the UK - there are facilequalities which make it hard to trust.The music wins hands down over adeal of the other Ambient releases tohave reached us. but there remainsome niggling difficulties. The ackysleeve art - or'image poetry', as oneBuggy G Riphead wishes it to beknown - seems to have been sampledfrom an in-flight British Airways6atezine; you're almost being invitedon a Led Zeppelin styled private jeCwith air hostesses in skimpy uniformssimpering'l'm Electro...Fly Me!'Secondly, the inevieble problem ofchoosing four artists who don't reallyhave a great deal to do with eachother. lt's almost as though they'rebeing used to illustrate a point aboutmodern electronic music, rather thanbeing granted the space to speak forthemselves. That point is underscoredby Biba Kopfs elaborate sleevenote,which articulates every thought youcould have had yourself on the music

fiust sit back and let the e><perts akeover). Weirdly, lsolationism (whichKevin Plartjn also compiled, with farmore interpretative sleeve notes)didnt have this stumbling block atall...perhaps having more artistshelped increase the chaotic feel. Butthis isnt really important. The realiq/of a 4-CD set is that you never listento it in one sitting. Rather eachaudition digests a handy slice and forthat tjme, you not only forget theother 'Driftworkers', you also forgetabout the other trivial problemsweighing down your shoulders. Verily,this is highly seductive virtual spacesurround- sound, as near anequivalent as youll get to thatglorious death they give you in thedystopian SciFi movie Solyent Green -a slow-acting poison winds down yourbodily system, while romantic musicplays over heartbreakingTechnicolour visions of the naturalworld we have completely despoiled.

t2

ThomasKiiner, Teimo/PermaFtostMille Plateaux MP CD 35

New depths (or heights) in electronicminimalism. Despite the fact thereseems to be so little actually going onhere, Koner's music asserts anincredible presence. A disembodiedseries of monotones seep out ofyourspeakers like poison gas...'movingfurther and further away from theoriginal source of the recordings', asthe These Records catalogue puts it.After 15 minutes you feel like there'sa g@ntic invisible monster in theroom, rattling the windows and looseobjects. The weight of his bulkpresses on your chest until you cantbreathe. An army of Poltergeists. Iwould be glad to meet somebodywho can treat this as backgroundmusic, as | find it so utterly compellingit simply paralyses me.

This mysterious sound is in factoriginated from brushed gongs,amplified to a quite disproportionatelevel. A microscopic sound eventbecomes the raw material Koner willuse and subject to his careful and

The Sonnd Proieetor Third Issne

extended treatments. Stockhausenexperimented with pretty much thesame technique for Mikrophonie I fortam-tam and six players, in 1964.Stockhausen insisted on tam-tam asthe correct name for a gong, aninstrument whose sound heassociates with a lion's roar becausehe has somehow conflated twoHollywood movie openings (J ArthurRank's gong and the MGM lion). Oneplayer vibrates the gon& the secondmoves a microphone in accordancewith the score, while the third playsthe potentiometer and filters. In al97l lecture Stockhausen said 'l tellmy own students, if you want tobecome famous just take a magnifyingglass and put it to one of my scores,and what you see there, just multiplythat for five years.' Looks like Konertook that suggestion to heart...

Where Charles Hayward keepsreturning to his 'water'theme,

K6ner's lifelong interest is in thesnow and ice, A few years ago therewas that rumour that CDs soundedbetter at temperatures close to zero,and now look what happens -

somebody has to put it into practice!

He had one track on lsolationism.Teimoand PermaFrostwere at onetime available as separate CDs on theDutch Barooni label in l99l and1993, and yet here they are now inone handy double-pack courtesy ofMille Plateaux the label dedicated tobringing you Experimental Techno atany cost. Cheaper and more effectivethan buying a new fridge freezer. lsn'tthe consumer age great?

ryECAY

FRANCISCO LOPEZ PANACEA VS. ADVAII IGED ACADEIIY PUT PUTEDVARD GRAHAM TEWIS HEGKER AER ANTON NIKKILA

SHIRT TRAX FENNESZ NOTO

ASH INTERNATIONAL * 3.9

Ash Intematlonal 13 Osward Road London SW|T 7SSlell+44 (o)t8t 767 2368 Fex.+44 (Ox8t 682 34t4

E-mail: Web slte: http:,//wwwtouch.demon.co,uk/

Dlstribution etc.: UK - Kudoi r pinnacle/Therc Eu.ope . TargetAmcrlca - Outch East India Tradlng lapan - Dlgltal ilarcls Ltd

THE FINAI NAIL IN THE COFFIN ,hings can only get worse

ss

The Sound Proiector Third lcsue

Silokingdopg'my

. r 1 . r " 6 { I '

llleillsoiBGffi

Cypress E,ilI, Black SandayColumbia +74075 2 (19931

Cylrress Eill nI, Temples otBoomColumbia 478127 2 (1995)

The marijuana experience can be yours even withoutbulng a slab of hash under The Westway. The slowedtempo on every other track just presses you into a ball ofmush and spreads you neatly over the pillows .To listen isto reach that mellow high that only the weed can offer.Not that I would know anphing about iq personally myrecreational drug of choice is a fine botde of 12% rdwine, or 3.4 pints of Stella Artois. l've never understoodwhy advocates of the humble hemp can turn into crusadingenangelists for the stuff - Charles Bukowski has said thesame in a short story bewildered by two young upstarthippies who seemed to think they'd invented the conceptof getting high. Actually I always liked the way the ja:"2community in the USA - ever since the 1920s I guess -

evolved a whole series of slang words for their preferredmodes of brain-vacation stimulants. This was simply so 'the

man' (meaning Whiteys) wouldnt catch wise; by the time

four izzz guys were playing regular giSs at venues, to havebeen car.rght with that needle dangling from your arm orthat reefer slipping from your lips would have meantinstant dismissal. Hence that whole code-word thingbecomes a means of survival. lt's only us decadent whiteyswho find it at all glamourous!

The secretive tradition continues with Cypress Hill,evolved by this band into an elaborate sign-systemexpressed through sleeve art, rhymes and texts. The monkascending the staircase on cover of Temples of Boomtellsus that to smoke dope is to join a Holy Order, abrotherhood replete with a liturgical language thatoutsiders cannot dig. The postage stamps and currencywithin the sleeve art have been doctored to encodecertain hofy symbols, including the sacred skull. BlackSunday comes eguipped with a stream of printed 'facts'

about hemp and cannabis plants which the Governmentdont want you to know (as if), and these are resatedverbally on one track but in contrast toanarcho-syndicalist punk band Crass, who stuffed their LPboxes with humourless anarchist propaganda, Cypress Hillseem to achieve something far more subversive thanmerely advocating the consumption of vast amounts ofmary jane,

g4

The Sound Proieetor Thint Issue

Cypress Hill knock me dead with the apparent easewith which they make records.'Hits from the Bong'offers echoed, whispering vocals just on the cusp ofperception, like ghosts of smoke dancing over ahookah; while Temples of Boomthroughout is spikedwith snatches of Indian and European classical music,plus chants of Buddhist monks from HamkaimeaTemple, scattered between songs to nightmarish effect.Strip the sound apart and you find something like atooled-up custom hot rod - a perfect mechanical drumbeat, a dumber-than-dumb bass sequencer riff, andborrowed segments of old records scratched in todevastating effect. One of my favourites is the use ofthe harmonica riff from "The Wizard' by Black Sabbath -ifyou call your LP Black Sundayl guess you just have tosample that band! (This being the 1990s, each samplemust be credited by law - no fun at all eh!). Over thisframework a trio of Hanna-Barbera cartoony voices -

Chooch and Benny the Ball from Top Cat - exude their ,laid-back nasal whines and exhortations, or spit outvenomous street chants with outrageous internalrhymes. The sheer ingenuity of assembling it takes youback to (eg) the first Residents record, resorting rousing old records simply because there was no otherpractlcal way to do it, thus setting a templare of sortsfor a whole generation of artistes who no longer feelthe need to be a musician, but still want to make arecord, ln case you havent guessed I'm all for it,

Cypress Hill are a trio: ltalian New Yorker LarryMuggerud aka DJ Muggs; Cuban Mexican Louis Freezeaka B-Real; and Cuban Senen Ryes aka Sen Dog. Allthree met in their'hood' in south-eastern Los Angelesand took their name from a local street, CypressAvenue. Muggs is the producer and one assumes thedriving talent behind the project; he has also lent hisskills to House of Pain (in spite of declaring 'House ofPain aint down with us!'on one track). Where ElackSundey is mostly samples razor-bladed together with deftskill, Temples of Boqn uses live musicians.

Some records in the Hard-core Gangsta rap genre can giveus a steady stream of abusive language about murder,mayhem and misogyny, These elements are not absentfrom thei'Cypress Hill universe. Throughout 'lnsane in theBrain'the singer declaims he feels like Son of Sam anddraws you into a vortex of irrational heat, encouraged bythe nursery rhyme answerJines of his cohorts; joyousrioting is only one step away. lt's so comic-stripoverstated, exhibiting the braggadocio and insistence onform you associate with a graffiti artisr, that you cant takeit too seriously. These guys are no dummies. Cypress Hillare enormous sellers in the USA (due largely to Collegestations'airplay), and sell largely it seems to white collegekids; perhaps these listeners derive some comfortingexcitement observing the antics of 'dangerous niggas'froma safe vantage point. What it all means to a Londondwelling suburbanite like myself is anybody's guess. Twotracks even wound up on prime-time TV, during a segmenrof Chris Carter's Millenniumto convey some notion ofunknown evil..fudgement Nighe a rap movie I knownothing of, also features Cypress Hill on the soundtrackbleating out 'l love you Mary-Jane'. But then, 'l wanna gethigh' is the first song you hear on the movie AddictionbyAbel Ferrarra, which is what persuaded me to buy theseCDs in the first place. Now that film really is disturbing!

DrOctagon, EcologystMo Wax, NMO{6CD (1996)

Uaerly fucking bizarre. Plenty to enloy here in the veryclean and minimal but enormous sound - drum machine.bass sequencer and very witty scratches and samples, plusa seamless torrent of verbal raptitude. The rhythm tracksare kinda leisurely, and yet laced with an undercurrent ofmenace; Kool Keith MC assumes the fictional persona ofDr Octagon, he knows he can take his time with you as healternatively seduces you or regales you with his collectionof hard core porn videos. There's also a very waywardsense of humour here: the whole CD is themed as anightmare trip through a fiendish hospital where virtuallyanything can happen. Through raps and samples from aliensources, there's always that element of mayhem suggested;behind one door there may be fiendish vivisectionexperiments, behind another some alien mutations tobreed new.monsters to infiltrate society; elsewhere a mandisguised as a female nurse is gleefully penetrating someunsuspecting patient. Snapshot impressions of deformedgenitalia and redesigned breeding equipmeng a biologicalhorror show to equal anything from the pages of WilliamBurroughs. 'Earth people" I come from Jupiter', DrOctagon informs us on one rap, taking a leaf from Sun Ra'sbook but also implying (in rue X-Files fashion) the alienconspiracy theory behind this gene-splicing terror. Thetracks 'Elective SurgerT'and 'A Msit to the Gynechologist'will fuel your fear of hospitals to the point where you'll

35

The Sound Froieelor Third Issue

never go near St Thomas'again, compounded by the grislycover image of a severed hand (a plaster model used bysurgeons). Wait for the coda, a hidden track where MrGerbick app€arsr a creature with the 'body of a shark, andthe arms and face of a man', a glimpse of what the newworld's mutatd population will be like. Kool Keith hasbeen a veteran of the Hip Hop scene for many years andhis is the voice you'll hear rapping start to finish on thisdisc, supplying much of the identity of the mysterious 'Dr

Octagon'. DJ Q-Ben mans the turnhbles; DJ Shadowissues Transmissions'. Licensed from Bulk Records.

NecrolrcIis, The Dialog:ic ProJectDJ SpoolryThat Subliminal KidNew York, Knitting Factory Works KFW f 85

999:lSubtitled 'A Compilation of NYC Experimental Trip-HopAmbient Dub and Junge': at time of release this 'Dialogic'

CD represented a newvirus in the turntableempires and introducedthe concept of lLLbient, aYery arty New Yorkapproach to tape samplesand editing embodied bySpo"$ who, besidesconducting theseexperiments with sounds,is also a visual artist, hadhis own radio show atCollege, and runs anightclub. The guidingforces to his projectsounded familiar: aresponse to 20th centuryurban decay, the idea thatthe artist is an invisiblespirit at loose in the city,leaving only mysterioustraces to be uncoded bya chosen few Spray-cangrafliti isbne clue; toSp""ky that art form ismore than just idle kidsmaking a mess of derelict

ProPerty, ics a concertedattempt by a clandestinearmy to change the city'sface, and thus presumablybegin to alter itsconciousness. Theparallels with New Yorkpainter Basquiat are fairlyclear...among his earlymanifestations in that citywere the SAMO graffiti,which unpacked means 'Another Day, Same Old Shit'. lt'sencouraging people have so much faith in graffiti, but tome it's rather a closed-off art; its insistence on rules andform undercuts much chance for real expression.

This record is ludicrously dense and almost makes mephysically ill to listen to it - that's not intended as aputdown, but I'm choking on the traffic fumes minglingwith the clotted atmosphere of an Amazonian jungle after

the rains. The preliminaries take forever before segueinginto something with a backbeat, which when it finallyappears is surprisingly puny, like a scaffolding made ofrubber bars - it couldnt support a plate of Jell-O. Eachatmospheric moment promises much, delivers little. ltreminds you of the way TV video graphics nowadays canbe overlaid into impenetrable patterns of dense colours,shapes and moving objects. Spooky samples old distressedrecords with lots of hiss and crackle to have a sense oftimelessness'. A Necropolis is of course a Palace of thedead, and the aural landscape does seem very Apocalyptic,delineating a ciry which expanded beyond chaos intocomplete inertia, seized up, all trappings of civilisation(cars, buildings, communication links) reduced to utterwreckage. This in spite of the more optimisticcyberpunk-ish hints in the liner notes: the groups in thisproject are true underground pioneers. Taking theirmythologies from the future, they are reality hackers.Tricksters at the end of time, they sing the body electric...'

Spooky, real name PaulD Miller. studiedPhilosophy and FrenchLiterature to degreelevel. A knowledgeablehistorian and culturaltheorist, his DJ-ing is an'extension' of his writingreflecting among otherthings the collapse ofrational thought in the2(hh century. InBrooklyn he staged theLolandh happenings withvarious art-schoolcronies, building largephysical mazes out of'urban detritus'thatwould bewilder thevisitor. which confusionwas enhanced by thepresence of six DJsplaying simultaneouslythroughout thiswaynard environment;you'd escape theMetallica heavy metalonly to run into a wall of

Jungle music. Niceclashes of cultures andmusics...on the otherhand, if all yourneighbours have massivestereo systems I'dimagine that's what it'slike to live in a NqwYork tenement buildinganyway!

NOT A GOOD start Anl<st Records,being from the land of the RedDngon, are just so dogone hip thattheir cassettes ay khaw! Dontfence me in, Daddioi to those ntherpnctical little plastic abs that projectfrom the inside of ape cases,preventing the spools from unwindingthemselves willy-nilly. As a result theEctogram cassette, having unwounddnmatically within its own shell, triedto fuck with my ape player,reckoning very much without themighty force of its capsan wheel andpinch roller. Perhaps, if the moodtakes ma I shall uy again later. Butfirct if I might panphnse AnhurBrown, whose Cnzy World achievedfleeting popularity a number of moonsago...l AM THE GOD OF HELLFIREAND I GIVE YOU...

Labrador, WhyareyoatraaghingMatching Head C3O cassette-This has an offputting ambience aboutiq the cover, the titles. In its mild andwacky nonchalance, it seems deeplyCanadian (and waxing xenophobic fora momenq Canucks really are a bunchof charlids, arent they?) Themulticellular bipeds responsible forthis are actually from Tyne and Wear.The music isn't too bad at all, happily.The sound quality is good, despite theausterity of the instrumentation.Cheap sampler (a Casio SKl, unlessI'm mistaken), enthusiastically wangedguitar, things being banged, andsomething being sawn in half are all tobe found in Labrador's musical biscuitbarrel, and the overall effect isenjoyable. lt's intuitively srructured, Isuspecq so sits happily apart fromextremes of contrivance orcacophony. One track'Dreams AfterCoffee' is really rather listenable,featuring a scratchy and ethereal (in a1920s film kind of way) looped sampleand rumbling bass which went viaspeaker floor and sofa straight to mylentleman's area' - which wassurprising.

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

I had prepared a few snide words forthis review involving your archetypaltoddler's drawing of a sad hce, whoseexaggerated crescent leaves theviewer in no doubt as to the subject'sunrelenting misery. This hypotheticalcountenance could be a portrayal ofmy own as I listened to this tape itstitle making an inappropriate enquiryas to the nature of my mirth. I shallsave my razor sharp ribaldry for someother work,..

Matching Head, 12 Coanwood Way,Sunnyside, Tyne and Wan NEl6

WiIWeb, IlikeftGrtslyLodeRunner, TheBabhleSortRaclng Room Tapes, C6Ocasseffe (f996)-

A split tape of quite dissimilar artists.I'd suspect that Wil Web hadcomposed the entirety of hiscontribution on some new-fangledcomputer (and as Frank Sidebotromonce pointed out, a computer is afterall just a television and a typewriterwith some wires), were it not for theodd snatch of guitar, and thatgiveaway of giveaways - a Casio SK Ion the brass ensemble setting. MrsWeb's pride and joy obviously has anear for composition, and is the authorof some corking tunes. Unfortunately,it may all be a bit roo nice. After a

while, one begins to long for the dayswhen all cassetces had titles likeAllotropik Genocide Funktion orHitler? Great Bloke!. Tapes somonikered netated any need for oneto actually listen to them because,well...five men shouting whilst mowingthe lawn. Enjoyl- Wil's tunes woulddo any milkman proud, but like richfood and the 'solitary vice', are bestenjoyed in moderation. I Like it Grislygets a little samey in places, and ismore like a work in progress thansomeone's finest half hour. However,it cerainly isnt without its

moments...he should do filmsoundtracks, he'd be good atthat.

The Lode Runner side equallysuffers from a certainhomogeneity, a lack of finish.But every cloud, as they say(exhibiting a shamefulignorance of even the mostbasic meteorological facts), hasa silver lining. The music ispleasandy descriptiondef in6reminding one alternately ofCluster, Nurse With Woundand Rainbow - specifically the'Curly and Straight'films whichbisected the e><ploits ofGeorge, Bungle and Zippy(rather than the 'Long and

Uninteresting' varianr of RichieBlackmore's band). This tape is heavilyelectronic, and often rhythmic; notthe best pint that will be pulled atLode Runner's musical tavern, butenjoyable because it hints that thebest is yet to come.

X-Chris, AlplnestarCreosote, IllangRacing Room Tapes, C6Ocassette, 1996

This features those five shouting menand their lawnmowers as mentiondabove. Not quite but Creosote reallydo kick up an absolute flip of a rackeeUlungwould appear to be improvisedlive, with the amplifiers (probably

Irtow'sail 0f IaIGsSlriIlo

17

xgsB,L?jammed on I l) serving up aprovocative casserole of guitar, noise,tapes, rhythms, noise, feedback, noise,and electronics. And noise. I cantdecide whether I love it or hate it,and the music doesnt seem to caremuch either way. Truly, this is anonslaught unrelenting in its ferocity,although it does progress in someindefinable sense. lt isnt just 'l-2-34

GHGHGHGHGHGHHGHHGHGHGHHGHGHGH! for half an hour.

