Welcome to the new-look Freq website. It’s taken a while to transfer everything over from the old Freq, which has been in need of modernisation for some years now. All that and a huge number of new reviews from writers old and new, and it’s taken a while to get everything together – starting from July 2009 until the first days of 2010… but here it is, and future updates will be both plentiful and frequent.
Please scroll down and on for the most recent bunch of reviews; the archives index for 1998-2009 are here while there is an A-Z indexhere of everything posted so far.
The bulk of the record reviews 1998-2008 are in the following pages: Continue reading …
London bliss-rockers Kontakte continue their journey into the outer reaches of motorik rhythms and chimingly elevated guitar work with an EP which works around the theme in differing ways. “Superbug” itself boils over with tightly-wound energy, surging from twinkly psychedelic guitar melodies which dive off into shoegaze metal territory on a bedrock of cascading, weighty beats and a buzzing undertow. It’s reminiscent of the way Bowery Electric took the sound of ecstatic soaring guitars and made them throb to drum machine rhythms, but updated for a new century of technological beat-making, pulling off switchback returns until the final crash out.
“The Light Shining From A Window Behind Us” brings a benign uncoiling piano solo to the fore to introduce the final push into the reverse-engineered electronica of “Flight Paths,” where crossover keyboard reverberations trickle Harmonia-like into a langorous cloudscraping guitar line, all mellow and fruitfully calm until the music blossoms into the sort of sound which makes freefall dives into cottonwool spring to mind. But there’s a tricksy subtext here too, with interjections of chaos spilling the gentle mood briefly until the normality of the glissando is resumed.
Despite having been involved in probably about 90% of all British manifestations of all that is heavy, grindy and noisy in the last twenty-odd years, from Napalm Death to Jesu, Justin Broadrick is still only fourteen years old; or at least that’s how he appears. And given that my job here as a critic, is indeed to judge things on appearances, then to all intents and purposes, Mr Broadrick is in fact fourteen years old. Which is why it’s all the more startling to see the dates on these re-released classics. Not only are they actually temporally impossible artifacts, they make me feel really, really old. Definitely at least nine or ten times older than the ever-youthful Mr Broadrick.
Never anything short of prolific, he’s currently trancing out at Kevin Shields-scaring volumes with Jesu as well as nuking the dancehall with Blood Of Heroes, but for many people of a certain age and disposition, his name will always be synonymous with the mighty Godflesh. They were, in many senses, a very post-Thatcherite expression of that immense sheet of styles and sounds which come together under the name industrial music, usually for the purposes of having a fight, or at least some vigorous shagging. Filled with rage, despair and anger, they weren’t the cheeky sonic pranksterism of Throbbing Gristle, or the charming musique concrete experimentalism of Einstuerzende Neubauten; nor were they the cyberpunk metal of Nine Inch Nails or Rammstein, nor the bastardised disco of Skinny Puppy, Front 242 or Nitzer Ebb. They weren’t even the grizzled anti-war militarism of Ministry. No, Godflesh were industrial in the way the word is used in business and commerce – they were the sound of meat packing plants, of shipbuilding, of girders falling from very high up indeed and taking someone’s spine out, with no functioning union to get them decent compensation for spending the rest of their life in a chair.
Pure is quite possibly their classic, although as far as I remember they never released anything that was less than awesome. Pure was the moment when, having perfected the brutality and noise they did to a level only ever really matched for pure transcendent brilliance by Swans, they decided to start REALLY living up to their name. Drafting Robert Hampson of Loop in to help out on guitar, they decided to start exploring their more psychedelic potential, while never forgetting their primary mission – that driving, relentless, monolithic brutality. No more did they sound like you were trapped in a burning arms factory with Big Black. Now they sounded like you were trapped in a burning arms factory with Big Black, and you were all on REALLY, REALLY POWERFUL DRUGS. Almost twenty years on, there’s still not much that can match it for pure (c wut i did thar?) intensity, from the point a couple of bars in on “Spite” when the guitar comes in and slices your face off to the very end of closer “Pure II” (something of a departure for the band, being a twenty-minute slice of ambient isolationism, all feedback and ominous drones, and every bit as intense as any of the pounding and pummelling we’ve heard in the previous hour, like Skullflower crossed with Nurse With Wound, or, for a more modern comparison, like Sunn0))) with lots of trebly bits), when you come back to your senses and realise that yes, you ARE still back in your room, and have been all this time (or in my case, last time I listened to it, that I was drunk on a train being stared at by an old lady).
So far, so all-consuming. But that’s not all, for this is a wonderful 3-CD package, so you get the Cold Word and Slavestate EPs as well, (although Slavestate‘s more by way of an album, being almost as long as Pure, though much of it is remixes). Cold World is a riff-heavy beast of a track, with what we quaintly used to call the B side, “Nihil,” being as bleak as its title would suggest, all unfeeling electronics and angry guitars. A couple of remixes fuck with the template in various frightening ways. Yeah, it’s fucking good. Slavestate is another favourite from back in the day, because it was where Godflesh loosened up a little and got funky. Well, they didn’t loosen up, exactly, nor did they get funky in a way you could technically describe as such, but they embraced (or perhaps CRUSHED) the then-current obsession with all things danceable. You could dance to Slavestate, and not just moshing either. Though sooner or later the urge to just start smashing stuff tended to take over. And Slavestate was a bargain anyway, because even back then it included both tracks from the Slateman/Wound EP, which were also both fucking awesome in their own right.
Basically, this package is a box every bit as scary as the Lament Configuration from Hellraiser, and promising as many earthly extremes as that one did too. Approach with care; it hasn’t lost any of its potency over time. But DO approach it; you owe it to yourself to experience this if you haven’t already. And if you have, you owe it to yourself to give it another listen, compare it to over 9,000 of Broadrick’s other projects, and confront the reality that it really IS possible to be a jack of all trades and master them as well. It’s just that not many people can do it. Certainly not me, and almost certainly not you either. I know, it’s a hard thing to come to terms with, but Godflesh were always the best at forcing us to face the harsh realities of life.
While improvisation and social activity are natural bedfellows, improvisation and relationship can be a trickier proposition. It’s a reasonable – albeit vaguely fundamentalist – argument to say that familiarity is antithetical to improvisation; the former is about learned responses, primed expectations and prior awareness; whereas the latter is about responding in the moment, dealing with the unexpected and being able to create without preparation. As two or more players get to know each other they become used to each other’s approaches and preferences. The stronger a relationship gets, the more likely it is that the players involved will have negotiated a system of complementation, compromise and shared characteristics as comfortable and familiar as any composition or idiom.
In this context it’s tempting to view this CD – the sixth collaboration between Alan Licht and Loren Connors – as an act of wilful defiance. It contains two performances, recorded in 1996 and 2006 respectively. The dates seem deliberately perverse; 1996 is of particular significance to the duo, being the year they first recorded together; and ten years is a conspicuously round number, implying that this is some kind of milestone at which they are taking stock. However, the music offers remarkably little in the way of any discernible development in their dialogue over the course of the decade. The implication is that Licht and Connors are enjoying a little mischief at the expense of over-zealous musicotheologians and their expectations of improvising relationships. To paraphrase Morton Feldman: it’s not that they’re refusing to address the problem; they’re just refusing to address it as their problem.
This approach is what we’ve come to expect from Connors. He refuses to play the games that other improvisers indulge in. He has no interest in being the fastest or distilling the broadest set of influences, nor does he deconstruct or recontextualise the guitar with unusual techniques, implements or effects pedals. His typical solo M.O. is intact here: sparse, delicately timed and gently melodic blues inflected guitar, framed with reverb and with no attempt made to disguise or correct the recording process. The humming and buzzing of amps, the slow rise of controlled feedback, the hiss and crackle of the recording medium: these are as much a part of his signature sound as the notes he plays and the space between them.