Personally | find what distinguishesgood from bad in any form of art,particularly music, is whether thework speaks for itself, or simplybrings to the mind's eye images ofhow that work may have beencreated. For example, Faust lVsomehow makes me think ofspeeded-up and out-of-focus Super 8films, in gaudy overexposed colour, ofbearded yokels in a summery cornfield. Conversely, when I hear GeorgeMichael, all I can think of is a sillyorange man taking himself seriously ina recording studio. lf loud and shirtyis your bag then you'll love Creosote.I might have done also, had I beenable to clear from my mind thepicture of three lads in a garage allpraying fervendy that Dad takes histime washing the car so they can getthe tape finished.

On the other hand. I received nooffputting visual interference from theX-Chris side. lt is almost completelyabstract. Like Creosote, it's noisy, buthere the noise is expertly sculptedinto a surprising range of textures. Isee circuit boards, empty officebuildings, decaying electronics,

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

existing in some remote placewhere human reach does notextend. lt seemsinappropriate to say anythingmore. X-Chris is definitelythe prize find of this issue'sSkipload. Even if hiscontribution had been pairedwith a side of Jonathan Kingrather than Creosote, thistape would still come highlyrecommended.

Racing Room Tapes, 37Egmont Roal New Malden,Surrey KT3 4AT

Form, [theonewiththe blue cover and sixtracks on itlC9O cassette, demo

An astounding tour de forcewhich. resolute and

uncompromising in its rugoseatonality, demands the listener'sattention whilst Form lift up thedeceptively rounded stone ofnormality to peer, withoutDrocrastination. at the fetid horrorswhich lurk beneath. But not really.

Six tracks of noise, a drum machineon the tommy gun setting(deJeJeJer, delele-ler as we used tochant in the playground) over which aperson with a quiet voice saysmeaningful things. lt's easy to see

what they're getting at, and as avariant on Whitehouse or earlyRamleh, it isn't without originaliry. Butif you're going to do powerelectronics, it should sound,er..,powerful. This just sounds wealgand even a bit apologetic. The musicis okay, I suppose. The recording isdry and unflattering. The words,which dare not soeak their name tooloudly in case anyone actually hearsthem and sends a transcription offtoPseud's Corner, leave room forimprovement. On the positive side,Form have had the decency to recordthis on a good quality cassette, withthe erase tabs intact. So full marks onthat score.

Ed thinks this is Stephen Poulacheris+ Andy Williams, who also produce aweird comic called Love. No contactaddress, buc try 18 Nether StreecFinchley, London N12

Manslaughter, Sofa, SoGood,,SoWhat?Abattoir Records C3O cassette

I eat my words, X-Chris is not thepick of this issue's selection, for itturns out to be the mighty force ofManslaughter that is most deservingof your money.

Heavy Meal - Speed Metal - DeathMetal. Now there is...Fumiture Metal!An exciting new genre of which

Manslaughter (who cite theirinfluences as Metallica.Megadeath, Slayer and TheAntiques Roadshow) are the

\ first, and finest, exponents. Acynic might suggest that thistape amounts to litde morethan the tomfoolery of a braceof inebriated Geordies, though Idoubt they would have the guts

' to say it to Manslaughter's faces,least of all the one with the

1r Lemmy moustache. To such acynic I say, either open yourears or fuck off back to yourlate night Channel 4 arts dump.

Manslaughter deliver the goods,in big black trucks with studded

ryres and a furry Hellraiserpuzle cube hanging from themirror. And what goods theyare! There's no ironic smarm.no nudging or winking here, justfull.on skull crushing metalpower. Listen to the rage of'Can't Be Arsed'or themerciless fury that is'Sideboards of Destruction'.

SOFA, 50 600D... s0

3B

WHAT ?

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

These men are quite serious. Theseare not men who have time to wasteupon mere trifles. These are menwho have, perhaps, seen too much.Listen to their stor7.

24 East Cheap, Heaton, NewcastfeNE6 'UA

Ectogram, SvalbardAknst Records ANKST O74. C3O

ssEwll2gglUpon finally getting this to play, I wasimpressed by the outrageously deepflanging effect which opens the music,until I realised it was merely a resultof the tape screwing up yet again.Luckily this seems to be recorded,like many modern cassettes (forreasons that at last become clear)with all of the tracks appearing onboth sides. Svalbard sems to be asampler for some impendingrelease lSpitsbergenl. The music isfairly pleasant. Loose and vaguelymesmeric in a Krautrocky kind ofway. lt's okay, bit with so mucharound at the moment, is 'okay'

really enough? | have a problemwith this ongoing Krautrock revival,highlighted best by an interviewwith Loop some years ago. A Loopperson praised Can as a trulyinnovative and avant-garde band;Loop, he claimed, by continuing intheir tradition, were thus equallyinnovative and avant-garde, Let mejust get this straight...if I copy apainting by Picasso, I will haveproduced a work that is startlingand original? What rot!

Dont be fooled, kids. Krautrockrevival - l4od revival - Oompahrevival, lt's all the same thing butfor the ersaa stamp of'authenticity' afforded to Tortoise andthe like. Stereolab have some finetunes, but so, doubdessly, did TheMerton Parkas and The Lambretta, ifyou like that kind of thing. lf yourscratchy old Faust albums arentenough, and you need that nostalgicfix of the latest thing in Disney-styleanimatronic experimentalism, thenEctogram are just as good as anythingelse presently doing the circuirThey'll probably be huge, but for methey seem closer in spirit to Dartsand Matchbox than Can or Neu!

Ankst, 106 Cowbridge Road EastCanton, Cardiff, CFI gDX

Ectognm c/o Alan, 6 Hill StreegMenai Bridga Norch Wales LL595AG

The Moth, Pammel BoxRed Neon Tapes RN36, C9Ocassette, (1996)

Astonishingly bad. This is a shamebecause Red Neon have put out somenice things in the past, so I reallydont know what the excuse for thiscould possibly be. Most of the songsfeature a keyboard which l'd swear isbeing played by a cae Wearing boxinggloves. The drum machine rarelywavers from the Bontempi settin&over which our hero, presumably hewhom men call The Moth, sings hisspecial art lyrics in positively

stentorian tones. I get the impressionthat Mr Moth is of the belief thateverything he does - music, drawings,diaries, shopping lists - is art whichwill one day be discovered andrevered by future historians. One getsan almost tangible sense of thethought processes in action here:'Crap it may be, but these are theSEMINAL EARLY WORKS.' PummelBox is recorded on a high qualitychrome cassette, and the erase tabsare kindly left inact, both of whichare worth a few house points in mybook but not enough to excuse thisshoddily-produced tripe. lmagine thelocal amateur dramatics society doingfree expression mime, to the localrecorder group's medley of songsmade famous by The Fall and CaptainBeefheart. Yes, it's an amusing image,

providing you're not expected toactually sit through the bloody thing.

Does anyon- reme.mber Mighty Mothin the old seventies TV Comic?. Forthe benefit of culturally impoverishedreaders, the Mighty Moth sagareiterated the popular theme of theconflict between the Apollonian andthe Dionysi4n, embodied in the leadcharacter and his long-sufferingnemesis: Dad. Every wee( MightyMoth would eat Dad's entirewardrobe. Dad, driven to the brink ofmadness, would attemptlepidoptricide of the thoughtless andinconsiderate creature. Sadly, all his

efforcs ended in disaster. much tothe amusement of the little insectcunt. I often wonder why Dadnever tried mothballs. Which iswhat this cassette is a load of.

Red Neon c/o Patrick Parent, 76Rue Wayenburg; lMO Bruxelles,Belgium

Nocturnal Emissions.ReliquaryEarthly Delights, C9O cassetteg29slWhen a group more commonlyassociated with release on vinyl orCD puts out a cassette, there isoften a sound basis for caution. Thecassette, in such cases, often servesas a dumping ground for materialthat is too esoteric, or just plaincrap, for inclusion on 'proper

releases'. Happily, this is not thecase with Nocturnal Emissions, whoseem physically incapable ofproducing substandard dross, Whatis found here clearly benefits fromthe same high standards ofproduction, composition, and even

packaging as has been applied to theirexitensive back catalogue, with theexception (which may hopefully dispelany accusations of sycophancy) of theunlistenable second side of 1984'sShake Thase Chains, Rattle ThoseCa6'es album - redeemed, I hasten toadd, by a blinding first side.

The music? Ooh. Tricky.

Religuaty is entirely instrumental, andseems to be composed mainly withsamples of acoustic instruments. Thesound is dense without beingoppressive; meditative withoutsounding like some appalling new agemusical laxative. The overall effect is alittle like Muslimgauze providing thesoundtrack to a Charlton Hestonbiblical epic, on mediaeval instruments

39

- I'm certain I heard a krumhorn inthere - only, it doesn't actuallysound like that at all. Curse mylimited descriptive powers!

ln truth I susoect it to beNocturnal Emissions' musical

Prowess, rather than any literaryhandicap on my part, which makesthis difficult to review. lt istherefore a shame that themainstream music press continuesto ascribe bold innovation anddangerous avant-garde foresight toa bunch of groups who haveearned such kudos by daringlyshoving some old John Barrysoundtracks through a few effectspedals, while Nocturnal Emissionsremain relatively obscure. This,however, is the genuine article andyou should accept no substitutes.

Earthf Delights, PO Box 2,Lostwithel, Cornwall, PL22 OPY

Aural Guerrilla, MagicalMoments

99@)Jim MacDougall, the mastermindbehind this operation, is mad. I dontmean he's like, this real wacky dude,who'd catch you with a hand burzeror pinch a traffic cone as soon as lookat you. Rather, he has spent aproportion of his life (the part whichmost musicians spend at art collegeor studying sociology) in the dubiouscare of psychiatric institutions, subjectto even more dubious chemicalcocktails. Yer average patronising arsemight then expect this tape to be 'a

traumatic plummet into the depths ofthe humdn psyche'or similar,oblivious that such an assumption isnot greatly different to 'All blackpeople enjoy reggae'or Japanesemusic is plinky-plonky andinscrutable'. True, there is somefairly severe stuff on this tape but itdoesn't dominate by any means. Infact given that the musical line-up -

guitar, bass, drum machine,synthesiser, and vocals - isconsistent throughout the tape, it'ssurprisingly varied.

Joy Division, Throbbing Gristle, TheFall, and especially Chrome, all springto mind as passing influences,without this being overwhelming.The tape does have its faults. Forone, a few of the numbers sound abit incomplete, and lwonder aboutthe sense in including'songs'withlyrics about not being able to thinkof any words. And oh look Steve's

The Sound Proieetor Thinl Issue

having a crafty fag in the corner of thestudio. Also, there's a picture ofsomeone's 'Hampton'on the cover,which (hopefully you'll all agree) isuncalled for. Still, I doubt AuralGuerrilla are parcicularly botheredabout being nominated for this year'sMercury music awards, so...whatever.

On the positive side, the overallquality of playing and production isexcelleng and there are examples of aparticulanly valuable commodity here,namely the torker'. Several tracks -'Loony', 'Revenge', 'Dont Tell Me You

Care'and 'Medicine' - certainly fallinto this category. The majority ofthe other tracks also 'cork', albeitto a lesser extent. Jim's stream ofconsciousness vocal style is highlylistenable. and hints that the bestmay be still to come, particularlywith the few tantalising glimpses ofhis talent for crooning which issadly underused here. Not thegreatest tape ever produced, but asthe Perry Como inspired titlesuggests, it does indeed have itsshare of magical moments.

Aunl Guerilla, Flat 5, 2 EarlhamGrove, Forest Gate, London E7gHL, UK

Skiploadof TapesCompetition!Your super soaraway SoundProjector will send, absolutely freeof charge, a bumper goodiejamboree grab bag of most of thecassettes from this issue's Skipload,to the first lucky reader who cananswer these three simplequestions:

l: Which edible root vegetable wasthe subiect of an unnamed thirdparty's culinary boycott in the title ofa track from Faust's smash debutalbum?

2: Which seminal post-punk group,whose sound was likened by onemedia wag to 'some tossersrummaging around in a broomcupboard', recorded a song aboutCan's Damo Suzuki?

3: Huitzilopochdi was an importantdeity to the Mexica, of the city ofTenochtidan in Post-Classic eraCentral Mexico. Can you name hismum?

Apswers should be sent to theeditorial address and CLEARLYmarked Skipload of TapesCompetition. The winner will be thefirst correct ent,y we receive,whenever that may be. Nocorrespondence will be entered into.Anyone who has a problem with theabove reviews, and doub* that lU beguite so handy with my lists as myword processon is more thanwelcome to come and have a go ifthey think they're hard enough. I willbe in the car park of The Goose andGranite hostelry Lordship Lane,London 5E22, at 8.00 pm sharp on thelst March 1998. Potential combatantsare advised to book their hospital bednow.

40

' /

" t t . . .

gt t . . . . . . . . .H

The Sound Proieel,or Third Issue

"a

mmanwnGmGt0lnOthetra$ar]-^r,^r. frr^r,r I

#,,S

::{iirti?

'lSroulila$tSchlammpeitziger,Fre undlich bara ca d am eI o dieli e dgu tCologne, A-Musik A2-Nobody in their right mind could resist these engagingsynth melodies and friendly beats, guite the converse of

some harsh, repellent techno. lt may not be particularly

novel or challenging and it does resemble early Krafwerk'

but neither are hangable offences. The end of side A has

pastoral sound effects very like Kraftwerk's'Morgenspaziergang' frorn | 974. The young creator

responsible for these noises is: Jo! Besides running the

A-Musik mail-order shop in Cologne, Jo is very keen on

fish. That's probably him on the cover, looking extremely

ungainly as he stands on the beach holding an enormousbarracuda in his arms. This charming picture alone isworth your money, it's a holiday snap; a man not trying to

sell you some phoney, contrived, mysterious image is a

man you can trust, an assurance further confirmed by the

small-press 'art school'way these limited edition LP

sleeves have been assembled (one of six different photo

prints glued onto aft paPer, xeroxed text). I also like his

dry sense of humour in the lyric This beat is dynamic...this

beat makes you think because baby...your love stinks',delivered flat and emotionless in what I take to be an apt

parody of dance floor vacuity. The long LP title I think

unpacks into something about friendly fish, melodies andgood songs. As was recently pointed out to me, UK

newsagents are now filled with more Fishing magazines

New Colognepost-Techno

dribbles and drabbles

4l

than anything else. Carp has become the pitbull terrier offish, a popular'sporting'catch among UK working classmen (salmon and trout are for your upper class nobs).More and more flyposter adverts for dance records usefish. There's a picture of Beck wearing a fishing hat in theOctober 97 ish of Mojo.\Nhat do these people know?

Quite clearly, fish have the answer to the future. Invest ina tankful of tropical finny friends, and play this LP as theyswim aimlessly about.

Schlammpeitziger,Freundllchfuracadaremlx

@A 10" LP with four remixesof tracks from the abovealbum, by the well-knownMouse on Mars, Jo's buddyFelix aka FX Randomiz,Marcus Schmickler andSweet Reinhard. BothMouse on Mars andRandomiz do little morethan add rhythm tracks ofqueasy bleepy-bloopy beatsand wobble the synthiemelodies cutely, whileSchmickler's version of'Eine Wolke im Wald' is amoment of sheertranslucent radiance, asrelaxing as a hot bath.Reinhard is into somewhatfancier effects, with hisbackwards tapes, loops anddubbish mixing. OnlySchmickler can be said toactually make the musicprogress at all - the otherspretty much just get into agroove and stay there, butthis is still a hot litde itemand a real winner, Thepicture of Jo with hisbarracuda has now beeninvaded by single'moleculenasties resemblingDrotozoa.

Schmickler works in his 'Kasper-Hausar Studios' inCologne; these Cologne musicians, enjoying something of ahermetically sealed artistic life, are reaping the spiritualinheritance of the character Kaspar Hauser, whosetroubling Enigma was explored in one of Werner Herzog'sbest films from the so-called New German Cinema sceneof the 1970s, and one of the few not to have music byPopul Vuh, 'Cant you hear the terrible screaming allaround us, the screaming that men call silence?'is theopening text of this movie, and that's surely an axiom thatthese musicians live by. Kaspar Hauser's story is based onan old idiot-savant legend, the man is kept in a cellar untilhe reaches adulthood and then let loose in the world. Heproceeds to confound the rational Enlightenment-age men

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

42

around him with his logic-defeating observations. Achildlike enfant sauvage who stands on the verge ofcommunicating a new understanding of the world. But therational men win. and detirmined to understand whatmakes him ticlc they trepan his corpse at the end and bye><amining his brain, mistakenly think they can figure owwhat makes him tick. This film is also known by theGerman title which translates as 'Every Man for Himselfand God Against All'. Much as I love this film, the messagebehind it, is a decidedly Romantic hymn to the human spiritwhich veqges on being naive and sentimental. How far do

our Cologne friendsalign themselves withsuch disingenuousness?

,,,@N, r@)NCologne, A-MusikA4 (LP), or A5 (CD)

A stripped downminimalist affair,episodes in digital noiseover beats which aresometimes simplywoodblock click tracks,a bass throb and anextremely clipped highhat sound, ingeniouslyassembled to resistsyncopation - thesecond you spot apattern, it vanishes.Occasionally, timid andthin-sounding electronicblips orbarely-manipulatedsynthblasts disrupt themonotony; now andagain a pitch or note isarrived at, mostly hintedat by negative shapes.The listener is strappedinto a mechanicalhammock with leatherbonds, while littleMunchkin men swingyou back and forth. Thisart-techno is just thesort of thing to numbyour brain to sleep if

conventional painkillers aren't doing the job, and although Ienjoy it mightily some listeners may want something with abit more substance, more out of control. Admittedly thereis something slightly sterile here, prompting a familiarcontemporary scenario about young men alone in theirbedrooms with their machines. This is perhaps thedownside to romanticising the isolation-myth of KasperHauser; maybe these guys should go back in the cellar foranother ten years. L@R are a duo from Dusseldorf,Rupert Ruwa Huber and Otto Muller, and this is theirdebut.

A-Musik Brusseler Platz l0A,50674 Cologne

The Sound Proieetor Third lcsue

EYE SCRtrAM FDSTML cd. chsdbourne, shaklng rays, davey andlndonnn. charlle parker. pold snarklc. wllllnrn carlos wllllsms- sll nn ononn, charlle parker, gold sparklc, wllllam carlos wlltlems, atl on one

ln July, 1997, all capturcd hcrc on dlcltalle Intcrfece

tff. ii"" attanta lmprov serics frofr greet cross sectlontalent In mlxcd duo, trlo, end solo formats

cxquisite cassettes fnrm:

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DQE

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Postage UK: 2,1.00 1g item, 50p each et<tn.Eurcpe: f2.N) lsfitem, tl each exta.ROW:83.00 14item,21 each extra.Chequesto P.VlriH.Firheyr Dirtribution, pO Box {lO,FARI{BOROUGH, Hemprhin GUt4 6yT, UK

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KRAUTROCK.SAMPf,ER: Aneveningof moviesatthe National FlImTheatreLondonI August 1997,hosted byfulianCopeJulian Cope assisted in thecuration of this excellentprogramme. True, hispersonal appearance wasshabby, lazy and stultifyinglyunprepared - you wonder ifhe knew where he was orwhat he was doing there; butthese are rarely seen andextremely interestingcinematidmusical delights.Cope had the decency tobow before the assembledcompany and admit'there'ssome heavy Krautrock dudesout there who were on thescene from the start...they'resaying Get off the stageJulian'. (l am notaheavyKrautrock dude, and yet Iwas still saying 'Get off thestage Julian'). What attractshim to this scene - is it musicor is it fashion? His interescseem to lay primarily in thehairstyles of the performers- at one sage he virtuallysuggested the Amon Di.itildrummer was playing thedrums with his hair. Still,when the inevitable applauseerupted at the end of thislig', he gesticulated his armsat the blank screen as if tosay 'applaud these Krautrockguys...they're the stars.'Amon Diiiil2 were wellrePresentd, with adocumented performance of'Phallus Dei' wherein a fixedcrmera caught bits of thepsychedelic light show, and avery young and sexy RenateKnaup singing. Granted, notall the band was visiblethroughout, nor was thesound qualiry up to DMMstandards, but this was arare slice of 1969 krawrockexisting somewhere on thecusp of late psychedelia andready to launch forth into

treater glories of Wagnerianpomp. Rudiger Nucherndirected this bit of fooraleand the great Wim Wenders

44

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

resembled a magic marter. The flipside to these revelingvisages is the image of a securiry guard in his uniform, whoglanced at the camera for a micro-second: you had only tolook at that pudgy double chin, those dripping jowls, to seethe face of a man to whom the music of Can meansabsolutely nothing; a man who did not dig iC His mind wasprobably fixated on his dumplings and beer supper wairingfor him in his comfy petit-bourgeois home...The opennessof Can's music was I feel reflected in the fact that this gigthey shared stage space with a troupe of acrobats, ajuggling performer in afr evening suit, and a fire-eater. Thecircus atmosphere did not jar with the music, rather drewthe audience and viewer into a dimension where anythingseems possible. Still, I imagine these futile ruminations arebeyond the dimwitted Cope-following audience...rowdy asschoolkids on the bus, and apparently only interested inDamo Stzuki's trouser bulge.

Kraftwerk (minus Ralf Hutter)The showstopper was this astounding teaming of KlausDinger and Michael Rother with Florian Schneider. An I Iminute performance that kept stopping dead every time acrescendo was reached - yet kept on going withoutmissing a beac Masterful control was the order of the dayhere, so watching the musicians failing to even break into asweat may not have been particularly occiting the TVtechnicians accordingly superimposed a graphic asoundwave that jumped about in time to the music's peaksand troughs. An historic item, as you were effecrively

was one of the photographers; perhaps he did theroad-movie scenes near the end, car window POV shots ofthe countryside like a sudden breath of fresh air, bringingin pastoral elements that added no end to the uniquelyGermanic flavour. Amon Di.iUl also played on a couple ofselections from the German W rock show Beat Cfuhtransmitted in 1970 and featuring those resdess screenwipes, colour experiments and found footage japes thatwould make any contemporarT broadcast of Top of thePopslook pretty shabby. The videoape was obviouslygood quality too, still delivering a pretty sharp image after27 years. Reclusive Florlan Frlcke was virtuallyinvisible in a mysterious and noirish video document, againfrom Beat Club 1971, as he worked his moog in a lovingtribute to wife Bettina.

Can in Concert, Directed by peterPrzygodda,l9T2An invaluable piece of footage of Can playing at a freeconcert in Cologne, interspersed with film of them in thestudio, So much wordage has been spewed about Can'smusic lately it's superfluous to add any more at this time,so instead let's concentrate on the images in this cinematicescapade. The expressions on the hces of the Canmembers tell you something about their musical telepathy;half of the time lrmin fthmidt wasnt even looking at hisinstrument or what he was doing rather ehecking to seewhat the others would do nexc In the studio, theircountenances betrayed nothing but compassion and awillingness for that essential teamwor*. But before I gettoo idealistic, it might have been equally revealing to seethem having an argument. Damo Strzuki was so filmed as toyield up at least two unforgetable images: one where thelighting effects transformed him into a turquoise skinnedalien, sitting placid as Buddah in amongst the raging noiseof the soundtrack; another where his long black locksobscured the whole of his face, ln his red outfit he

witnessing the birth of Neu! here. Ralf and Florian hadmade their first two'Traffic Cone' LPs and, experimentingfurther, asked their friends Dinger and Rother to join theband. Their playing began ro take Kraftwerk in quite adifferent direction, as this short document reveals; RalfHutter lost his nerve at the last minute and refused to playthe Beat Club gig. Yet subliminal traffic cone images wereeverywhere, stickers on the equipmer.tr cases or perhapsthe real things littered around the neon signs. lf thiscombination of players had lasted a litde longer, Kraftwerkmight have taken aquite differentturn, maybedeveloped thatcombination ofaustereelectronics andcomputers withendless drumpatterns and more'rockish'guitar

playing - but thenwe wouldn't havehad Neu! or LaDiisseldorf toenjoy over andover.

Exremelyinterestingcollection and welook forward tofurther aural-visualdocuments of theCosmische Scenesurfacing in thenear future,

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

Here's my flash on the deal. lf we are to learn (as listeners,or as musicians) from the magic of Can, then I suggest thisisnt the best way to do it, cutting up their master tapesand remixing them with foreign sounds over variouspost-modern dance beat sequences. What Can did wasprimarily about performance, not making records; it wasbased on a tough discipline, an ethic of commitment tohard and long improvisation, listening to the othermusicians, a heightened sensitivity to the potentialcompatibility of each fellow player. This level of dedication

rs a verT scarecommodity in theworld, andsomethingextremely hardto learnovernight. Thea*ual soundofthe records,howeverdistinctive, isalmost irelevantwhen youconsider theintensive

Processes thatfed into a Canperformance. Yetthat sound is allthese remixersare interested in.

But Can lovedmaking cut-upstoo, I hear you allcry. Granted,Holger Czukaywas an earlypioneer of

sampling and editing - bring forth exhibit A" theoutsanding 1968 Canaxis which is probably a touchstonefor many of the featured artistes here. And a given Canrecording was more often than not edited together byCzukay from hours of studio performances, usingingenious and seamless technique. Yet it was only a part ofthe overall Can process; the raw material Czukay workedwith was of the highest guality. Weirdly, if these remixingguys really had been sacrilegious, and worked someoutrageous ideas into their music, then they might havecome closer to the spirit of those wild German hippiesthan this item does.

Sacrilegethen can only work for me as a footnote to theglorious history of Can; but if you put the abovereservations out of your mind, hide the cover under thebed and play this CD 'blind', chances are you're in for apretcy good time, lt may be an overlong spin in places -remixers love to have lots of space and time in which to'develop their ideas'it would seem - but enjoyable enough.Sometimes the Techno machine has a habit of chewing upeverfthing in its path and reducing it to a homogenousmulch, the same stereotyped ideas, rhythms and stale ideasyouVe probably heard a hundred times already. But thenyou've never heard it done to Can before, have youl

Can, Sacrifege,2 x CDSPOON CD39llO (via Mute Records) 0997)You know the storT here - album tracks by Can ,remixed'

by leading lights on the UK dance club and DJ scene, alsoavant-gardsters Brian Eno, Bruce Gilbert and Sonic youth.Perhaps we should credit this to Various Aftists. not toCan at all; and of course it isnt sacrilegious, euite thecontrary! Each contributor here venerates Can, worshipsat the altar of this legendary Krautrock band who in thecurrent day and age seem ro get the credit for inventing orforeshadowing virtually every modern manifestation ofrock music (and dance music). Jaki Liebezeit's quote - 'The

drum is the instrumenL the star, the centre of it all-Everything at the moment is based on rhythm. The drumhas been emancipated.,,' - is becoming ubiquitous. TheSacrilegeartistes each have a story to tell in the booklet ofhow they bought their first Can record, or atcended somelegendary Can concert in the 1970s, and their lives werechanged forever. Kris Needs: 'l was blown away by thefreeform mayhem...in 1973 | was luclq enough to see themlive. They were awesome...' ; A Guy called Gerald: ,The

breaks and rhythms that they were using in tlre late 60sand early 70s were way ahead of their time..., ; System 7: 'l

musically came of age in the heyday of EuropeanExperimenal music'...Amazing how prescient all thesepeople were; there may be a slight touch of revisionismgoing on here...

ficnL

45

The Sound Proieetor Third Iscue

IheillonssOTHru

DIgitaI Gothlc: A critical dlscographyofTangerlneDreambyPaulStumpSAF Publishing 1997, I 6opp,

ISBN O 946719 t87

Rather like the career of Tangerine Dream, this book getsoff to an interesting start and then begins to sag dreadfully.The early records have much to recommend them:Electronic Meditation, which in 1969 somehow managed tounite drummer Klaus Schulze and severe experimentalistConrad Schniuler on one record, is astounding but quiteunrepresentative of what would appear later. After AlphaCentauri I havent even bothered to investigate. PaulStump has combed the debris thoroughly enough; youwant to like the later Tangerine Dream as much as hedoes, yet even he feels compelled to apologise for histastes. As if to compensate, he demonstrates his hipnesswith frequent references to the modern UK Techno andAmbient scene, and atEempts to draw lines that makeTangerine Dream one of its prime influences.

This argument is decidedly ill thought out, and is but one

of many blunders in this confused tome. Firstly a potted

history of electronic music is attempted, starting with LuigiRossolo and passing through all the usual suspects -

attempting to site TD within this context. Secondly, a stabat configuring the music witlrin a specific German literarytradition - hence some scholarly references to poetry andfantasy tales. Sadly, despite valiant efforts to drag himselfback to the path, Stump is unable to follow either conceptthrough completely. | find it hard to buy into any of theseglib continuum arguments. After these essays, it's a straightchronological resume of their increasingly dull career wewatch them sinking into the morass of European musicalblandness.

The electronic equipment fetish is one thing everyoneassociates with this band. Anyone who tells a story ofseeing them live in the.l970s comes back to the sameimages - players dwarfed by banks of unfamiliar lookingtechnology, and blinking red ligha everywhere. The fact iswith monophonic synths you need a lot of them to makeany sound at all. I feel almost sorry for Froese and hiscohorts Peter Baumann and Christoph Franke, as theywere locked into a treadmill of spending their profits onthe latest developments in electronic hardware just tokeep up, like updating to the latest version of Word forWindows. At least they were able to modify theirMellotrons (a keyboard instrument that plays pre-recorded

tapes of flutes or strings), replacing the manufacturers'supplied tapes with an elaborate set drawn from their ownrecordings and soundbanks. Modern composer PaulSchiice seems to have experienced a near-sexual thrillseeing photographs of Tangerine Dream in the midst oftheir expensive technologr.

Stump's research reaches a plateau fast. Julian Cope'sKnutrocksampler is drawn upon as a lazy crib, most often

46

Tfre Sound Proieetor Third Iocue

to voice an opinion about a particular record; and TheTime Out film guideis turned to whenever we broach thesubject of a duff 1980s sci-fi or acrion movie which TD

lcored to bring in the rent (and pay the synthesizer bill).The first instance is understandable, though there'ssomething worrying about finding an eccentric fan'sburblings mutating into a standard reference work. Thesecond case smacks of lazy journalism; a film review giveslittle insight into how a film came into being or why TDwere approached to do the soundtrack,

The pictures are one of the weakest features here. Thereproduction guality is poor and the process does thes_leeve art no justice at alh this is one thingKnutrocksamplergot right, insisting on .6lou. plates andstrong layouts. Two photos by David Elliott stand ouc asuseful contributions to the process of learning fromimages, as does the frontispiece photo taken it time of thesigning to Virgin records and somehow convelng thesense of our heroes as the mad Teutonic hippy knightstheir early music promised. This however is-virtuall-vcancelled out by the next image in the book showingFroese's son Jerome looking like a reject member of Toto

9"* yr$ his Billy ldol on a bad hair day appearance; andthe Bodacious Babe Linda Spa, saxophonirt in,o.u."."ntTD incarnations, whose stage presence apparently fulfilsthe unreconstructed Heavy Metal wet-dreams of the male

weirdness through unaccountably strange records andmusical events. Maybe Space Explosion was concoted inthe hope that if you combine enough ,weirdies, in onechemical cockail, a supernova - a Space Explosion - will bethe electrifying result.

Well, not really I fear. They have never played as a troupbefore, and so (presumably for everyone's convenienceand comfort) often resort to bog-standard plodding 4/4rhythms as structures. As any artist will tell you, if adrawing starts off with too many wrong marks. then noamount of later modification will ever make it right. Theselumbering beats used by Space Explosion are like thefoundations for the house, and unfortunately turn out tobe rotten lumber and crumbly concrete. No matter howmany layers of decoration are added afterwards -

Jean-Herve's vocal ravings, Engler,s'Talkbox'interpolations, Karrer's violin solos, tons of dubby echo, ora cosmic synthesiser wash - they amount to emptybaroque ornamentation on a basically unsound,t u"trr".ln fact the rhphm track is relied on to underpin the work;whenever the drums drop out the remaining playersstumble into a hesiant, turgid stretch of long tones,drones and groans, On the other hand, 'Krakatau'

starusoff with some freshing free jrz-ish percussion andcontinues with exciting dynamics in the same vein.

component of theaudience.

This book was apparentlycompiled in some hasteunder pressure from thepublishers, and intendedas not much more than adiscography with addedcommentary. Thisdiscography appears arthe back and is anotherweak poinc probably hardto fuult irs completenessor accuracy, but thereare no cataloguenumbers!

Space Explosionfapan, Captain Trip0TCD-O67 (19971-ls the world ready forthis, lwondenavirtualKrautrock SurvivorsSuperGroup? First off,here's the roster of theguilty Cosmic Explorersin full: Jean-Herve Peron

Still on the positive side,this CD has a big deepand rich sound -crammed with as muchdigital steeliness astoday's productiontechniques can muster.As loud and penetratingas Techno Animal -although naturally thedrum sound isnt astrebly. There is usuallyjust enough playinggoint on to keep yourattention, and many ofthe musicians performvaliantly - ChrisKarrer's violin parts cutthrough the cosmicbullshit, Jean Herve'sbass works overtime, asdoes his subliminalacoustic guitar. Thereare some trulyabominable synth noisesfor which it appears wecould blame eitherMoebius or Engler.

and Zappi Diermaier from Faust; Dieter Moebius ofCluster fame; Mani Neumeier, from Guru Guru: Chris

5"r.*: "{ Amon Duul; Jurgen Engler from Die Krupps.

Engler's the joker in the pack, more of a Industrial i,letallisrthan a bona-fide Cosmische traveller. Recorded live in astudio in Cologne, it was mixed and produced by Moebiusand Neumeier with help from recording engineer ChrisLiee. lt would be nice to know who oiganiied this, andwhy. Each player here has his own identr:ty, and furtherdeveloped it through years of activity since the I 970s.Each has in their own way explored unknown regions of

rike a siily euentin t *ntino nt, r:n:r"?:';ilff0'tt:am acdnt from big name stars. Alguably a reunion likethis is far better than say a 1970s UK progressivesupergroup like Asia or U( or any monstrouscombinatjon of creeps from groups like yes, Genesis orPink Floyd. But perhaps as UK listeners we became toofamiliar with our homegrown stars and dismissed them,like sports fans dismiss clapped-out football players. TheGerman sars are one step removed, less familiar to us;but maybe in their German homeland this Space ExplosionCD is being greered with total neglect by jaded fans.

47

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

lalliisselilofiLa Diisseldorf , [samelfapan, Captain Trip CTCD 064 (19971

VlvaIapan, Captain Trip CTCD 065 (1997)

IndividaellosCapan, Captain Trip CTCD 066([9971

La DUsseldor{ music is fun, cheap and easy - real supermarket shopping for your mind, everything you need is there inone user-friendly wire trolley spin! In the late 20th century the demands of the marketplace always win. The UK'scommunity of young Kosmische clubbers, all equally clued-in on great Krautrock classics, have insisted on the reissue ofthe first Neu! album with its spraycan dayglo red slogan cover, on a heavy slab of vinyl at a price that modern shopperslove to pay. You cant beat the great Neu! but it sometimes seems I play La DUsseldorf more - these are 'useful' records.Some people seem to neglect this period in favour of earlier or more obviously weird and cosmic krautrock but toignore La Di.lsseldorf would be a grave error. Here we have a genius simpliciry, a somehow sophisticated dumbness, abasic conceit spun out to an infinite length, like a sugar strand one hundred miles long and one molecule thick.

You should know all about this scene as guitarist Klaus Dinger's 'supergroup'project, following on from the great Neu!records he made with Michael Rother, Klaus plays guitars, keyboards and 'synthies' (turns out that one 'Nikolaus VanRhein'credited with keyboards is in fact an alias for Klaus), joined by brother Thqmas Dinger and Hans Lampe onpercussion, both of whom had played on the third Neu! LP. Lampe was an assistant of Conrad Plank the legendaryproducer, and Pfank was in the control room for the first LP La Diisseldorfrecorded in 1975. lt was reissued on Radar inthe UK in the later 1970s, and became something of a favourite with your post-punk and new wave hipsters; not hard tosee why, La D. managed an art-school mutant disco sound without being at all pretentious or resorting to day-glo soundproduction; they were more successful in every way than say X-Ray Spex Talking Heads or Magazine.

On the first LB 'Dusseldorf is a hymn to the city, an endless chant singing the praises of the new Jerusalem, the Heimatof Klaus Dinger who found so much beauty in the rugged post-war industrial estates that the warehouse door he posesthe group in front of becomes nothing short of a cathedral. A continuation of Kraftwer.k's themes applied to a slightlymore mundane environment. The beautiful Silver Cloud' is here, a hit single in their home country. There's a footballconnection here too. I hate the sport football but I liked the Wim Wenders moie Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penaky.Really that film was a psychoanalytical thriller and not a football movie at all. Similarly, Klaus Dinger plays football asthough it's a scientific experiment and plays rock music as though it's nuclear physics. The sound of these records is soperfectly seamless and continuous, yet not simply the sound of machines playing on autopilot. Primary colours applied toa huge canvas using Dulux rollers, leaving no trace of brushmarks. Endless string ensemble synths over a basic drumpattern, wo perfect chords which never change. A winning formula.

1978's Viva has the ludicrous selfdeprecating White Overalls' song alluding to the band's chosen futuristic'fashionstatement at that time...'new style hit the city...sons of the city, sons of the futurg we are like roses.'Would that Bowie,the original Thin White Duke, could have sen the funny side...undercutting any seriousness, there's a photograph oftheir white overalls drying in the airing cupboard! The sideJong'Cha Cha 2000' is a superbly overblown epic triumphantsynth trills rising and falling in crescendo after crescendo, anthemic punk chants vying with Andreas Schell's piano riffs.The scope of this LP's vision almost anticipates Spandau Ballet and all the other clueless New Romantics, the onlydifference being Klaus Dinger had style, humour and got it right; the UK blanket-clad ninnies were oafish clothes-horses,produced lots of shit records, and got everything wrong. A fantastic back cover artiste-with-animal photo that takes theweirdness ol Pet Sounds one stage further.