Much of Connors’ body of work has an eerie sense of continuity, as though each successive release is just a fragment of something absolute or eternal, a piece that has always been playing and always will be playing. It’s tempting to view the guitarist as a spirit photographer or Electronic Voice Phenomena enthusiast, forever trying out different locations and recording equipment in an attempt to capture the desolate fragments of melody that haunt his playing. The multi-skilled Licht seems content simply to join the older guitarist in his usual devotions, threading around Connors’ lonesome figures but never disturbing the singular atmosphere he creates. This kind of deferential, mannered approach is again almost sacrilegious in many improvising circles, in which maintaining a sense of a player’s identity is viewed as an essential aspect of the activity. Allowing a sense of confusion concerning which players are making what sounds is not the same thing as one player being deliberately subservient to another’s sound. The former can still be a signifier of ego and hubris – the need to be superficially impressive – whereas the latter is almost invariably selfless. It rather lends weight to the reading that Licht and Connors are exploring something extra-human, something they believe to be bigger than the both of them.
There will be those that dismiss this record as the lazy ploughing of an easy furrow, or as the churning over of old earth. But they would be missing the details, the subtext and the gentle subversion that makes this ongoing collaboration so compelling. Licht and Connors know all the arguments, have heard all the theories. They’re just choosing to do something else.
The foundations of rock music are built on strata that have long eroded for all but the most credulous. It was initially fun, sexual and swaggering; angry, rebellious and irreverent; energetic, spontaneous and irrepressible; extrovert, engaged and innovative. Decades of mishandling by musicians, record labels, critics and musicologists have caused these qualities to be all but stripped away. Energy and spontaneity have been neutralised by expectations of repertoire and recording methods that spend too much time correcting the music’s natural grain. Irreverence has been slowly, dully bludgeoned into a meek acceptance of a sacred canon of artists and albums. Anger and rebellion have been either co-opted into brand exercises or ridiculed and dismissed as inarticulate/misinformed/misdirected, leaving both sidelined as unfashionable or irrelevant. The result is a music that has become increasingly thwarted and introverted, retreating into an asexual world in which its DNA is passed down unaltered to young musicians who want nothing more than to express their unique individuality in the same way as their father before them.
This is not another rant claiming that yesterday’s bands are better than today’s bands. Far from it. If this had been about musical results then the argument would have been framed in musical terms. The results are not merely as good as they have ever been: the results are exactly the same as they have always been, because musicians’ influences, expectations, working methods and ideas seem the same now as they were twenty, forty, or in some cases sixty years ago.
Thankfully there are still a few bands who realise that you cannot expect different outcomes when you repeatedly use the same formula. Steve Noble’s New channel influences that extend well outside the standard rock palette through improvisations conducted at breakneck pace; London’s Temperatures use vintage ARP synths that hiss, bubble and squeal through their propulsive drum and bass interplay; Aufgehoben breathe new life into studio processes, editing recordings of astonishing dynamic range into careering walls of overdriven noise; Boston’s Neptune and Norway’s MoHa avoid sounding like anyone else via furious multitasking and customised/homemade instruments; and the late Afrirampo, who up until June of this year scribbled colour outside the lines of slap-dash psychedelia and combustibly jammed rock’n’roll.
Rangda’s False Flag is a deceptively effortless new entry into this mix; deceptive in that the music is of such quality that it’s easy to forget how much hard work it takes to be able to play at this level. The trio – consisting of Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance, Comets on Fire), Richard Bishop (Sun City Girls) on guitars and Chris Corsano (just about anyone you’d care to mention from Sunburned Hand of the Man to Sonic Youth, Paul Flaherty to Bjork) on drums – has the kind of natural chemistry you would expect from players with so much in common. Each explores the blurred boundaries between folk, improvisation, noise, drone and rock traditions. False Flag synthesises these influences into a compellingly melodic, bluesy take on improvised rock, frazzled at the edges and seemingly transported straight from the Seventies with its twin soloing guitars and bass-free weightlessness.
The album alternates between roaring ecstatic free play and quieter, more poised passages. Maximum potential is wrought from the simplest of compositional frameworks; “Bull Lore” creeps up on the listener like an improvised Slint, a structural palindrome in which Bishop takes the lead on the ascending first half, with Chasny picking up the reigns as the piece descends to its close; while “Fist Family” simply suspends droning notes and masterfully controlled guitar feedback above Corsano’s flurried rolls around the kit. It’s a best-of-both worlds approach, allowing for freedom of expression while retaining enough of a loosely-controlled format to appeal to people who aren’t interested in improvisation.
While it’s hard to believe that any of the three are stretching themselves beyond their comfort zones the results really are extraordinary. Bishop, Chasny and Corsano ‘s playing is never less than sublime, each demonstrating that their influences have been fully integrated and worked through in their playing rather than being tacked on or appropriated. It’s rare that this amount of painstaking effort goes into being spontaneous. The result is full of character and with a hard-earned depth that seems paradoxical given how quickly the album seems to have been assembled.
Rangda’s debut is a happy reminder that you should never write off rock and roll, even if the wider situation occasionally seems desperate. The blueprint is necessarily simple; spend more time working over your own playing style, developing your own instruments or your own approach to your instrument; keep your band small and manoeuvrable so each individual member has more space to be themselves; use loose structures that encourage improvisation and freedom of expression; and don’t bleach away your energy and spontaneity during the recording process. In other words, spend more time working on your own contribution and cut out the waste, middlemen and bureaucracy. In 2010, in these times of efficiency savings and austerity measures, who’d have thought that adopting Tory strategies could save rock and roll?
Longevity in the fickle world of pop music has traditionally been an undervalued trait and Cluster, now well into their fourth decade as a musical unit, have long been an elusive presence as they’ve sailed through the decades since their inception in 1969 (with fellow electronic pioneer and Zodiak Arts Lab alumni Conrad Schnitzler as Kluster with a ‘K’). Cluster have seen through the ‘heroic years’ of krautrock in the 1970s, the popularisation and subsequent instrumentalisation of ambient music into new age in the 1980s and the re-emergence of krautrock as an explicit reference to successive generations of electronica and pop artists from the 1990s ’til now.
There’s a ceaseless expectation upon the shoulders of electronic artists of Cluster’s generation to be somehow ahead of the curve, somehow anticipating incipient trends in electronic underground ten years before the event – and a cursory listen to Cluster II or Curiosumdoes reveal eerie pre-echoes of the deep-space exotica of Skaters or the stiff, glacial rhythms of early grime. But, Cluster’s beautiful and deeply peculiar fusion of bucolic melancholy, cosmic transcendence and joyously confounding goofiness exists in its own time zone, while all the while being unmistakably of its time (Zuckerzeit or Soweisoso encapsulating the ecstatic spirit of krautrock at its heroic peak.)
Likewise, this new album Qua, released following a fifteen year hiatus since the duo’s last, despite being every bit a Cluster record, retains a sonic kinship to the kind of woozy ambient electronica that has emerged from labels such as Benge‘s Expanding Records imprint, also echoing Mouse On Mars‘ early synthetic exotica and the fragile, oblique soundworlds of Nuno Canavarro – all these artists doubtless owe some debt of influence to Cluster, so it seems quite a reasonable thing at this stage in their career to reciprocate that influence in turn. Much more, however, than their last album of 1994 (One Hour), this feels very much less the product of its contemporary sonic environment and much more intrinsically a Cluster album. A set of electronic miniatures in the vein of their understated 1975 masterpiece Zuckerzeit, the playful instrumentals that comprise Qua are by turns pastoral, mechanical, uncanny, blissed out and audaciously wrong, often within the same moment.
Cluster’s late 70s and early 80s releases on the Sky Records label, once unfairly characterised as the ‘elephant’s graveyard of Krautrock,’ are probably the other nearest point of reference for this set (and the Bureau B label deserves special credit for bringing these undervalued gems back to public consciousness). The murky grooves of “Xanesra” and “Putoil” recalling the Residents-like brittle electronic churn and lollop of Curiosum; “Albtrec Com” and “Na Ernel” meanwhile echo the pop-art (proto)-New Age of Grosses Wasser, marrying familiar rhythmic tropes (albeit rendered off-kilter in such a way that lesser musicians would consider simply wrong) with melodies of disarming, almost nursery rhyme simplicity.