Individuellos is from l98l and does little to change the winning formula, although there are fleting and intriguingexperiments with foreign materials, backwards apes, and impenetrably alienating lyrics. Not that Klaus ever lost hiswarped sense of humour at any time. This CD reissue includes both sides of a maxi-single 'lch Liebe Dich'dw'Koksnodel', the A-side quite naturally being the very opposite of a heartfelt love-song Klaus moaning the words to hisloved one like a speech-impaired ogre on his deathbed.

The artrvort for all three items has been successfully rescanned and refitted into glossy foldouts for the cramped CDformat by Kfaus in collaboration with Captain Trip himself, Ken Matsutani . lndividuellos displays some trademark Dinger'messy' layouts, blurry polaroids, washed-out video grabs that reduce the subjects to hollow-eyed zombies, suroundedwith writing in a scribbly thick-point marker pen. I like this clunky style as it seems to cast Klaus Dinger as an insanefuctory foreman writing on his clipboard. Touchingly, one of the back cover portraits was his grandmotlrer AnnaHiszewski, who has since passed to a better place...

NB These issues are better than any phoney copies you may have seen on the notorious Germanophone'label;Captain Trip has the real thing, produced in collabontion with Klaus Dinger perconally. Write to Ken Ma*uani atCapain Trip Records, 3-t7-14 Minami-Koiwa, Edogawa-Ku, Tokyo lapan and he'll send you a dinky mail ordercaalogue marked'For Personaf.

4A

h

,h 4s

Around-upof someCDreissues of 70s'Krautrockclassics'These have been accumulating atnndom - | just pick up whateverintriguing Knutrock I can and when itcomes to crunch vetT little of itdisappoints. Wlth growing KrautrockCD sections spreading across recordshops through the land, thereb neverbeen a better time to invest@te...

Agitation Eree, trastFrance, Spalax l+229 (1992)

One of the better-kept secrets ofGerman rock this excellent bandmanaged a distinctive blend ofastro-improvs with tinges ofexperimental electronica, and I havethe feeling they didnt turn in a singleduff LP. A team of fine players to aman. This spacey gem consists of liverecordings from 1973 and 1974, threetracks developing into sideJongdrawn out jams featuring superlativeguitar work (MichaelHoenig Jorg Schwenke andLua Ulbrich) cut withunsettling strange noises.'Soundpool' and'Laila ll'evolve into beautifullysweet melodies, while'Looping lV' is far darkerand desolate; for this theband's ranks are swelled byguests Gustav Lutjens onmodified voice and ErhardGrosskopf playing loops.Nowhere near asself-consciously'cosmic' assome of their Germanbrothers,(Ash Ra Tempel,or the Cosmic Jokers),Agitation Free managed toshackle at least one ankleto the earth while theirheads roamed free in thestar-fi lled clouds. Needlessto say this makes most UKProg from the same periodlook pretty damn sick.Muchly recommended.

Briiselmaschine,[samelFrance, Spalax 14882 (1994)

A light folky item from 197 | ; if thecloying melodies aren't to your taste,you may just want to skip toSchmetterling'for nine and a halfminutes of fine sitar drones andacoustic guiar circular riffs, whilebeing baffled by the young German

The Sornnd Proieetor Third Issue

lady's sprecht-gesange commentary.This cut has many other periodfeatures, among them congas, fluteand mellotron; the band try hard forthat Incredible String Eand feel butthey're just a tad too square to cut it.More worryingly, the cleverdiminished chords of 'Nossa Bova'threaten to become a Steve Hackettmoment of preciousness. Elsewherethey try their hand at more traditionalsongs, for example 'Lassie'turns outto be a version of that favourite ofthe early 1960s UK folk club circuit, 'l

Loved a Lass', and sung in English socarefully that they unfortunatelyforget to add the emotion for this sadsong of lost love. Like Emtidi's Saar(see last ish), this is one from the Pilzlabel produced by Rolf-Ulrich Kaiserand recorded by Dieter Dierks. Thewhimsical watercolour sleeve art isalso very much of the time, an idyllic'musical instrument landscape'populated with big butterflies.

AnnexusQuam, OsmoseFrance, Spalax 14881 (1995)

Another fine record, this 7-piece bandhave their origins in a combo calledAmbition of Music formed in 1967,who opted to play their owncompositions instead of the beatmusic still then popular inKamp-Lintfort. However, to expand

their musical horizons in 1968 theylinked up with a local Evangelicaltrombone band - thus trumpets andtrombones became parc of themusic's equation, along with asimultaneous j"zz influence fromelsewhere. Interestingly, at the timethis led to some local 'modern'

church concerts...embryonic fre jaz.in the pews!

The players soon tired of this andwent back to the 'elemental areas ofmusic, such as dynamics, rhythm andintensity'. Along with thisimprovisatorT approach they drew infilm, colour effects and weird lyrics. Ineffect they were discovering ThePsychedelic Happening but in auniquely Germanic way. Performancesin the Kamp-Lintfort UndergroundCentre became archetypal anarchicevents - the collective improvisationband encouraging the young audienceto express themselves and join in themusic. By 1970 Anno<us Quam hadgiven concerts in Japan and played for

a couple days at theWodd's Fair in Osaka.

Like Xhol Caravan orEmbryo, Annexus Quamskirt around the edges ofjaz rock with their windinstruments. electricorgan and conventionalrock set-up, althoughtheir stodgyarrangements dontalways take flight. Whilethe tunes are mostlyarranged, the bandsmuggle in the oddsnatch of totally freeplaying now and again,only to lose their nerveand sneak back to theirtasteful guitar chords or12,/8 time signatures. Thelast track begins andends as free playing butit's regrettably short. ltwould be interesting tocompare theirdevelopment with theall-out free players inGermany from this

period, or indeed UK contemporariesSpontaneous Music Ensemble. Theimportant thing is that Annexus

Quam overlapped with the flourishingGerman Rock scene, perhaps in thehopes that they could bring the spiritof their underground experimentationinto a more commercial field. andspread their idealistic message to awider audience. Their name reflected

50

this interest in'combining togethernew and existingmusical forms'androughly translates as'Connection How'.

Released in 1970. thiswas one of theearliest releases onthe Ohr label and hadan elaborate die-cutfold-out sleeveprinted with sometruly oudandishEscherJike imagesfolding into eachother. Note that thiswas a few yearsbefore the fad forgimmick sleeves tookoff in the UK (egFamily Bandstand,

John Lennon Wal/sand Bridges).Themulti-combinationformat (about asclose as a recordsleeve has come tothe condition of anOyvind Fahlsuomvariable painting) wassupposed tosymbolise'thepossible associationsthat could arise fromour music.,.sincemusic does not allowitself to be tied down in its effect onindividuals, each hears and feels itdifferently'. The CD package onlyhints at this origami nightmare, buteven original collectors find itwell-nightmpossible to snag a mintcopy!

Thanks to Margaret Lilias fortranstation of CD sleeve notes.

XhoICaravan, ElecffiposA/AcD 941066Amplified wind instruments played bythe main men Hansi Fischer and TimBelber spice up the Jaz-Rock fusionatmosphere here, but this fine musicalextravagance soon takes off into aworld of its own. Hansi you recallalso played flute on the verywonderful Embtyob Rasche LP.'Electric Fun Fair'bodes the kind ofwacky European Circus Jazz that theWillem Breuker Kollectief does sowell to this day, a hybrid thatborrows from Frank Zappa as muchas Peter BroEmann; Xhol Caravanhave a psychedelic spin on the deal,

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

helped in no small measure by thegreat electric organ playing of Ocki.The sleeve art leads you to expectsomething quite different, perhapssome form of dark undergroundbad-trip space rock" whereas thisparticular Electrip has lots of sunshineand blue skies. A band with, I believe.a fascinating history which I'm notcapable of telling you about. No dateson this particular issue, so not evensure if it's 100% legit...

Various Artists, UnlnonnDeatschland: TheKraufuockArchiveV'oluneiYlrgin Records CDOVD 473(7243 8 41967 2rl (19971

More obscure items from TonyRobinson's Pyramid label, which wediscussed in brief last issue. ThisVirgin set is a rather shoddilyproduced series, and lwouldnt reallyrecommend it but this parcicularvolume contains The Nazgul with'The Dead Marshes'. a 12 minute

extract from their sole LP. I believethe LP in its entirety will be availableon CD before long but if you can'twait then by all means pick up a copyof this (it's budget priced) and makeMr Branson that little bit wealthier.1;1s f{azgul is a rarity among rarities,as it genuinely stops you in yourtracks, and lingers for some timeafterwards...even the memory ofhe'aring it disturbs you. One assumesthe trio of hippies behind this wereseriously into bad acid trips, but withor without the drug culture this is anextremely sinister piece of music. Theremainder of this CD contains furtherextracts from the Galactic Explorersand Golem LPs, but also some realstinkers by Baal, Chronos andTemple. The skerchy sleeve notes arenot a very satisfying read, and thecover art is hideous - presumably ariptych to be completed by buying allthree products, l've seen Volurhe Onein the 2nd-hand racks more timesthan I care to remember, and expectthe same fate to befall the other twoin this series.

5l

aatoo$

IheYounghrconS

lBrieflGuiilet0 lleldon

ByDavld ElliottIt's been fun wallowing in Krautrock nosalgia this pastye?rr or so, but what about France? Was there acomparable'Frog Rock' scene? Any equivalent KlausSchulzes, Kraftwerks, Tangerine Dreams and Ash RaTempels? These particular acts were quite big in Franceand toured octensively there, but there were very fewcomparable French artists, in terms of style or status.

A bit of conte)c... ln the late sixties German andFrenchrock music was hevily influenced by all thingsAnglo-American. Bw the more interesting scene was thereaction against it Many young German musicians adoptedan extreme response; turning away from the popularculture of the occupying forces, they delved into othercultures, science fiction, electronic instruments - and drugpof course. A lot of artists didnt bother with lyrics...Erperimenation was all. The French response was analternative rock scene which was generally more political,more lyrical (but definitely not in English) and more j'zzoriented. Come the 70s there were many fine bandsaround, but apart from Gong and a few UK festivalappearances by Magma le rock Francais was largelyunknown here. Which is a pity. One of the best groups,who seemed to be the perfect cross between what wasgoing on in Germany andFrance at the time, was Heldon.

Heldon ups essentially Richard Pinhas and varied others.Born in 195 I, Pinhas had studied and taught at theSorbonne in Paris. Following two shortlived bands, BluesConvention and Schizo, he formed Heldon (named after aNorman Spinrad SF novel) in 1974. The debut album,Guerilh Electronigue (Disjuncta 1974), set the scene:distorted sustained guitar over tense cyclical electronics.There was nothing jazJike about this, nor cosmic. We'dprobably lump it in with ambient now, but above all it waseggressive and urban. Fripp and Eno were undoubtedly biginfluences, and indeed Pinhas has gone out of his way tonamecheck them in various sleevenotes. But it would beunfair to label Heldon as mere imitators; they were a greatdeal more than that.

lf the debut was searing then Allez -Ierh (Disjuncta 1974)was edgily reflected. Essentially just Pinhas and GeorgesGrunblatE they displayed a more subtle use ofelectric/acoustic guitars and electronics, includingextensive mellotron. Comparisons could be made withside one of Fripp and Eno's Evening Sar(vthich it actuallypreceded). And if we continue the comparison then theirthird album, hb Always Rock h'Roll (Disjunce 1975), wasHefdon's lndex of Meals - a relendessly dir<t and

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

unforgiving double. Even the 'quiet' l8-minuter, 'Aurore',

named after Pinhas's dog, exuded ferrous tension.

A change of direction came with M.a /V/sson (Urus1975), showcasing Pinhas's newly acquired Big Moog. Butinstead of o<panding the sound a la Klaus Schulze (whoalso had the instrument) and reaching for the heavens, theHeldon sound became even more claustrophobic. This wasa bass-heavy unsettling dirge of sound. The baby inintensive care on the front cover kind of says it all. Nextup was Un Reve sans Conseguence $eciale (Cobra 1976).trgain, if you wanted a clue to its contents, the hugegushing furnace on the cover is pretty unambiguous,Drums and percussion had figured before, but hereFrancois Auger's batterie was simply outsanding.Combined with Pinhas on odrilarating menacing form, UnReve was an assault on the senses.

lntetface (Cobra 1977) saw Heldon go Sci-Fi, witheyecarching helmeted alien on the cover and 'Flying Saucer'musical triplet. There was a real 'band'feel about thisalbum, with the settled line-up of Pinhas (guiars,electronics), Patrick Gauthier (moog), Francois Auger(drums, prcsn) and Didier Baard (bass). The l9-minutetitle track in particular, showcased a tighg confident unit.A surprise, then, that Sand By(Eg 1979) turned out tobe Heldon's swansong. Featuring three quite differenttracks - side one's gradually evolving'Bolero', a short jazzyinterlude from Gauthier, and the storming title piece -

Heldon seemed to be on the verge of major recognition.But for some reason Pinhas decided to drop the bandmoniker and turn 'solo', though he continued to call uponthe services of his faithful cohorts. Cerainly change was inthe air: Ett Records had collapsed, there was UK interestin the from of Pulse Records and, what the heck a newdecade beckoned.

Which is where I shali leave it until the next issue, whenRichard Pinhas's solo career will be e>omined. Suffice it tosan Heldon are well worth checking out They might notbe as feted as their Krautrock counterparts but in their sixyear existence Hnhas and Co contributed some ofthemost stunning searing instrumental music you're likely tohear. Europe's best kept secret?

Heldonb back caalogue - excepg I think Agnea Nilsson -

has been reissued on CD (some with extn tncks) on theFrench Spahx label:

Guetllla RlectoniqaeSpalax 14239-AIIez-TeiaSpalax 14235

ftbAlways Roch'n'RoIISpalax 14231/32 2CD

AgnetaNiksonUn Reve sans Conseqaence $rcdaleSpalax 14234

IntertaceSpalax 14230

StandBySpalax 14233-

5S

The Sound Proieetor Third Issne

T Pha,nt(orrrofIrifoery

Uillm[rul$ilionFun he 19il1s ad leruld the stan

For a long time I collected in isolation,knowing nobody else who bothered with it; I virtually took the music for granted, until I sensed that thismusic was appreciated quite seriously by young listeners in America; Byron Coley gave nothing but favourablereviews to Derek Bailey CDs in his Forced Exposure magazine and Eugene Chadbourne cited the Incus labelas an early influence on his own Parachute label and the Greensborough improv scene. I began to realise UKimprovisers should by rights be considered national treasures. Ne><t thing you know, original vinyl issues ofIncus records - at one time thrown into the second-hand racks with utter contempt - start fetchingrespectable prices at record fairs. lmprovised music is the goods. lt's virtually impossible to describe - mostcivilians find it a terrible racket, and even its champions and apologists admit there are problems (sometimesi!'s too serlous). Yet whelt it works, it's a fa1@tqrg doqument of players enjoying freedom; it provides the

most liberating e><perience for the listener, and I Glieve-carr erven start affecting ihe way you thinFanifperceive the world. We shall focus largely on tlre UK this rip and sadly ignore for e>omple the mainlandEurope developments (Peter Brotzmann, Hans ReryL Han Bennink and the FMP label).

s4

Having been collecting and listening to thismusic since l98l I know this extremelybrief overview can only really hope tointroduce a few non-initiates to the field.

The Sound Proieetor Third fssue

Some Glessiceailyl0l0stccoilin0s

I have the softest possiblespot for Derek Bailey'sDomestic and Public PiecesteTs-77(EVIANEM 400r)as it was the very first pieceof improvised music I heard.

Parts of this CD were originally issued on vinyl as Quark9999; a copy from the Coventry record library kept mecompany for a few long Autumn nights in a lonely bedsit.The music seemed lonely too - one guitar, one musician.Certainly an intimate experience, but shot through with aninner desolation. I grew to love the second side of PublicPieces in particular, later appreciating that it was electricand amplified (the first side was all acoustic). lt was sounfamiliar and strange that I got lost in it; seizing on thefew recorded moments t}at it was possible to 'remember'

and using them as map reference points in this aliendomain. l''lany times I have sought to recapture that senseof lostness; few records have ever had such a profoundeffect.

This record has humour as well as sadness. Bailey makesan elaborate joke about'Playing The Blues', the fullsignificance of which eluded me for a long time. Desperateto black up and play like a minstrel, he yawps 'Hurry upwith the burnt cork!' over a super-fast solo which slidesinto a parody of twelve-bar. Then there's 'Unity', a straightreading of a news item about Unity Theatre beingdesroyed by fire only the recitative is chopped up to fit inwith the unpredictable cadences of his guitar playing. Nostranger to introducing'foreign effects'to this very day,Bailey rarely used his own voice again, apart from anotherjoke also on this CD (originally on Caroline Guiar Solos

4 - the guy who found the lost, chord.

I also regret the passing of tlris brief electric period. Baileyused the volume pedal on the electric guitar, enabling himtotal control over the volume of each note, as it emergedfrom the strings - he could even vary that note's volumewhile it was sounding. The utter eeriness of this noise issomething most musicians would die for; you could beclinical and say it was something to do with making aninstrument behave unconventionally, part of the modernistdeconstluction of music. But who can fail to be overcomeby the sheer emotion in those volume-pedalled wails? Aclich6, but he really made his guitar gently weep. By 1972he had started using a second amplifier and a secondvolume pedal. But Bailey found the practicalities of carryingso much heavy equipment to gigs was too much of astain. More importantly, other people were beginning tocopy him. With a severity of focus and discipline, heconcentrated on wringing what sounds he could from hisfaithful Gibson acoustjc guiar. Get this CD for theamazing sounds of volume controlled electric guitar, withl9-string guitar, Waisvisz crackle box and otherspontaneous events live at the ICA in 1975. For some| 976 recordings using the same electric devices, try andfind a rare LP - Bailey playing Duo with TristanHonsinger, Incus 20 (1976).I made a tape of Domestic and Public Pieces and withoutreally knowing why, obsessively copied out all the copy onthe back cover. Remember when records came out withmessates to the retailer'FILE UNDER: POPULAR (PopGroups)' printed on the back sleeve? Quark 9999 made ajoke out of it... there was a long list of categories headedFILE UNDER-Jncluding POPULAR (R/ENTUALLY),

CHAMBER MUS|C (FOR ANY CHAMBER), EASYLISTENING (WITH AN OPEN MIND) and VERY GOOD.The sark typography was worrisome, as basic as a RichardLong catalogue. I had not seen an LP sleeve likethis...sometiing must have tipped off my subconscious thatI might not see it again.

Saxophonist Evan Parkef made his presence felt in1982 at a Company event at Warwick University. Theseevents were organised by Derek Bailey, and settled intoregular London venues; they would be a meeting point forimprovising musicians everTwhere to gather and playtogether in combinations. Many of the Incus records aredocuments of these per{ormances. The Warwick gig mighthave been an altruistic attempt to wean students offCulture Club and open their minds to something else;Evan played a solo piece and terrified this listener. lt waslike a bloody fire alarm going off, the sound of his sopranosax gradually filled up the venue and made its repetitiveassault on your eardrums.