Hans Joachim Roedelius‘ evident propensity towards the pastoral and ecstatic, and his total lack of inhibition towards sweetness of melody comes to the fore on tracks such as the gently ebbing synthesizer miniature “Ymstrob” or “Gissander,” in which a rippling electrical pulse meanders towards harmonic resolution while Waybulloo garden chimes clang mechanically against a mournful electronic tide. As with their best work, the productive tension between Roedelius’ bucolic inclinations and Dieter Moebius‘ more wayward experimentalism here produces an album which seduces, confounds and confuses, unfolding new spaces and pleasures with each successive listen. As ever, Cluster sound utterly out of time, yet it’s clear that forty-plus years on Qua couldn’t have been realised at any other moment but here and now.
The Necks have had a pretty good upswing in their fortunes with London performances over the last few years, with sold-out runs of nights at The Vortex in Dalston so successful they added in extra shows late into the night, followed up by a triumphantly immense performance in the ecclesiastically-charged setting of the Union Chapel in May 2009. Tonight’s set finds them moving further into the upper echelons of the capital’s establishment music scene by bringing their special brand of minimal-maximal improvisation to the Barbican Theatre, the smaller space in the Barbican arts centre – which is by any other standards a huge space where a pin dropped reverberates and a coughing audience member resonates into the auditorium.
So when Chris Abrahams starts things off with a faint ripple of piano notes, they ring out with crystal clarity, as Tony Buck chimes in with a twinkly bell and micro-percussive ripples, and Lloyd Swanton throbs delicately on his upright bass, the slow climb out of silence from the trio spotlit onstage into the otherwise darkened hall is one conducted in an atmosphere of deep, reverent listening. In some ways this denatures the performance a little, removing any background and presence of the space itself and foregrounding the music itself and the three thoroughly absorbed performers themselves at the slight expense of much in the way of psychogeographical mood. Such is the nature of large, mostly anonymous concert halls, where the pristine nature of the sound often results in a faintly flatter experience of the show itself.
Nevertheless, while contemplating the above, it soon becomes apparent that The Necks have built up a formidable wall of sounds, the piano rumbling in waves and rippling hypnotically while the cymbals and blocks tap out a pitter-pat rhythm underpinning the swelling bass. The mask of concentration on Lloyd Swanton’s face is a particular aspect of Necks performances, his eyes screwed tightly shut as if he cannot bear to witness the spectacle in front of him lest he lose the moment, or that the slap of strings should become so immense that he could drop hold of the gathering slow crescendos. Abrahams, meanwhile, is stroking crinkly sweeps and sharply-interjected single-key taps out of his own 88 strings while maintaining the ever-present trills, and Buck is hard at work on placing sticks to surfaces with the skill of a multi-limbed metronome. The sensation they produce resembles nothing so much as contemplating a liquid flow of music emanating from the trio’s bodies and out of their instruments, and of being pulled under into riptides of tightly-interlocking channels at varying depths, the bass drum, upright bass and piano in particular meshing at various points into a pounding, breathing mass palpitating with a tachycardiac heartbeat pulse.
After 30-odd minutes the piece has risen into a coruscating wash of by now bowed strings and Buck’s trembling drumkit, the torrent shuddering as if coming into contact with a waterfall, the flow poised in a seemingly endless rush of motion held in almost unbearable tension, then ebbing inevitably over the edge and down into softly-struck silence. No wonder both they and the audience need an intermission.