One aspect of Parker's dedication to exploring the music ishis hermeticism: a devotion to solitary work in hisdevelopment of breathing techniques, his study of CharlieParker records, his daily practice sessions. 8ut when thesocial-sharing side of music call comes, Parker is at theready, pairing his saxes with just about any possiblecombination of instruments. On Three other storiesl97l-74 EMANEM 4fi)Z Evan turns in some exceptional

duo performances with Mr Meccano set himself, Paul

Lytton; besides the saxophones, Parker plays a numberof home-made items such as the Dopplerphone, a devicemade out of lengths of plastic hoses. Lytton is a lovablyHeath RobinsonJike artist who at this time, pardy inspiredby a Folkways LP Sounds of the /unkyard, played with alarge and complex drum kit besides other unusualinstruments, including air horns and a harmonium. He alsobuilt a frame with objects attached, wired up ro a conracrmike, which could be used to produce unnatural electronicsounds by plucking striking or bowing movements. Theelectronic component is one that Evan would contjnue toexplore; it's always an inspired move when he does, hislovely long tones vibrating with elecric drones. Parker andLytton made Collective Calls and At the Unity Theatretogether, while Ra was recorded live at the Moers festival.Another electronics/sax pairing by Evan was with WalterPrati in f 990 and the exquisite Hall of Mirrors (MM&TCDOl) resulted.

A great image I treasure of Evan was sitting about 15 feetaway at a small and intimate venue (The Place TheatreLondon, | 3 October 199 l). Watching his body prepareitself for what would be a blistering 40-minute continuoussoprano solo, the frame heaving as it took air into thelungs,..you could see the music coursing through his veins,welling up inside of him, waiting for its release, This was allin a few magical seconds before the instrument was evenput to the lips. Parker uses circular breathing a systematicway of inhaling through the nose while playing thusenabling a continuous blast of air through the mouth intothe instrumenc I tried explaining it once to a group offriends, one of whom knew ofJaki Liebziet and thoughtcircular drumming was the same thin6 which it isn'r.Everyone else, however, just laughed...one should knowbetter than to cast pearls before swine,

- -oiD

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

Withdrawal (196G2)EMANEM 4O2O (1997)

KaryohinChronoscope CPE2OO1-2 (1993)

Part of the pre-history of 70s UK improv is to be

found in the ranks of the Spontaneous

Music Ensemble (and the Musiclmprovisation Company, to a certain extent).Pick up the SME's amazing Withdnwal CD foranother ear-opener, a great history lesson, andsome brilliant photographs 'from the sessions,This was recorded in the mid 1960s for a moviedirected by George Paul Solomos, about a heroinjunky. A genuinely harrowing early free-screechclassic, with some beautiful and unusualcombinations of instruments in the palette, suchas flugelhorn, oboe, vibraphone, and glockenspielall blending in the mournful mix. Karyobin has fora long time been a holy grail of vinyl collectors,being issued on the collectable lsland label - adeal which probably came about through Parker'sfriendship with Stevie Winwood. Both sessionswere produced by one Eddie Kramer, big-nameproducer who worked with Jimi Hendrix;Karyobin in the prestigious Olympic Studios inLondon.

Both records feature Bailey and Parker, plus JohnStevens, Trevor Watts and others who wouldbecome associated with hard-core improvisation- but also players with one foot in the jazz 566ng,such as trumpeter Kenny Wheeler and bassistDave Holland. This is one thing that makes thesedocuments of great interest. How didimprovisation develop in this country? I'm nothere to say it developed in a continuum out offre jaz., but here on these transitional recordsis the sound of a strange halfraray house, ideasand practices in embrTo which would come tofruition in the 1970s. The missing link is an LPcalled Challenge on the Eyemark label,excqssively rare on vinyl and not yet on CD,

Some CDs mentioned above on the Emanem Label as wasthe original Domestic and Public Pieces (only the label wascalled Quark); for an interview with label owner MartinDavidson, look ahead. My personal preference is forrecording made in the 1970s, which seemed a great timefor improv music...but it would be a misake to ignorerecent developments. Bailey and Parkerare survivors, theirart remains imporant Their talent basn't disspated, nordo they try and tnde on past glories. Quite the contntry...

Derek Bailey, Guitar drams'n' bassIapan. AVA\T AVAN 06() l lgq6l

This is a record of Bailey plalng super-fast amplified guitarsolos over a 'backing track'of genuine drum n bass soundsprovided specially for the occasion by DJ Ninj, a Junglist

from Birmingham.,.a simple and effective combination and abloody excellent racket Bailey finds rhythms that arebarely perceivable, asserts his unique personality without ashred of arrogance, and in effect is defying the unyieldingbacking rack to keep time with him. This record induces apainful hyper-awareness of the passing of every singlesecond, simply because Bailey (the fourth dimensionaltraveller) is so intent on exploring the possibilities of eachmusical collision as it emerges and dies.

To me its origins appeared to have sprung out of a severeloneliness, the awfulness of being an improvisor anoneeding to practice or play alone. For a long time Baileymade practice tapes (of himself or other pieces of music, Ithink) to play along with at home. Sometimes sections ofthese tapes would be arbitrarily wiped and drop out atunexpected moments, forcing the player to keep alert atall times. One night he started listening to Jungle piratestations, responding as much to the relentless music as tothe chattering of the DJs - sending out a message to theircrew, advertising gigs or ordering a takeaway pizza on theair. 'The music's constanq but with interruptions', observesBailey. From this I sense a reaching out to some succourfrom the airwaves and somehow finding it in the Junglestations. What appealed most to Bailey was not exclusivelythe music, but the liveliness and chaos of the station, Atape found its way into the hands of John Zorn, whoprioritised it on the massive waiting list of Avant projects.An abortive attempt was made to record it in Birminghamwith Mick Harris, who not only couldnt provide a chairfor Bailey to sit down while playing he seemed unable tomix a live instrument with the backing tape which Ninj hadprepared. (See The Crackling kher section for moreHarris debacles). Finally it was recorded in Brooklyn by BillLaswell. I am well aware this CD was given a warmreception in one area of the music press, as though itsomehow'brought together' two apparendy incompatibletypes of music, and vindicated both. Rather, one should sayit vindicated the good taste' of the journalists who are soproud of their catholic tastes in music.

There is a kind of post-modern mayhem which been afootin music since the mid 1980s, at least. The 'putting

together'aspect is what Eugene Chadbourne practicallybased his career on, melding Country and Western, jazand rockabilly with improvised music. Anothermanifestation of that sickness was Henry Kaiser, whooffered to teach anyone to play'in the Derek Bailey style'via a practice video. I hbve no idea what this means. Baileyis more than a style. lt seems we simply pick things up likerags from the street, nothing is lived, learned or feltthrough the heart.

There was a f ive set promoting Guitar Drums 'n' &ss atThe Garage in 1996. This was excellent and much betterbecause it used a loud backing tape of Jungle music beltedout through a portable ghetto-blaster, complete withdropouts and silent sections (as I say, deliberately kept infor the unpredictability element, so Bailey stays on histoes). lt gave thus the impression of total spontaneity in awa/ the CD didnt quite manage. When this event was stillin the planning stages, Stefan Jaworzyn observed 'l find thisidea most appealing and it strikes me as closer to Bailey'saesthetics than producing a CD with specially composedjungle'. Bailey has won his spurs ten times over forconsummate musicianship, and this project - along withother collaborations with Japanese players Keiji Haino, TheRuins and Altered States - are probably chiefly to keep his

So nfiat ilo you tninkp

own interest goin& rather than trying to 'prove'anFhing

about improv, compatibility with other players, music, hisown abilities or anything else.

Evan Parket's disappointing set with GeorgeIewis @ the ICA in Summer 1997 was nobody's fault,just that the self-generating computer programme keptgoing down. The idea was that a special random-generatedseries of instructions would feed themselves throughmodems into Lewis'electronic geac playlng pre-sets andsounds in such a way tlrat it was almost thinking for itself.Parker was required to think on his feet to keep up withthis digial racing demon, e)<cept when it crashed andsounded like about 20 stuck CDs all playing at once. In facrit sounded more interesting at this point than how it was'supposed'to behave! Richard Sanderson thought it wasfunny that a machine did the same thing an improvisordoes when it runs out of ideas...it leans on the keyboardswith its elbows. Parker, probably more than a little miffedafter the second such crash, fell back on familiar phrases,and sounded like a shell of his former self. On the otherhand From &xophone and Tromboneis a 1980 lncus LPwhich pairs Lewis and Parker, and it's an unbeatable classic.The sax - electronics pairing continues...

Evan Parker and LawrenceCasserley, SolarWindTOUCH rO.3s (r997)

Parl<er's soprano sax processed by Casserley'selectronics on this CD, which is very sweet andeasy on the ear...this may be a good thing if itentices an average chill-out thrill seeker to bendan ear, but what does it say about Evan Parker'sdirection? This is almost like improv for thePortishead listener, who likes music to be littlemore than sounds which are sampled, looped,processed and distressed into pure, arc,freeentertainment A shame if so. because Parker hasalways struck me as being about completecommitment to the processes of playing andpractising exploring the relationship betweenartist and instnrment, and not simply abouteffecting nice sounds in the ether. My preferencewith Parker's diverse work isnt hard to guess..,lrecendy came across one ofthe rare BeakDoctor recordings (Evan hrker at the Fingerhlacel which is intensely harsh, a warbling vibrointenso meisterwerk of inexorable looped notes.It is actually physically difficult to listen to,demonstrating that room-clearing power Parkerwas somewhat amused to find he had. Still, that'snot to say every single Par*er recording has tocome armed in full atack mode - and if you'renot as captious as this listener you're bound tobe pleased by the aerial acrobatics on displayhere. There's even a tribute track to the greatCanadian avant-garde film-maker Michael Snow -'The Central Region' named for one of hisstructuralist cinema masterworks. Interestingly,Michael Snow also made a lilm called New YorkEye and hr Controlwhich has a Free Je-soundtrack on t}e ESP label.

The Sound Proieetor Third Issne

$omc nGU Hooil in the uotGl

It would be a mistake to concentfttte exclusively onbupercars'Bailey and Pa*er; the UK can boast dozens of

great musicians who have improvised, joined at theCompany weeks, added their unigue two pennorth to themusical continuum and released many fine records onlncus, Ogun, SAJ, Lea lctus and other labels. Some othertime then we hope to more than meref namecheck thefollowing more-than-legendaty arnngen drummenhard-working man and all-round saintJohn Stevens, AlexWarl Tony Coa the great drummer Tony axby (whocant get a reissue prognmme from CBS as they want thesame mone)/ they charge for Miles Davis to do it), MaxEasdey, Lol Coxhill, Misha Menglebery, Phil Wachsmann,Barry Guy...some American greats also represented by thisscene include Geo,& Lewis, Steve Lacy, Anthony Braxtonand/ohn Zorn. By all means invest@te records where yousee these names.

In the meantime here's a few releases from the katterlabel in Glasgo4 a truly independent label devoted toguality improv on CD:

Dislocatio n, Carve anothet notchScatter Of CD fNDl-A splendid yawpsome howling from a mysterious Japaneseset of improvisors. Yoshinori Yanagawa on saxophones,Toyohiro Okazaki playing electronics, Fujio Kimura on'electric strings'which sounds like an amplified mattress...on the first suite 'Between the windows of the Sea' partsl-? they stan off like a plastic replica of an autumnalCompany Week but soon pull things their way and turn inan ethnic sounding evocation ofa beautiful royal-blueseascape as rendered by Hokusai. Wooden flutes join theshrieking banshee sax while Kimura's string set emulateswind-chimes. Joined by sampler Syohei lwasaki forthis...'Dislocation'the second suite is 58 minutes of sheeratmospheric delighc The human voice of the saxophonebecomes a comfort in the alienating landscapes ofelectronic washes and droning strangeness. The intensitynever lets up, guaranteeing delirium, epilepsy and nausea ineven the most hardened listener.

Bevan Frangenheim and Noble, TwistersScatter O6 CD, 1996'l cant believe it's all acoustic!'..Some outstanding blowingfrom Tony Bevan on the soprano and bass saxes...flick totrack 6 'Cleaver'for a tour de force bass sax solo worthyof Frank Lowe, Bevan starcing out slow with long droneytones that saw the top of your head off, then suddenlybecoming possessed like a preacher in the pulpit speakingin tongues; you can hear his entire body becomingarticulated with holy spirit as he squeezes out manichonks. Tune in to the Twisters'track for the sound of theTitanic being raised from the ocean floor, near-industrialovertones and harmonics shimmying out rhe bell of hissax urged on by ferocious lashings from AlexFrangenheim's double bass. 'Belly of the Whale'conveysthat genuine sense of tense bewilderment that only therazor-edge of improv ensemble plalng can provide, bothto the listener and the player - there's moments herewhere the players are amazed to be where they are,

57

making these uncertain grunts to each other, the samemixed emotions probably felt by Pinocchio meeting hisfather Gepetto in that very place. Granted, some of thepieces take a while to warm up before they really startcooking and that cheese-grater percussion sound(courtesy Steven Noble) has become a little datedsomehow - but overall this CD yields up real moments offire. A real testament to the legacy of Albert Ayler, toname but one,,,

The XIII Ghosts, Glganti RepffIlcasDestucto BeamScatter O4CD

Intensely annoying this horrible CD opens with belts ofrepellent wacki-nastiness noise antics trying to give JohnZorn or Hanatarash a run for their money, but eventuallysettles down to some decent mournful clarinet passagesnow and again. 45 fucking tracks and 88 minutes of thisinfantile drool to get through. Alex Ward is a precociouskid, a clarinet player who (besides playing in a Messiaenconcert) started atonal improvising in his early teens andwinding up his teachers at school concerts. He never reallygrew up. Wherever he appears at ggs, carrot-top Ward issure to be bragging about the far-out CDs he just boughtand swanking casually about his 'extreme'tastes. Here heinsists on inflicting us with his silly mock-solemn vocalinterjections, absurd track titles like 'Greedy Motorcyclisthas sidecar full of chips', and trash-culture moviereferences by the truckload. He is joined in this byelectronics man Switch, who I take to be a man of tneMatt Wand school - Wand is one half of the irritatingStock Hausen and Walkman combo, Mancunian gets intenton taking the piss out of everything in sight with theirthrowaway sampling jokes on cheap and nasty taperecorders. Also joined by cassette st:r Andru Clare (ofMogazine fame). Nick Couldry, Jim Denley, Tim Hill, EyanThomas and Pat Thomas on a variety of devices andinstruments which in their hands are reduced to thecommon rubble of noisy plaything dribbles. Atrocious, anabomination in the eyes of the Lord. Lovely sleeve paintingthough.

Scatter also does a Dereh Balley release, Drop me

ofrathfith,Scatter 02 CD, some vintage l?86 and1987 solo recordings on his Epiphone Triumph and MartinD 18 guitars. lf you like Bailey you need this one for yourcollection,

Descension, llve illarch 7995Shock Records SYO29CD (l QQll

Another option is this...Descension, comprisingShock assault techniques from guitar and drums duoAscension - Stefan Jaworzyn and Tony lrving -playing with saxophonist Charles Wharf and SimonH Fell on the bass. A nihilistic, anti-music, anti4az.,anti-everlthing rant; poor recording quality, a starktypo sleeve that makes an Incus sleeve lookcluttered. Everything abow it says FUCK YOU tothe listener. lf only it werent such a damned great,adrenalinioosening listen,..this is the cosmiccrossroads Inn of the Damned where all past musicsmeeg not for a polite United Nations conference buta coarse, drunken argument where fisticuffs andbroken furniture are only one pint of Kronenburgaway. Sonic Youth guitar clanging melded with the

The Sorrnd Proieetor Third Issue

Cecil Taylor marathon 'have you got the balls to staythe course'approach (first track is merely nonstoP48 minutes). Guitar feedback overlays with wailingsax howls in sublime moments, the drumming takesthe free-pulse playing of Sunny Murray to a logicalnode ending. You can see this dementia as going outfurther on a limb, or perhaps another way out of thelmprov dilemma. lt's just as limited in its audienceappeal, but artistically in tune with the times.

Ghris Gutler

Pl3 P53ryl199!}Chris Cutler and Zeena Parhins, Shark!ryll229tChris Cutler is not exclusively an improvisor, wearingmany hats that reflect his diverse interests in Per{ect PopMusic, composition, musique concrete, and politicalagitation. All of the above were at least representd by his1970s projects like the band Henry Cow and theassociated Rock In Opposition groups they toured with.The second and third Art Bears LPs remain indeliblemasterpieces of song composition tempered with freeplaying and tape manipulation. Whatever you may think ofhis musig he has at least remained a 'sociable'Socialist, andtried to shade his iddogy into a Capitalist ethos. ZeenaParkins is an incredible harp player with her own history ofpairings, guestings and per-formances in the alternativescene, although not a massive discography of her own justyet...there was a solo CD Nightmare Alleyon Table of theElements. She plays the harp amplified and uses effectspedals. I think she could be absolutely brilliant given theright circumstances, but it's not always possible to tellfrom this CD. Recording somehow sounds a bit flat. Theperformances werent all of the best and for some reasonit starts with the quiet dull ones before it leads into thenoisy interesting ones. Interestingly shows how this musiconce the provenance of a dedicated handful of fans cannow command a full house at the QEH at the South Bankthese days. P53 is one pf Cutler's 'directed'improvisation

projects. This pure noise-making for its own sake and thedevil take the hindmost is not for him it seems. Plans weremade. He gave the players some narrative element to playwith, a role-playing position of sorts, which would directthe performance in a series of overlapping sequences.Creative process is certainly imporant, but a shame thedocumented results are so tame this time around. P53features twin grand pianos played by Marie Goyette andsome other classically trained bozo, Zygmunt Krauze. Theinevitable Otomo Yoshihide turntables and. it has to besaid, adds the most interesting elements, running a closesecond to Lua Glandien and his real-time electronicprocessing of the performances. Another 'putting togetherlexperiment, seeing how the classically trained musiciansfare when you take their sheet music away: answer is, theyjust play fragments of Mozart or whatever, stuff theylearned by heart anyYvay,

5B

Have you any views on improvisedmusic vis a vis Jazz!

lf one has to categorise music, andthere are times when it is useful to, Ithink Free lmprovisation should be ina separate cltegory to laa.. Althoughstrongly influenced by laz, there havebeen other influences and subsequentdevelopments, which have meant thatFree lmprovisation has drop@ mostof the characteristics that make JazJaz. There are inevitable borderproblems whenever one divides an artform up into categories, but this stillshould not totally invalidate thecategories,

Did it grow out of American Jazzmusk or evolve in some other wq/?

Most of the so-called first generationof Free lmprovisers did starc offlistening to and/or playing Jaz. Insome ways Free lmprovisation can bethought of as an evolution of l"n yil

the intermediate stage of Frer-Jan.But there were otherimportant influences from theworlds of composed (and, paceCage decomposed) music, andalso from certain traditionalmusics, Some Freelmprovisers, such as thefi rst-generation Germans,retained considerableresemblances to Free Jaz.Others found non-hierarchicalareas very unlike jaz to work in,notably, in their different ways, AMMand the Spontaneous Music Ensemble.

ls the pairing of Derek Bailey withAnthony Bnxton (the Wigmore Hallconcert) signilicant in this regard?

At that tr'me, very few people(musicians or otherwise) were awareof the considerable body of Freelmprovisation that was taking placemainly in this countn/ and certainother parts of Europe. Braxton wasone of the people who vvas aware,and he went out of his way to includeBailey in one of his concerts. lttherefore seem natural to put thesetwo exploring musicians fromdifferent backgrounds together as aduo, especially as both were keen todo so. Although Braxton is usuallydefined as a Jzzz musician, he works inmany areas, and some of his musicwould seem to have little to do with

laz..

How did this music 'mature'in thel970sl

By the early 1970s (perhaps, the late| 960s), a significant body of free

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

musicians had found their owndistinctive voices, and had developedseveral ways of making musictogetJrer. Although there hassubsequently been considerableevolution, many of these originaldiscoveries are still being utilised.

Has it any more evolving to do!

I hope so.

How would you defend this musicagainst critics who find it a terriblenoise/

Tell them to listen with an open mind.Point them to areas that are lessconventional ly'terrible'.

Why do you like improvl

It gives the musicians the bestopportunity to express themselves. Ifind it to have been the most originaland moving body of music over thelast thirty years. Having said thag I bIno means like everytiing in thatcategory (nor dislike everything else).

What are your views on the scenetoday?

In many ways it is very similar to howit was twenty-five years ago, Thereare a lot of good musicians around,and a seemingly endless trickle of newones turning up, but there is preciouslitde money available. Two differencescome to mind. Musicians now comefrom a far wider range ofbackgrounds/o<periences than theyused to, and there is much moreelecronic technology available forboth making and recording music.Personally, I get ver;r little enjoymentout the way this technology is usedfor making music. I parcicularly likethe sound of unamplified acousticinstruments - if I want to listen toloudspeakers, I can stay at home, Onthe other hand, for recordingcarrying a portable DAT machinecertainly beats carrying oaro Revoxreel-to-reel tape recorders and amixer, especially now that I am not asstrong as I used to be.

What is the 'Naked Charm of MusicRea I is t ica I ly D oc um ented ?'

I like to have records of the music asit is performed, so that it is heard as ifone was sitting in the best seat in theaudience. I generally do not like tohave artificial echo added - | thinksome music benefits from a dryacoustic - and I do not wantover-dubbed string sections or choirsor synthesizers or whatever. (Therehas been some good use ofoverdubbing but I think it is theexception rather than the rule.) lt issatisfying to have completeperformances, but very often aperformance has a good bit and a badbit, so for repeated listening I am allfor editing to leave just the good bit -

not completely realistic, perhaps, buta technique that has produced manyfine collections.

(As for the specific words of mineyou dug up: At the time I was reading

a book about particle physics- something I did everydecade or so to try and keepup with the latest scientifictheories. That was about thetime that quarks werepostulated - hence the'naked charm'- acharacteristic of quarkswhose meaning I have longsince forgotten. As for the

rest - my middle name is Richard.)

Who did the original sleeve notes forDomestic and Public Pieces?

There were not any sleeve notes assuch, Maybe you are referring to the'File Under' sequence - amini-comment of the wodd of musicin general - that I compiled and usedon other LPs. (l had forgotten aboutthat. I must add it to the Emanemweb site - thanks.)

There seemed to be a warmth andhumour there (and in Baileyb vocalpieces on the recorQ which I findsomehow absent from improv today -

would you agreel

I think then as now, there was aspectrum in the world ofimprovisation from humourless musicto musicless humour. Sometimespeople manage to pull off variousdegrees of mixing music and humour -

sometimes the humour destroys themusic, or the two simply do not mix.I often find warmth and humour intoday's performances.

I shon inrcruieuuitnillnltt D[UlDS0ll

59

What was the Unity Theatre (and wasit really destroyed by lirQl

Unity Theatre is a Socialist theatrecompany that goes back to the 1930s,if not earlier. They had an actualtheatre in London between CamdenTown and St Pancras. Starting around1973, they let the Musicians'Co-operative use it on the off night(Monday from memory). The buildingwas burnt down late in 1975, and hasnot been rebuilt. The theatrecompany still exists withow a

Permanent base - my ex-wifeMadelaine (aka Mandy, the other Emin Emanem) recently performed inone of their productions.

What other venues in London playedhost to improv musicl

The Little Theatre Club was anothertheatre that let musicians use it when

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

the USA since there is a largedomestic market there which doesnot like paying extra for imports.Unfortunately, the distributors theretook so long to pay, that we ran intohorrendous cash flow problems. Wedid not enjoy living in the USAgenerally, so we decided to comeback, but by the time we were able to(in 1982), the Tharcher Winter was infull swing so we decided to go toSydney instead. We enjoyed livingthere very much, but found it a bitlimited, so \ /e came back here in1988. (Although Australia had aLabour government for most of thattime, it was run by the virtualThatcherites Hawke & Keating whocomplained that Thatcher was stealingtheir ideas. So Blair is very deja vu foranyone who lived in Australia in the1980s.)

recording.) | do not go along with thecurrent fashion of obscuringeverything. As a long time browser ofLP and CD bins, I find myself noticingitems that have the most importantinformation - the name(s) of theperformer(s) and/or group - inreasonable sized letters near the topof the front. This is not always themost artistic of designs, but it surehelps browsers in record shops.

But then, record labels that far outsellEmanem obviously think otherwise.For instance. a sealed FMP CD hasvirtually no information visible unlikea sealed Emanem CD which has allthe personnel and track details on theback. And then there is Tzadik whichseems to specialise in printing vitalinformation in 6 point gold letteringon a busy silver baclqground. Why dothey bother? Can anyone read this,

it was not actually used as atheatre. There were twoimportant periods when thishappened - 1966-9 and19724 (approximate datesfrom memorT). Also, beforeusing the Unity Theare, theMusicians' Co-operative usedRonnie Scott's Club onSunday evenings (which wasrather bizarre). Othervenues came and went - asthey still do.

What was the role of theICA?

I dont think the ICA had anyrole in presentingimprovisation - has it everdone so? (Maybe the music istoo contemporary.) The late

Jaz Centie Society didDresent some concerts of

without screwing up theireyes and/or brain? (Thereare also certain magazinesthat also insist on printingtext on busy baclqgrounds. Irefuse to attempt to readsuch things. Do they reallywant to damage theirreadership? Or are they justpuffing out the pages withrubbish that they dont wantpeople to read?)

I have nothing specific to sayabout lncus designs - someappeal to me, some don't(One of these years I mustfind time to work out how touse the desk top publishingpackage I bought a year or soa80)

improvisation (such as SME 1974 andBailey solo 1975), and sometimesused the ICA Theatre or Cinema todo so. Other people may haveorganised concerts there too.

THE EMANEM LABEL When did itsart/

I started it early in 1974, although Ihad been thinking about it for a fewyears beforehand. I actually starrdrecording with a Revox (very badly atfirst) about a year before that.

Why has it had so many internationaladdresses?

That's a long story - probably notvery interesting - combining situationsboth under control and out ofcontrol. Here's a shortened version:ln 1975, I thought the label would bemore successful if it were based in

What is the labelb 'mission

stittement'l

To help document and propagategood music, especially that whichother labels would not touch. Thereare many areas of music that I aminterested in, however it seems bestthat a small label concentrates on onearea, or group of areas. Hence the(general) concentration on freeimprovisation, which is perhaps thearea that has least documentation and

ProPagation.

Do you have anything to say about

)/our current CD sleeve art designs(which I think are excellent) ar thoseof lncus rxord sleeves?

Top of my agenda for the CDbooklets and inlays is CLARITY, as itwas for the LPs. (This is also a qualityI like in the actual music and the

What are your views onbriginal freaks'who have to own first

of these recordsl Do youhaye any views on this music fetchinghigh collectorb prices?

All collectors (including myself) are abit irrational - some more thanothers. The original issue thing wasparticularly big in Japan when I visitedthere about ten years ago. Onecollector wanted to know which wasthe original edition of the Lacy soloalbum. I told him, but also told himthat the pressing was much, muchnoisier than the second one - he stillhad to have the original, I saw someout of print Emanem LPs for sale incollectors' shops in Tokyo at quitehigh prices. Unfortunately, none ofthese high prices goes to me nor tothe musicians!

6|}

DEREK BAILEY DoMESTtc & puBLtc plEcEs

solo guitar improvisations 1975-1977 lEfrFnEm'l 4001

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

EMHNEMCOMPACTD'SCS OF UNADULTERATED NEW MUSIC

FOR PEOPLE WHO LIKE NEW MUSIC UNADULTERATED4001 DEREK BAILEY Domestic & Public Pieces (1975-7) solo guitar (acoustic & amplified)

4002 EVAN PARKER & PAUL LYTTON Three Other Stories (1971-4) saxophones, percussion, live electronics, etc, etc4003 SPONTANEOUS MUSIC ENSEMBLE Face to Face (1973) John Sfevens & Trevor Watts

4004 STEVE [-ACY Weal & Woe (1972-3) solo soprano saxophone & quintet with Potts, Aebi, Carter & Johnson4005 SPONTANEOUS MUSIC ENSEMBLE Summer 1967 John Stevens & Evan Parker + Peter Kowald

4006 ANTHONY BRN(TON & DEREK BAILEY First Duo Concert (1974) the complete Wigmore Hall conceft4007 PAUL RUTHERFORD & PAUL ROGERS Roques (1 988) frombone & double bass duos & so/os

4008 SPONTANEOUS MUSIC ENSEMBLE Hot & Cold Heroes (1980/91) John Stevens, Nigel Coombes & Roger Smith4009 EVAN PARKER & PAUL LYTION Two Octobers (1972-5) mostly soprano saxophone, percussion & live electronics

4010 JOHN RUSSELL & ROGER TURNER Birthdavs (1996) acousfic guitar & percussion duos4011 JOHN CARTER & BOBBY BRADFORD Tandem 1 (1982) clarinet & cornet duos & so/os

4012 JOHN CARTER & BOBBY BRADFORD Tandem 2 (1979182) clarinet & cornet duos & so/os4013 DEREK BAILEY Lace (1989) solo guitar (acoustic with a little amplification)

4014 ROGER SMITH Unepected Turns (19936) solo guitar (mostly acoustic)4015 SPONTANEOUS MUSIC ENSEMBLE Quintessence 1 (19734) John Stevens, Kent Cafter, Trevor Wafts, Derek Bailey & Evan Parker4016 SPONTANEOUS MUSIC ENSEMBLE Quintessence 2 (19734) John Sfeveng TrevorWatts, Derek Bailey, Kent Cafter & Evan Patuer

4017 NIGEL COOMBES & STEVE BERESFORD Two to Tanole ('1997) violin & piano duos4018 PAUL RUTHERFORD & ISKRA 1912 Sequences 72 & 73 (1972-4) Bailey, Guy, Nicols, Oxley, Parker, Nley, Watts, Wheeler, etc

4019 PAUL RUTHERFORD The Gentle Harm of the Bouroeoisie (1974) solo trombone4020 SPONTANEOUS MUSIC ENSEMBLE Withdrawal (1966-7) Sfevens, Watts, Bailey, Guy, Parker, Rutherford, Wheeler

MARTIN DAVIDSON 3 Bittacy Rise London NV\17 2HH EnglandPhone: 44 1 81 346 4512 I Fax: 44 '181 37'l 871 0 / Email: EmanemDisc@aol.com / Web site: htg://members.aol.comlEmanemDisc/

Distributed in Britain by HARMONIA MUNDI

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

Sihp1mRbS' -=.-- -= =--1 -- -llUG I lfr:',i",*f s,!:".tr"*ff[iufrT*:"ff,::'.',:",

I to a trusted deputy on standard keyboards. The new

@ Thescratch club, The spitz, East | '|.lly efficiently reffeates and rebuilds Dannv Tavlor's

r,ondon, lrth september ieez -

| iil:H'#[:ir:H fi,[tl::ffi#i"r$:""nFirst their classic '60s LPs make it out of obscuriryonto

I npir"t''n*a outing (although similar beats did form thecD, now the Silver Apples themselves are back. The

I ulli, ir hi-NRG -irrery a loincidencel)lineup has changed - there's a new drummer at Danny ITaylor's stool a-nd a keyboardist fleshes the g.orp orl to a I

lt's sobering to think that when Silver Apples began there

three piece - but their musical identity and siuni are still I would have been few reference points to guide their

alive and well and if anything theyVe matured wirh I experimentation - yet they still managed to produce

Simeon's extended fallow period. I consistendy concise and direct music. A few decades of

At their storming spiu gig they treated us to,superb | lii",lH,:i;:',ffi]i".::::ffil:rill's.fl:Ir.J"renditions of old 'hits" cast in a new light of

:n: , ,. | ""y ""irc"1 rt's not onry obscure outfits rike the Appres

happier-sounding Simeon of the '90s' plus a sprinkling of | *il"t" inn"r"aions are ignored. l,m staggered by the

impressive new material' They still use nominally | "".i". "t

bands who cite the velvets or can as aear-unfriendly whines, bell sounds, oscillating signals and

I i"fl;;" but seem to have learnt nothing from them,unwieldy bass lines as the unlikely componentso{ their

| ;";;;y being a particular blind spot (primal Scream aretunes' which insinuate themselves into your n:"0

,"i1 3o I ir.ri *"it. offenders in this respect). silver Apples old andthe parts which melodic PoP songs dont reach'

^lt't-tn't I i"r, n"ru economy in spades and a dark and edgy music

::'i"iil515i5'-:"i:1ffi;j.til"Y}i,3J,1:',lo,*n, I tr'"r' rik no othe.. Go on, take a bite.

on yourself - another listen and you're crTing our for Imore. lf anything'll make you hunger for aronal music ir's I HARLEY RICHARDSoNthis stuff.

I

62

UoIumGGomulGravlhords Whirlies and Plrrophones:Eryt erim ental Ma sical Insfo am entsBookand Compact DiscByBartHopkinNew York, Ellipsis Arts...ISBN 1-55951382-3g99g)This is a beautifuly packaged CD and book boxed set. Thebook is a mini-survey of strange and unusual musicalinstruments, some past but mostly present, with snippetsof information about the creators of the instruments andhow they arrived at realising their devices. There are somestunning photographs of these, including two beautifulpictures of the Theremin, Futurist Luigi Rossolo's famousintonanumori, and Reed Ghazala's devices resemblingexpensive executive toys. The CD, naturally enough,contains samples of what the devils actually sound like, onetrack apiece - although not everyone is represented,

Bart Hopkin compiled it and helives in California, whence heissues his uhique magazine EMIdevoted to this sort of thing. Theintellectual dilemmas are posed atthe introduction of the book:musical instruments have not beenallowed to evolve, runs thethoerT, due to the constraints ofthe classical orchestra'srequirements. Even mostelectronic instruments cant getaway from the 88-key pianokeyboard, or emulating the soundof extant instruments. Ourresourceful inventors thereforelook to nLw ways of designinginstruments, perhaps improving ona basic model, or reinventingfundamental aspects of thephysical act of plafng. Keiji HainoI think has commented on thebasic limits imposed by muscialinstruments; it's hard to get awayfrom the detirmined movementssuch as hitting plucking scrapingfingering or blowing. His personalsolution was to develop a complexsystem of extreme dance:like bodymovements that would radically alter his whole approachto pfaying the guitar. Not too far away is Godfried-WillemRaes' Pneumaphone here - which requires the player to siton a big inflatable pouffe and thus squeeze air through thereeds and chanters.

But for some reason I find this whole thing intenselyannoying. For mq there isnt really enough art or musicgoing on here. Oh, there's plenty of noveltyStrange Music has a lot to answer for in that department.The people in this book are craftsmen first, musicians

The Sound Proieetor Third lcsue

second (or not at all). Most of the instruments here arewonderful examples of very finished sculptures, orart-objects; some are interesting snapshots of an electricalexperiment in progress, But as to their function and use asmusical instruments, well...perhaps that work still has to bedone. Tom Waits, in his introduction, gave me plenty ofhope in that direction, detailing with relish his collection ofmegaphones and how he plays dumpsters and objects inhardware stores. But whatever you think of Waits, at leasthe's a songwriter with stories and ideas; a studio veteranwho has a notion of what sounds he wants and how to getthem, These inventors for the most part are not sosteped in the inflocible practicalities of the music industry;allowed to indulge their whimsical pursuits, they haveevolved almost like musical Outsider Artists.

Maybe some time in the fwure a musical visionary will pickup the gauntlet and compose whole arias for some ofthese instruments. But I somehow doubt it, because theprojects represented here seem very closed-off,hermetically sealed - the creators have satisfied their ownurges or curiosities, and somehow led themselves into acreative cul-de-sac. You never sense these ideas are goingto lead back into the continuum of music making. A fewquotes from the text will illustrate how precious some ofthese people are...'Building a Guitar is Meditation'..,'lstarted moving into a kind of nurturing or loving space in

the sound'...there are magicalsounds to be heard in smallmetal objects'...'a self-intensifyingweb evolves from thecombination of possibilitesbetween individual functions',Self-indulgent, West Coast-ypiffle.

We make an exception of thegreat Harry Parrch (who isrepresented here), but thaCsbecause he was so exceptional.There was a focussed mission tohis insrument making linked tohis personal philosophy aboutart and life. He needed theseinstruments to realise hismuscial ideas, because he simplywasn't getcing what he neededfrom the conventional

' orchestra. That driven quality,or pioneering vision, issomething I cant detect in mostof the other projects describedhere, interesting or attractive asthe results may be. Rather, itfeels like they just wanted to trysomething a little different, withno idea of what use their novel

devices might be put to. At the end of the day, thecreators here simply arent musician enough to live up tothe promises of their own inventions.

Thus the CD amounts to little more than a fascinatingcatalogue of some weird sounds youVe never heardbefore. Fun the first time, but ultimately very unsatisfying.

turt Hopkin, PO Box 784, Nicasio, CA 94946, USA

63

ResonanceVolume 5 Number 2,199752 oo, ISSN 1352-772X

I recommend a squint atthe Retuning Radrb issue here -

more than likely a personal triumph for commissioningeditor Phil England, who also conducted most of theinterviews from a starting point of 'a naive enthusiasm forartists'engagement with radio'. This fascinating survey isthe result. Some of the pieces have hardly anphing to dowith music, but everything to do with ideas - and above all,the idea of freedom. Perhaps broadcasting to thousands isthe most effective and subversive way to affect peoples'minds? The overall theme is the untapped power ofbroadcasting and here are extremists, terorists, radicals,pranksters, pirates of the aiG conceptualists and weirdosof everT possible stripe who are doing their best tomaximise that potential. lf you ever thought one of thosewacky Radio 4 plays (with overlapping voices and musicfrom the Radiophonic Workshop) was somehow'experimental', you're in for a surprise. Unfortunately thesefreedom-mongers - be they playful anarchists orcommitted Marxist libertarians - can be thwarted by thevery people they are proposing to'liberate'. Thus if Don

Joyce proposes an uncensored freedom-of-speechphone-in for his listeners, 90% of them are flummoxed bythis notion and probably the best they can come up with ison-air obscenities. Still a lot of conciousness-raising to bedone, it seems, Then, there's the prankster element: LanceDann (Noiseless Blackboard Eraser) ricked the public intophoning in their ideas for a bogus David Bowie project. Anelaborate nasty joke which proves very little, and hiscontempt for humanity is revealed out of his own mouth:'Every day I'd just go in and download these lunatics anddesperate, sad people that thought they were DavidBowie, or wanted to be David.'