Suitably refreshed, the second set opens with a low throb from Swanton and a hesitant melody perambulating out from Abrahams’ keys as Buck shakes and eventually taps out a block and gong rhythm. Where the first session grew naturally and easily, this time around the tone at first is distinctly less comfortable, the single-minded percussion in particular jarring almost angularly against the bright trills morphing out of the piano. Almost sneakily, The Necks deploy a range of subtly-growing thumps and thuds from each of their instruments, the dysrhythmia flickering with an urgent momentum into a thunderous roil, and again there is the sensation of being held in stasis, of being transported without moving in the thrall of an endlessly circulating and slowly-changing six-handed entity which is making the huge room judder.
Just when it seems impossible for the music to get much bigger, the trio pull off the trick of lifting the piece yet further into immense atonal spasms of multi-dimensioned ecstasy. With rhythmic gears shifting into overdrive, there is a curiously wrong mechanical aspect to their interlocking anti-grooves, like the rise and fall of a non-Euclidian engine propelling the three riders up the never-ending surface of a hyperbolic wall of death; and that is very much as disconcerting as it sounds, the central section of the set being one that is almost vertiginously difficult to bear. As the layers of seething sound are stripped gradually away and rebuilt in differing forms to the never-faltering but ever-enhanced beat of Tony Buck’s hammered blocks and clangorous chimes, the ever-rumbling bass asserts its presence again and again. Together, the trio’s primal stumble steps erratically to avoid the cracks, loping past and through Abrahams’ haunted, omnipresent looping melody, surging wildly once more into the space-filling reaches of tightly-wound chaos in expansion, before falling into a slowly divergent termination which is at once both a welcome relief, and all too soon come in its arrival.
I have to admit I’d never heard of Disappears before this record landed in my lap, so I looked them up online. (Research, see? Professionalism and that. That’s what seperates us real professional music writer types from the blogroll masses.) A noisy Chicago four-piece, refugees from the sad decline of Touch and Go records, Disappears have found an unlikely home for themselves at glitch-(and drone – Ed.)-merchants Kranky. On their myspace the band list their influences as “Reverb Delay Drums Heavy Tremolo Feedback Guitars Repetition”, and say they sound like “Reverb Delay Drums Heavy Tremolo Feedback Guitars Repetition”. Heh, awesome. They also sell 7″ singles and RANT IN ALL CAPS on their blog.
Lux is the band’s first album, and there’s not an inch of fat on this record. Lux is a taut, urgent love letter, a 29-minute homage to everything that rules about garage rock. Minimal drumbeats and offhand vocals are half-buried in blissed-out vintage guitar fuzz and trembling, soaring reverb. The guitars are nonetheless kept on a very short leash, the three-minute track lengths calling an abrupt halt to what in other hands could have been some wicked heavy psych/surf guitar freakouts. But that’s all part of Disappears’ cool. They craft awesome hook-laden guitar lines, only to discard the whole mess a minute or so later. Cos, y’know, whatever. There’ll be another awesome guitar hook next track, forget about it, man.
You could go through this album song-by-song and pick out the band’s influences, obvious as they are – as a record collector’s band, Disappears have got to rank alongside the likes of Yo La Tengo. But unlike Yo La Tengo, Disappears don’t sound like music nerds. (Don’t get me wrong, I love Yo La Tengo - I’ve seen them play loads of times and they’re always great, but they’re definitely nerds). Disappears are cool. They’ve adopted at least some of the attitude of their musical influences along with their sound. You know that bored, solicitous monotone Iggy Pop does so well? The way he can say “we will have a real cool time, tonight” and something in his deadpan tells you that this man knows exactly what he’s talking about? That’s on this record. There’s also a ton of the Velvet Underground‘s sunglasses-after-dark sangfroid, the intangible menace of Suicide‘s first album… I could go on. I wish I’d heard this album when I was 12 years old, I could have learnt as much about rock’n'roll in 29 minutes as I did in four or five years of hanging out in mediocre record stores.
It would be a fair criticism to say that there’s nothing new on this record. But then, it would also be a fair criticism to say that new stuff all sucks. Everything on Lux has been done before, but damned if if this familiar old garage rock material doesn’t still sound awesome. Especially presented the way it is here, stripped back, dressed in black, lean and dangerous. Put this album on and crank it loud – take half an hour of your life that you were probably going to waste watching Friends or something, and remind yourself why you love rock’n'roll.