Also of interest - the story of John F Muir, a producerwho tried to do something different at the BBC, includingthe early Radio I show Nlifr Ride...rhe very depressingidea that'culture' no longer matters at all in the Western20th century is put forward by the Belgian Fluxus artistWillem de Ridder. More positively, he encourages a formof (albeit absurdist) activism in the usually passive radioaudience,iwith his semi-confrontational, subversivestrategies...Peter Lamborn Wilson is an Americanbroadcaster, very politically aware and caught up in everTLeftist's dilemma - 'the media have become an exactmirror image of Capital...Capital is structured as a chaosand media is structured as a chaos.',.. and for you diehardswho still want musiq Keith Rowe's stories of his use ofthe shortwave radio in AMM performances are highlyencouraging and inspiring. The use of the found objectinterested him from his Art Student days and of course itcontinues as a valid aesthetic everywhere today, althoughhe traces its origins to the early l6th century. He usedradio samples transparently and sparingly and when he did,magic moments and joyously synchronous events were theorder of the day.

This ish is a bit pricey ({7.00) as you're likely paying forthe CD taped to the cover, which for me was a taddisappointing - not quite as disturbing as the texts hadpromised. Still, thematically and conceptually here's one ofthe best issues from this LMC periodical.

London Musicians Collective 3.6 Lafone House I l-13Leathermarket Street London SEI 3HN

The Sonnd Proieetor Third Issue

64

Charles Hayward, Bscapefrom Earope: trlve in JapanVolume OneLocus Solus (RecommendedRecords Japan), LSR OOI (1997)

A genuine original is drummer, singer,tape-manipulator and keyboardsmanHayward, his career spanning fromThis Heat through The CamberwellNow in the 1980s. to becoming ahvourite of the European improvscene, for example as part of RegularMusic and Les Batteries whoperformed at the M.l.M.l. Festival inFrance in-1986. Charles Haywardrecently took to peddling hiseccentric voice and instrumentationone-man band to Japanese listeners.This decent linle CD documentssome of it (and there's better still tocome on the 2nd volume, with KeiiiHaino, Otomo Yoshihide and PeterBrocmann). Hayward strikes me asendorsing and living the kind ofuser-friendly Socialism that you or Icould happily live with. Each lyricembodies a cry for fair play or justice,or questions modern sacred cowswith a healthy scepticism. Witness thedark sarcasm on 'Queen TermiteMilk':'lt's all righc.l'm a social worker..and I know when to intervene!' Hesings to me of another way of life,..butI ignore it, I choose to ignore it" Theonly trouble | find that half the forcehas gone these days; Hayward1997-brand is a bit fluffu like the Ken

The Sound Proieelor Third Issue

Loach of Raining Stones as against theKen Loach ol Cathy Come HomeHe'll never write another lyric asbleak as 'Not Waving But Drowning'or'Twilight Furniture', both sofraught with concrete images ofisolation; as if to confirm my fears, he

lelds up rereads of both those ThisHeat favourites here, skipping abouthalf of the original texts as though hiscomputer.memory had wiped themclean. Revisiting the past then, putshim in the unfortunate position ofsome kind of 'alternative'karaoke

singer. Luckily some of the new lyricalmaterial is quite good; and the musicis as punchy as ever. His drummingstyle is just brilliant, and the ingenuityand simplicity whereby he manages toaccompany himself live, with apesand melodica. wins full marks forinnovation. Highly effective in thisarea is the use of bagpiping urpes on'Contrary Warp'and the disturbingvoice whirlpools on 'Not Waving. Butyou could argue Hayward is at hisbest when interacting with othermusicians - and the final track'Creosote' really carches fire.lmprovising with Makoto Nomura atthe piano and melodica and AkiraToyonaga on the guitar, Haywarddrums up a storm and magics upsome vital seconds of thoseunpredictable dynamics and tensenesswe love him for.

His Name ls Alive, Stars onESP4AD 6010

His Name ls Alive are more fun thanthe averagre 4AD act, and every nowand then throw up something totallyunexpected which puts a welcomespanner in the otherwise over-politeapproach to production. A lot of thelistening pleasure comes from theband imitating and distorting stuffwhich other people would be contentjust to sample and repeat. On lly'all',birds tweetering along randomly inthe background leap into life and sartsinging in tune with the melody, thenone ofthem picks up a set ofbagpipes. There's another sweet trackwiere parts of 'Good Vbrations'arefaithfully reproduced, but throwntogether in a different order toapproximate His Name's idea of aSmilevack. This is an open-mindedattitude to music, but commonplacethese days - most bands water downthe music they're 'embracing' andHNIA are no exception. They usesud dub and techno but you'd bebetter advised to stick with thesource records. One exception - andthe strongest tune - is the themesong'Home', which undergoes threeradically different incarnations. Thethird ends the record trumphantly,starting as a four-track demo thantransforming into an all-out gospelnumbe6 then it all goes wrong as U2

llisGutator'$

65

enter the studioo and whip up thechoir into hallelujah-Lord cliche. ThenHis Name's drum machine steps in anknocks them back into line.

ln common with other 4AD releases.the sleeve is designed by VaughanOliver. I cant undersand why thisguy gets any work - he has no eye forcomposition, a taste for emptyimages, and he throws fonts aroundlike a 3rd-year graphic design student.I guess I also hold him part-guilty(along with I D magazine'1 for thecurrent preponderance of cluttered,superimposed images. Delve insidethe booklet and you'll find abewildering photo of someone aboutto take a spanner to a luminescentcardboard star - nice to seesomething that suggests a story,rather than an Argos catalogue!

HARLEY RICHARDSON

Loren MazzaCane Connorsand Suzanne Langille,CrncibleIYYC, Black Label records,

4t!229)Depressing..,comes over like somekinda urban folk music althoughConnors is no string-picker to rankwith our own Bert Jansch or ArchieFisher; wasted by the acid of punkhistory his guitar phrases are mostlytrite and aimless, only given anyweight by amplification, and he wontkeep time with himself. Nor canSuzanne Langille sing worth a darn,barely able to suggest even thewhisper of a melody or projectmeaning.f;om her dull lyrics.Atrocious recording is (probably)kept deliberately flat, to alienate thelistener so you too can share in theartists' feelings of emotionlesssterility. The two never perform as aduo on any single track; it might havebeen halfway inter€sting to put themtogether, although Connors' melodiesoccasionally seem to sugest a ghosdyreprise of those of his partner, Thisseparation compounds the sense ofalienation behind Crucible Still, youmight want to persevere; it's almostas good as a Folkways recording ofsome clapped-out rural blues singerreminiscing about his days on thebayou, and you know how desirablethose records are.

The Sound Proieelor Third Issue

"A genGr{e GDfrealnNrslroal

hL:rtorr;rernbedded.Lne\raer:tr trDlrra,EeIre lreelg off

tlre firete---"

Bob Drake, trIttleBlackIralnUSA, Crumbling Tomes Archive(Nitre-Encrusted Records) CTA

sll229)What John Zorn is to the saxophoneand iaz", Robert Drake is to theguitar, banjo and rdmerican folk music.That said he's not as crazy as Zorn,but keeps switiching styles - Countryand Western, Bluegrass, West Coastpsychedelia, even a touch ofpost-punk scratchings, which sur-facein and out of these per{ecdyconstructed and composed poppytunes. There's a sinister edge too - hefashions a patchwork quilt and trims itwith black lace. To say Drake is aproficient picker would beunderstating the case; he's a mastercraftsman ofthesteel strings, thestring instrument he cant play aintbeen made. and there's a sense of realmusical history embedded in everTphrase he peels off the frets. Mostlyinstrumental, but The UnattendedFuneral' has a lyric; it continues atradition of American death ballads.yet adds a melancholic post-moderntwist worthy of Will Oldham as itdepicts an empty grave inNowheresville and the decalng coffinof the poor guy they forgot toburT...because'nobody remembers'.The overall sound is fleshed out bydrums, bass, violin and keyboardwork, recorded at home to produce avery polished and engaging 43minutes. Evocative children'sbooklike sleeve painting of a rockymountain nightscape, depicts a trainshining its light through the nightwhile warched by some vigilant beasts.Perhaps this is how Drake himselffeels - a lone beacon in the coldlandscape of modern America. Thesecond solo LP (the first was WhatDay is h) from this American odditywho was also in Denver band theSUUs, recorded 2 CDs of minimalsongs with Suzanne Lewis as Hail(these could be interesting), playedwith The Thinking Plague and mixed

the fast-paced enerEetic (EC) Nudesrecord which I very much care for,All of these are available in the ReRMegacorp catalogue last time Ilooked.

fim Sauter, I)on Dletrichand Thurston Moore,BarefootlntheEeadUS, Forced Exlrcsure FE-015g2ggtThurston Moore proclaimed his loveof atonal free jaz. by aligning himselfwith this project (recorded in 1988)and adding his guitar to the great wallof sax erected by Jim Sauter andDonald Dierich. The latter two areAll-American Heroes of the Honkworking for years as two-thirds of thehnastic Bortetomagus, and arecneators of such closely-knit andintensive free music that they havesuccessfully cleared my house ofunwanted guests many a time. DonMiller was the other third, he playedelecric guiar in that highly unusualline-up, so these two mad reedmenhave had no difficulty in swallowingThurston whole or wiping his electricfeedback off the face of the earth withtheir twinned-bell arrack. Forgive anindelicate image, but sometimes theirmighty saxes assume the proportionofenormous phalluses, huge andfecund, making Sauter and Dietrichinto pagan fertility gods like the CerneAbbas giant. (So much for the oldguiar - penis substitute nonsense -

these puffers are the real men!) Theiroerformances here however can bespacier than on their relentlessBorbetomagus records, giving someroom to breath; check out the eerie'On the Phrase ?ss Backwards" 'for

a spooky high-pitched drone delirium,although if it's all-out free blowing youneed, then 'Concerning The Sun As ACool Solid'is the l8-minute blastoidtranscedenal wor*out for you. Thisis the way treeiaa. ought to be,unencumbered by any nonsense like

L,Hi;r'irir::un'" or boring ord

Sonic Youth are nearly superstarsthese days, yet continue to sporttlreir avant-garde credentials whichthey pick up like old clothes fromSalvation Army stores. Thurston drewup a list of Top Ten Free Jazz recordsfor Gnnd RoSal maguine #2recently; his choices were impeccableand he knows the scene, but anotherside of it was him boasting of theimpossible viny' rarities he's managed

66

to snag. Still, that's pretty uncharitablebecause the guy can also play free -

and not just buy his way into it.Thurston acquits himself with honouron these tunes. He propels thingsalong with chuntering guiar on 'All

Doors Look Alike', adds patented

langly slidey noises on'Tanned Moon',drapes feedback everywhere like ablack velvet shroud, and there ismuch humour and glee in the entireevent, including witty song titles like'The Date-Reduced Loaf. Add a fineMax Ernst collage cover and you'vegot a near perfect package l'd say. Asthe sleeve note puts it, Two free menmeet a slave,..everTone goes homebarefoot'.

Itmber Asylvm' The NataralPhilosophyoftrovePennsylvanla, Release RR6ess-2 (19971

Like label-mates Trial of the Bow,Amber Asylum are a bit too tastefuland fey overall, but a sentimentaltwerp like myself can sometimes bemoved by the poignancy summonedup on 'Looking Glass', one weepyinstrumental the musicians thought fitto reprise. Kris Force, Annabel Leeand Martha Burns form a string trio(2 x violins + cello) and play thesesimple and slow-moving minor-keyvery introspective tunes, accompaniedby a Classical guitar. The introspectjveelement probably comes fromcomposer and vocalist Kris Force,who is one velvet collar away frombeing a sadder, straighter version ofKate Bush. She also covers 'Poppies'

by Butry $inte-Marie. On the otherhand, she added her skills to a coupletracks on the last Swans CD. Perfectlistening for a fogy November day. lfyou like Pre-Raphaelite paintingchances are you'll like this..just dontexpect another Nico Chelsea Girh.

rhBand, ThirdorderParasltumCalifornia. Drunken Fish

W)One of the principal dynamic effects Iassociate with tecnho music is thecontrasting peaks and troughs of theoscillating signals. rhBand areemphatically NOT a techno band - nodrums for a start! - but they uselayers of these occiting oscillations toexcellent effect. rhBand are a quart€twho perform their improvisations liveto tape; they're remarkably attuned to

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

each other's moves and when theyturn up the dial in unison, it can feellike they're reaching in through yourears to pull your stomach outthrough your head. Underpinned withrich, bassy distortjon, the totalexperience is topped with eerietreated sounds. When rhBand turnthe dials up to ten they'll have youleviating three feet above your bed.

HARLEY RICHARDSON

Iotal, Buffin' the CelestfuIMaffinRural Electrificatlon Programme

Strange things are afoot down on thefarm. The animals are restless. Acockerel leads a rebellion against thehuman oppressor, takes a chainsaw tothe barn, then sets it alight" Thehrmer flees and the animalscommence to dismande the place -

chaos ensues for x minutes.

Total are John Godbert and MatthewBower. a duo who use and abusetraditional instruments (violin, reeds,piano, guiar) as well as the occasionaltape loop to fashion painful sounds ofdevastation for our listening pleasure,This kind of abstract music is a filmwithout pictures - you wonder wherethe sounds have come from and tryand attach visual associations to makesense of them. However the clashingand une><pected sonic combinationsdont fit any story you know so yourbrain is forced to invent a new one. lncase you're scepical and wonderingwhat kind of plot or characterdevelopment there is in my litdefarmyard storyline above (or how itcould sustain my interest for thelength of a CD), think of it more likea musical equivalent of a Breugelpaintin& packed with little incidentsand details on a theme.

On this CD, JG and MB buff thecelestial muffin with sevenindistinguishable (more or less) tracksof noise. Which is not to say thatthere's no light or shade here. Thelow-fi recording technique (l wouldguess that they turned everything upto eleven and stuck a mike in themiddle of the room to let it pick upwhat it could) means that instrumentsdrop in and out of audibility accordingto the laws of physics, rather than thewhims of a mixer. This could e><plainthe sense that there's a lot moregoing on than you can hear, thefeeling of being an onlooker. I triedplaying this in the background while I

got on with some household chores,but found that it kept demanding myfull attention; it requires that you fullyimmerse yourself in the busy-ness ofit all. Go back and find yet more in it,if you can listen to this kind ofabrasiveness at all.

Hungry for more narrative? There'st}re name of the record label /'project', Rural ElectrificationProgram, and the great cover drawingof a demonic-looking creaturereaching towards the celestial muffinof the title. A black sun spittingneedles of black light into the slq.That's pretty much the story injectedinto my mind whenever I listen tothis.

HARLEY RICHARDSON

Conact Runl Electrification Prognmat 67 Holborn Hill, Millarn CumbriaLAIS sBL, UK

"Tlre-;yran lra.rreyorr lerrtta.tLngtJrree feet

a.brzeEforrr3Ited.---"

Barbara 1|f.anni'ng, 7272Matador Records. OLE 221(r99?)

You must hear'The Arsonist Story',the tense 19 minute narrative in songwhich opens this record. Lyrically it'se><tremely inventivq phrases filledwith deft twists and turns and anintelligence you rarely find these days;thematically, it's vircually an expansionof Brian Wilson's 'Fire' segment fromSmile.ln place of the cellosapproximating fire sirens on 'Mrs

O'leary's Cow', here we have thechants of'Fire! Fire!'over the urgentinstrumental riff 'Fireman', andgenuine fire sound effects. In thenarrative, Manning oudines thebehaviour of an alienated teenaterwho can only express his feelings bysetting fire to buildingp; she tells astory, but her interest lies inexploring the character's inner space.She akes 40 seconds to tell us whatthis guy sounds like playing the pianoas though the character himself hashelped to make the record! Thefragments of his cracked psyche aresuggested in 'Evil Craves Attention'-'fire is his drink'...and the hopelesslyblind parents mourn communicationbreakdown in 'Our Son'. (Otfier

67

listeners have noted the Arson' punhere). He retreats to his bedroom(another Brian Wilson image'ln MyRoom'), sinking further into aclaustrophobic psychosis -'my roomis l0 by 10, I'd love to watch it burn'.Throughout these songs, musical andsound effects interpolations becomeincreasingly dark; electronic swathesenhance a phrase here and there, untilthere's the all-out concrete tapesection prepared by Jim O'Rourke,linking the body of the piece to the 7minute coda. O'Rourke's disturbingsound collage of fire and cracked icesuggests the warehouse fire and afrozen lake into which the protagonistsinks. In the sublime 'Trapped andDrowning', we hear only Manning'stnrncey guitar strums, a monotoneorgSn and a mournful trumpet as thehapless character wails the best thingyou could do...is not come to myrescue', This suite is filled with someof the most poignant images ofisolation lVe heard for a long time - itgives singer-songwriting a new leaseof life. Manning's engaging voice andobvious honesty are a breath of freshair; the rest of the LP is great too,she's a fine guitarist althoughsometimes her backing band,especially the drummer, dont do a lotfor me. To me The Arsonist Story'called for a Van Dyke hrksarrangement, but perhaps that wouldmake it a bit too precious. Manningused to be in various American bandslVe never heard of, including SF Seals,World of Pooh and 28th Day, but isaPParently no strunger to soloprojects. Also available on vinyl as athree-sid$ LP.

Spaceheads, RoandtheOatsldeThese Records, TIIESE 13CDsw)One of those rather annoyingmodernistic bands who speak oftrossing genres' of music, therebyupsetting many a purist along the way.Andy Diagram comes from aneccentric rock background - in the1980s he was in the DiagramBrothers and Manchester-basedDislocation Dance, and played with

James. He blows trumpet throughvarious old clunky analogue effectssuch as echoplog harmoniser andphase shifter and is not afraid to letrip with pretry melodies and funkyriffs, at times stumbling intoelectric-period Miles Davis soundalike

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

territory, Richard Harrison drums andsometimes uses foreign objects tomake a percussive racket like alow-rent Tony Oxley; he comes at itfrom more of a jaa. baclground,having been inspired in that directionby a Ronnie Scott TV show in the1960s. The pair ofthem have beeninvolved in various semi-hiparrant-gardish proiects, for emmplewith singer David Thomas (as TwoPale Boys), and enjoy greater financialsuccess on the European touringcircuit than in this countqy. Havingseen them live at the QEH supponingDerek Bailey and the Ruins, I foundtheir novelty wore off very quicklyand they didnt do an awful lot totranscend the limiations of theirsound, or their essential mediocrity.Seconds of a trumpet blast or a bit ofnoise can be sampled and then loopedto make a backing rack a ricknabbed from dance culture; this cansometimes work quite well, only tobe ruined by Andy Diagram who cantresist adding a clever toody trumpetflourish over the top of it, indulgingand echoing himself into a mockery ofgood taste. This CD is slightly betterthan all that piffling blarney, but I canonly manage about 2-3 tracks at atime before, like a creme caramel, itmakes my fillings ache. lt wasrecorded from live shows and radioperformances in the USA in 1996, hassome witty real-life documentary tapesamples in between tracks, andmailart superstar Mark Pawson didthe dinky limited silkscreenedhandstamped CD case.

Hovercraft, Vagus Nerve /De- Orbit B atn l2t I remlx byScannerBlast First, BFFP 1345 (1997)

Hovercraft, that general lynon-descript guitar trio from Seattle,have taken a marginally moreinteresting turn in this twelve-incheraided by Robin Rimbaud and his Black& Decker grinderette. There's achill-out side and a nasty side, thelatter of which | find more appealingprincipally because you can hardlymake out what the band are doing atall. Whatever contribution they madeas source material has been largelyeffaced by Scanner's malarkey.However, given Hovercraft's rating inmy estimation, and that Scanner's glibtechno-flippancy leaves much to bedesired, the meeting of the twodoesnt add up to a treat deal. lCs a

bit like deep-frid piza, a chip shopdelicacy reputed to be much favouredin Glasgow; a hunk of lardy pastrysmeared with processed cheese andtomato kerchup, is dipped in batterand thrown into six inches of boilingfat; what was an unhealthyproposition to begin with is,amazingly, made even worse.

"ilfrr:rLaallfoneethat ar3e

Panrt of therUf6f,6rUrlndE

Atman, PersonalForestCalifornia, Drunken FlshRecords, DFR-34 (1997)

Atman are an improvisational trio ofmusicians involved in the Polish DeepEcology moyemenL Their reasons forliving permeate into their music, youcould never separate the two. MarekMarek and Piotr have been playing inthe forest together for 20 yearstrying to learn the universal musicallanguage. Moondog said it's taken him50 years to find the musical tonesthat are part of the MegaMind. Thesetones put the player in touch withand a part of everything in theuniverse. Atman use these tones too.Some of the instruments heard on /Personal Foresr include: variouswoodwind instruments, Jews harp,polish dulcimer, sitar, zither and evenTibean liturgical instruments! | wouldrecommend this CD to everyone, themusic is very atmospheric andpowerful and never follows expectdpatterns. The music has been createdwith the highest ideals in mind, whichmakes a change from the rest of uswho play instruments to get peopleto like us! Atman are an inspiringgroup. ln fact you c:rn even attend aforest workshop with them. Thereyou can make your own instrumentsand take part in a 24 hour musicalceremony. lf anyone would like to goto Poland with me please let meknow OK?

ANDREA B

Voltolux, VoltolaxBrenen, Mambo Records 1997

The Hayfever (German music fanzine)house band, managing some prettydamn convincing retro Space Rockgr.ritar jamming overlaid with

oa

occasional modern electro segments.It seems they can get really carriedaway into the thunderous, noisierrealms when they play live...this studioLP may not capture much fire in theirperformances, but there are somereet tasry episodes from leadinstruments soloing away into thezone of digital delay and mono-synthsquawks. lf you feel the need for70s-styled GongJike plalng (andnobody will blame you) you can do alot worse than this. Although not inthe same inventiveness stakes as Can.whom they namecheck they putanything on the Kranky label in itsplace.

Electroscop, EomemadeElertroscope, Wurlitzer f ukebox,

w,Electroscope are the esoteric Scottishduo of Gay'e Harrison and JohnCavanagh. They are pretty much offexploring their own privateobsessions in their own way in theirown time and on their own. They useold analogue tape recorders rescuedfrom skips to record quietish clarinet,keyboards and guitar. I hear very fewgroups that I cant throw in with a'trend'or into a dismissive box.Believe me, Electroscope are one ofthe very few that I'd describe asunselfconscious, fascinated and odd.Touches (only touches) remind me ofMovietone, Pearls Before Swine,Nico's harmonium and maybe theVelvets track'The Gift' (John's moodyspoken ribute to Joe Meek). Theyare the real thing a quiedy individualgroup wlilch sadly will go over mostpeople's heads.

ANDREA B

Yo Ia Tengo, f Can Eear theEeartBeatlngas OneMatador Records OLE 222-2(r99?)

Rather parchy offering from thisusually dependable favourite guitarcombo. fn f 989 their PresidentLPheralded a new direction for thepreviously une><ceptional Yo La Tengo- suddenly they were a superior indiegr.ritar pop band with a power{ul anderpansive sound. I assumed at thetime this was the result of some kindof studio trikery - | later discoveredthey could reproduce it live, it wasjust that they'd developed a particularway of using effects pedals. Sincethen, theyVe expanded their rante

The Sound Proiector Third Iscue

with each release, bringing countrymusic ambient and even rave withinthe scope of their guitar-drums-organset.up, the expanded playing time ofthe CD format giving them space toexplore, mix and match their differentstyles. But they've also becomepatchier with time, allowing weak andlazy rehashes of old ideas creeping inamongst the stronger material, Withsome selective programming of yourCD player, you can turn this into anexcellent LPJength disc. AutumnSweater' is the immediate standout,with the military snap of GeorgiaHubley's drums locking the sinisterrepeating organ figure into place.Then there's 'Moby Octopad'withbassist James McNew (l think) addinga beautiful, delicate singing componentto the already formidable roster ofvoices. I thought I'd had my fill of lraKaplan's obligatory feedbackworkouts, but in YVe're an AmericanBand'he's tied to a melody whichforces him onto crazier ground thanwhen he's in free-form mode,

HARLEY RICHARDSON

Broadcast, WorkandNonWork

rBlP.g:3ggglBroadcast seemed to emer3e from asticky chrysalis fully formed. Thiscompilation of their first three EPs isso sure of its own elliptical cool andconfident layering of synthetic soundyou wonder if this Birminghamfive-piece single-mindedly refinedthese space-age pop structures longbefore sitting their GCSEs. Naysayerswill point out t}rat suchbubbling-moog meets icy-femme-voxstuff couldnt have e><isted withoutthe influence of the ubiquitousStereolab. Fair enough, the'Lab wereoriginal patrons via their Duophonicimpring but there any majorconnectjons end. Broadcast reject theairy Euro-flavour of their pals infavour of an appealing provincialgraininess. Many of their tunes andcut-up instrumentals echo UK 60sblack and white TV serials like DangerMan znd Edgar Wallace, all stabbingharpsichord motifs and moody JohnBarry atmospherics. The perfect foilfor Trish Keenan's res@ed andrestrained singing. Buried halfiaray backin the mix you can almost picture herin an olive acrylic polo-neclgmumbling halistic observations asshe stares out at night-time traffic.lmpressive and accomplished,

Broadcast's debut could well prove to

f*:f *a"-follow defi ning

JOHN BAGNALL

Iabradford, MimedlanaranlaBlast Flrst BFFP l44CD (1997)

Mainly an instrumental mood-exerciseset but the treatment of the vocal onthe sixth track is suMued anddistorted in a way that lets you knowin no uncertain terms that the singeris a mysterious, sinister and troubledkinda guy..-a Mam Johnson move thatsugests there's a few The Therecords in his collection. This deviceis often overused on records to signal'alienation'. and its unthinkingappearance here is emblematic of thepoor attitude of the whole record,Apart from a sound like scraping acymbal (interestingly used as a rh)rthmrack on the sixth track), there is litdesigr of anything imagfnative about thisdisc. lt's refreshing to hear modernbands making use of violins, stringsand piano, instruments not usuallyassociated with a rock context - stepforward Tindersticks or Belle andSebastian. both of whom are OKalthough I personally find thatcontrivd scene a bit of a blind alley.However Labradford for their partcant come up with a decent tune, nordo they have sufficient imagination todo anything special with the delicatearrantements theyve taken suchtrouble over. A big differencebetween them and Martin Denny,Arthur Lyman and co is that thoseeasyJistening arrangers were at leastmasters of the sweet melod.Granted. we welcome morealternatives to loudness in modernmusic (this quiet disc is thus a relieffrom thumping dance music) butLabradford's lamebrain approach isnta successful one. And if I ever hearthat e><pansive Ry Cooder-sryle slideguitar used to sugest'atmosphere'again, f'll tape over my copy of ParisIexas. The coup de grace for thislistener was the final long track withits banal Play School image of aHawaiian island paradise (gendydescending >rylophone no@s = atrickling stream, you get the idea), theonly surprise being that Labradfordresisted the tempation to add thecliched sound of breaking surf. Justhow'alternative' is this supposed tobe?

HARLEY RICHARDSON

69

Aqueousand Roedelius,MeefrngtheMagnsryTwo musos of the 'tasteful'

persuasion with their very expensivesynthesizer suites have managed tohook up with German big*uyHans-Joachim Roedelius. This CD isthe result, twittering in your face withits electronic sounds ranging from thepleasant and twee to the unbearablynaff, with very little in between.Andrew Heath and Felix Jay wereclearly thrilled at 'meeting the magus',and I suspect their awed respect hasparalysed their creative forcessomewhat. As to Roedelius'motivation, who knows; it's a far cryfrom his Eno collaborations, and aneven further one from Cluster. Felix

Jay brought his black boxes to playwith Roedelius on state in Londonl9llll97, and his contributions didntadd a great deal then, either.

TrialoftheBow, frlteofPassageRelease RR 6950-2 (r996)

Dont bother buying this, it's far tootasteful and pseudo to have in yourhome. But there's one nice littleethereal droney track called The Eyreof Awakening'which I spin now andagain; expect it to be sampld byLoop Guru or a canny DJ before longeither that or these geeks will beplaying on Sting's next LP. Trial of theBow are two harmless Australianclods who create this 'sensual, tribalmusic' utilising both ethnic andmodern:hstruments. Bleah.

Fiano Magic, PopalarMechanlcsChe 2rO2 (19971

Dont throw flimsy sub-categories atPiano Magic! Popular Mechanrbs is nota piece of lsolationist Electronica,though lengthy passages consist ofpure machine-stress crackle. This aintsynth pop either, even if rinky dinkKraftwerkian melodies sprout upwhen abstraction momentarily petersout. Then there's Concrete-stylenatural sounds and quirky femalemonologues about lathes, Raleighbikes, logarithms and baking...

Disparate yet somehow seamless,this first Piano Magic disk begs to beheard in its entirety - as an evolvingsoundscape. lf there's a unifying moodit's one of mysterious domestic

The Sound Proieetor Third Issue

quietude. f'laybe those anonymousboffins (a duo?) are heirs to the weirdgentility of the BBC RadiophoincWorkshop? Their 7" For Engineers(Wurliaer Jukebox WJ25) soundedlike the tinkerings of two amiableelectricians in a potting shed.Whatever your choice, you shouldntregret taking a detour down PianoMagic's garden path.

JOHN BAGNALL

StephenFellows, MoodXEnglish Electric Records, CSA

391-gg)K'rel, AdAstaDead Ernest DERNCD 1l (1997)

Curious...Fellows, some of you mayremember, was the flangeJovingguitarist in 1980s group The ComsatAngels, support act at many a duff gig.Here he turns in a CD's worth ofAmbient / Space Rock solo studioexperiments. An artist developing hisinnate talents for electronica or acynical cash-in on the latest fads?Either way, this heap of helpings isoverlong where an EFs worth mighthave been acceptable. Each track is atwo or three minute stab in the dark(one of them using a cigarette lighteras a sound source - prettyavantgarde huh?); everphing suggestsa rather mediocre talent switchingrestlessly between gadgets in the veryexpensive train set ofthe recordingstudio. Only a couple of tracks 'Take

4' and YVhoosh Parc Two'cross thethree-minute barrier and begin todevelop but not far enough intoYVhoosh' territorT. Nothingobjectionable, but singularlyunspectacular.

Krel's Ad Astn is an unpretentiousdyed-in-the-wool retro item, heavilyinfluenced by the Hawkwind school of70s Space Rock and plugs into anentire subculture of fans who lovethis style of music (and probably littleelse, one assumes). Played mostly byMartin M of Manchester. here arecomfortingly familiar monosy'labicpower chord loop riffs, chimingacoustic guitars, phasing effects andoodles of cosmic synth tones, Can beconvincing enough when he stays inthe groove, but half the force is lostwhen the beat stops dead to let thetrack segue rather clumsily into inertsynth washes while the creator stareswistfully into the sunset. Other tracksalmost resemble the kind ofbackground music used in the

Discovery Channel, or by PolytechnicMedia students attempting to emulatesuch films. One Hawkwind is probablyenough for this country; they're likeour Grateful Dead in terms of adedicated legion of blinkered funs,though nowhere near as interestingmusically. From the Star Trektypebce on the cover to the banalchocolate box photographs, there'snothing in this package to surprise orenlighten you, but it is graced with anunassuming charm (despitepretentious sci-fi lyrics, Martin is nota pompous ego-ripping soloist) whichwins hands down over the cynicalcareer-move flavour of Mood X.

Sophia, ElxedWaterThe Flower Shop RecordingsFLOWCD OO4

I like a good serving of depressingmusic as much as the next maladjust,but it's hard to be affected by thelikes of Sophia. The message of RobinProper's lyrics seems to be simply'lifeis unfuir', but he expresses thiscommonplace truth in extremelymundane and poindess terms. Thelyrics read like the work of a doursixth-former cataloguing theirmisfortunes, lf Daniel Johnston'swords are a positive and catharticexpression of pain (for bothperformer and audience) thenSophia's is a humourless and self-pityigdrain on everyone's energies, Theirmusic is a stumbling block too, withthe band's cod attempt to bemelancholic, sketching in songssoullessly with a mix of lazyfinger-picking and slighdy detunedacoustic and electric guitars (as iftheyVe tried to emulate a singleaspect of Neil Young's music, unableto see the other interesting elementsthat go into it). I much prefer thoseparts of this LP where the music is atodds with the apparent intention ofthe lyrics - in particular on 'So Slow'and 'Happy When You're Sad', wherethe band lock together and a creativespark not otherwise in evidence issuddenly ignited, producing twouplifting gems. An NME journo wouldprobably call Sophia's music thesound of suicide' - but as far as l'mconcerned the aforementionned twotracks are treat reasons for beingalive.

HARLEY RICHARDSON

70

Ihe Sound Proieetor Third Issue

strante sounds weresimply pulled out ofhis magic hat, apossible e><planationfor theotherworldliness ofhis sound. ltcertainly isunbelievable thatthese complexrecordings are theresult of somethingas down to earth asa performance in astudio.

lmagine beingsubmerged beneatha turquoise, tropicaloceanl the drone ofthe harmonica is thecool current passingover your skin, thestranteaccompanyingnoises; e><otlc seacreaJures weavingpeacefully about infrontofyou. Butthere is a sinistertone, Perhaps someterrible creature liesbeyond in darkerwaters, watchingand waiting for theright momentbefore mounting itsatack. But that

fhrce

By Niall Richardson

f,eo ltiamond, Earmonlca MeIodIa EpColumbia SEG 77El Ic. l950sl-The hct that I know little about this musician / composermatters not to me - quite t}te contmry the sense ofmystery seems to enrich the listening e><perience. On thecover he looks like some kind of surreal magician, like TheGreat Gomo from a 1920s black and white silent movie,an image definitely in tune with the music. perhaps the

moment never comes and while the music exists, you candelight in the heady atmosphere it so effordessly evokes.

From a time when pop music was so suburtan andsqueaky clean, it's heartening to find that music ocistedwith some sensitivity t}tat was sepafte from Rock'n, Roll.I often wonder whether Leo Diamond realised he wascreating such weird and e><citing sounds, or if he thought(incorrecdy) that he was going with the flow. The fact thatI found this EP in an 'Oldies' shop sugests that it soldfair1y well when it uras released (c. 1950), but I wonderwhat kind of disgust must have greeted this via themajority of the population brought up with Cole Porterand Doris Day.

Bela Babal, An Rvenlng in BadapertPerlod Records LP TLl934 [c- 19551

The first impression is of intense colour, a kind of reddishpurple that eng.rlfs the entire sound. Then, the intricacy ofthe plalng comes across thick and hst Babai's violinsustaining intense, slow drones over a rumbling cello andchiming piano. The larter forming a muddy whidpodbehind the chainsaw lead instrumenc Each chord on theviolin played with such insistency that it burns itself intoyour brain leaving a perrnanent scar. On a more detachedlevel, the combined effecr is like warching a scratchy Super8 film filtered through a tinted lens.

7l

The Sound Proieetor Third

Hearing this always reminds me of music from a WernerHerzog film, the name of which I forget. In a (typicallygrim) bar scene the camera focuses on a peasant stringquartet who are making the most amazing racket. Theylook calm as they play their strange medieval instrumentsbut the sound is like they're atacking the strings, etchingtheir individual prsonalities in sound. lt's seemingly not anangry aggression but more the result of an intenseenjoyment of their craft and wanting to see how far theycan push each note before hitting the next.

Babai's style reminds me also of another violinist one JohnCale of The Velvet Underground. The droning aggressivenature of their music is not where the similarity ends. Bothhappened to be child prodigies - Babai (according to theliner notes) playing his first gig at the age of four,progressing to recitals all over Europe and America by agetwelve. God knows he old he was by the time this cameout, but the cover suggests he'd had an active careerbefore it did. ld like to think that his life had followedmany twists and turns, and years of intense strugglingbefore finally he reached his artjstic peak and created this:his masterpiece, In fact I have litde solid information onthis genius.

There's something quite chameleon about theseperformances. Every time I listen they take on a newcolour and have an increasing y rich texture. Like a voidviewed from above which increasin$y is filled witJr moreand more strange objects for you to look at and befascinated by. Similady, in my more cynical moods, itbecomes like bland background ambience for your localcurry house - like wallpaper. Such multi-dimensionalsounds are to be treasured. All the more for me because.lhappened to find this disc by accident whilst rummagingthrough my maters mother's ageing record collection,

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Issue

Ferrante and Teicher, troye ThemesfromCIeopafua

I dont mind admitting I'm a sucker when it comes to theEasy Listening section of a record shop. All those brightlycoloured covers and strange titles never fail to fascinateme and | find sifting through them as enjoyable as going toany art gallery. Unfortunately, the only thing the averageHappy Hammond or Music For...LP has going for it is apretty picture of some half-naked lass. Still, | find myselfcompulsively collecting these exotic objects, much to theirritation of my friends.

In any given used record store you'll be sure to find adozen Ferrante and Teicher discs, and cheaper than therest. Most of them are orchestrated cover versions ofpopular themes from the sixties. What's crazy is that theseguys ar€ the forgotten geniuses of their time and, evenduring the recent lame 'Loungecore' craze, their LPs wereavoided like a bad smell. lt seems even arch-schmaltzsterMancini did better than F&T, with 'indie kids'drooling overmint copies of his vinyl.issues at thirty quid apiece.

Little is it known that F&T were originally avant-grdists,and began their career by plinking and plucking their pianosa la John Cage whilst titling their LPs with such far-outnames as The Sound of Tomorrow Today! and SoundBlas*.Y,lhat we have here with Love Themes fromCleopatnthough is one of their later Martini offerings; abombastic delve into the realm of schlock stringorchestras and ethereal angelic voices, but nevertheless aclassic. By now they'd ditched their arty leanings andjumped head first into mastering the cocktail piano. Theresults are rather like watching circus acrobatics, as thenotes soar and descend with breathaking precision. Onepiano dives a{ the other rises, and the effect can be'quitemind-scrambling when it's heard in full stereo. Anyonewho's a fan of stereo ping-pong master Esquivel wouldenjoy the e><perience, Anyway, if you don't believe me it'llonly cost you a pound to check them out. lt's got a prettycover too!

fl

rtR.F - t