Lisa Dillan is a vocal improviser originating from the northern parts of Norway. She is a trained and educated jazz singer, but many years ago she moved further away from the jazz, and started exploring the possibilities that lies within improvising with the voice and creating various mouth sounds. When I first watched this tiny woman doing a live performance some years ago, it was a big(!) surprise that she could produce such massive sounds by her sheer voice. Combined with the subtle minimalistic moods and sounds, her playfulness and use of glass and fruit in her performance, it was a pleasant experience. She is an artist with many talents, she has a background from breakdance, and does performances and also teaches in improvising and telemark skiing.
Her second solo album comes a full five years since her debut album, Vocal Improvisations, so it’s been a long wait. Arousal continues in a way her explorations of her own sound universe, and was recorded mostly in the Emanuel Vigeland Museum, Tomba Emmanuelle, wich is one of Oslo’s best kept secrets. The museum website states: “The museum’s main attraction is a dark, barrel-vaulted room, completely covered with fresco paintings. (…) Entering the museum is a unique experience. The impression of the dimly lit frescoes with multitudes of naked figures is reinforced by the unusual and overwhelming acoustics of the room.(…) Vigeland erected the building in 1926, intended as a future museum for his sculptures and paintings, but changed his mind and decided that the museum should also serve as a mausoleum. All the windows were closed and his ashes were to rest in an urn above the entrance door. Influenced by Italian prototypes, he named his building Tomba Emmanuelle.”
In the Arousal booklet Lisa writes that “..in the room endings are present, and therefore also new beginnings – the arousal of life itself.” Arousal is a physiological and psychological state of being awake or reactive to stimuliWhat is also present is the fact of marvellous acoustics with long reverb, which highlights her voice very well.
So, what does the CD sound like? It starts off with Lisa Dillan creating subtle ambience, almost sacred in wich the sound really comes into its own right. She continues over the tracks with wonderful harmonies, or a careful, subtle performance. She also reads her own lyrics in French, which she does a few more times over the CD. Her love or curiosity in the French language, its tone and rhythm is apparent, and although not being a French speaker, I have a notion she is justifying the language, or enhances the very special sounds of the French words. She continues being playful, minimalistic and noisy at times.
All tracks bar one are recorded in one take, and no overdubs or effects are added. Just Lisa Dillan interacting with the microphone and some sounds created by measuring cups, glasses, and a chair scratching the floor (track 3). I also like how she incorporates some folk inspired tunes or sounds. It keeps the modern improviser in connection with her roots, or culture in some way. The DVD enclosed enhances all the impressions created by playing the CD. Six short film or performances shows exactly how she creates some of her unique sounds – headstanding in a flower pot while making strange sounds, or performing with a dummy with an erotic undertone to name a few examples.
All the way through this magnificent release it is apparent that Lisa is doing her own thing and in her own style. She has not only over the years created her own style or soundscapes, she is also still energetic, playful, unafraid, and very much uncompromising. Coming from a jazz education, she is of course trained as an improviser, but she moves away from all of the strict rules jazz musicians sometimes performs by, and she gives a rat’s ass about what people think too, I guess. Who else would create a mouse call? And why not?
Recording studios are time machines, capable of layering conflicting alternate pasts, warping space into new configurations and building dreamlike gestalts from contrasting times and places. But we could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Engineers and producers have worked diligently for decades to maintain the illusion they’re releasing records made by pub rock bands performing live together in the same place at the same time (live performance being a rarely questioned benchmark of ‘authenticity’). Outside of experimental music the most anyone usually hears about time and location in the recording process concerns lengthy gestation periods and/or musicians who choose to record in exotic locations, usually in starfucking glossy magazine articles in which both are used to reinforce notions of wealth, celebrity status and the myth of the ‘tortured artistic genius.’
For most recording artists the studio has been reduced to a sterile and controlled environment from which they cherry pick at the chaos and confusion of the real world. Any attempt made to address setting and physical space gets restricted to lip service in post production, whether it’s a field recording to add an easy sense of mise en scene (everyone wants to be considered for soundtrack work) or a generous dollop of reverb (an all too obvious signifier of physical and emotional distance, the dimensions of a recording environment, time passed and memory). Too many musicians use these devices without questioning, leaving them open to reasonable accusations of laziness, thoughtlessness and orthodoxy at one end of the spectrum or appropriation, fetishisation and imperialism at the other.
On Maersk, Skjølbrot‘s Dan Bennett attacks these issues by way of specificity. Rather than dialling in preset ambience he gathers it from specific places and events, making it the structure of the music as opposed to mere post production decoration. The liner notes for the album hint at his sources; “Migrated” makes reference to the “resonance of (the) Bird Market at Place de Parvis in Paris”; “Shipbreaking” lists the “Unimak Pass 08/12/2004, industrial deforestation in Chitagong since 1991 cyclone.” The result is a combination of hazily recalled alternate history, psychogeographical travelogue, an audiophile’s attention to detail and a keen awareness of musical processes. More than anything else it is a work that values the effects that people, events and the passage of time have on our understanding of spaces and locations.
Bennett uses a number of methodologies. On some tracks he repositions field recordings as a score or template over which he adds instrumentation and adornment, before all but deleting the original sonic guideline. On others he captures environmental resonance using a process similar to the manner in which impulse-response reverbs digitally model the reverberation of a physical environment. Conventional recording wisdom attempts objectivity in the modelling process, using multiple mics and carefully controlled conditions to capture an idealised representation of a location, a homogenising methodology that delineates physical space as distinct from its visitors and the kind of events that might take place there. Bennett takes the opposite approach and allows sonic contamination from people, passing cars, wildlife… he extends his frame to include everything that happens in the moment, rather than leaving the world on the cutting room floor. Softly keyed pianos, distant vocals and what sounds like faraway synths seem to have been chosen for how they complement these collected resonances rather than vice versa. Other pieces are altogether more difficult to pin down, a combination of approaches and sounds demonstrating that he is less beholden to his processes than he is to the outcome.
This is arguably Maersk’s greatest achievement: that there is no clear hierarchy of concept, methodology and musical result. It’s impossible to tell which has primacy; impossible to locate the seams between location recording, performance and electronic treatments; impossible to tell foreground from background. Place-memories are superimposed on each other as though evoking dream environments, with multiple locations blurred into a single gestalt. Throughout the Skjølbrot project Bennett is an unreliable narrator, weaving a tale that is somehow both subjective and depersonalised, a confusion of settings with key characters and events omitted or occulted. It is the musical equivalent of a Mike Nelson installation, in which paradoxical clues scattered around uncanny locations encourage a kind of forensic examination, positioning the listener as a Lovecraftian detective attempting to trace the tracks left by someone or something that is at once human and altogether unknowable.
Maersk is available in lovingly handcrafted packaging from the Skjølbrot website.
The June edition of the Jazkamer monthly series, We Want Epic Drama, is the first album with the full metal line-up since the highly acclaimed Metal Music Machine was released. Two drummers, electronics and three guitars promises quite an onslaught. However, that is often the case with Jazkamer, two or more members almost always manages to present an impressive wall of sound, no matter what.
As with the March edition, this album is a full-on production, with lots of drums apparent, though not in a metal doom kind of way you might expect from this line-up, but more free improv full speed ahead noise style. Divided into two tracks, this album is more than 70 minutes long. Both tracks starts off with hard-hitting freestyle drums, and guitar and electronics follow. By the mid/end parts of both tracks the drums have disappeared, and noisy guitars and electronics take turns in being more apparent. But this is beside the point. The interesting, exciting works of this album is how Jazkamer explores every bit of the sonic palette. Maybe less of the more subtle sides, but all kinds of feedback, harsh white noise, pink noise, screeching and wailing guitars, whistling, rumbling, airplanes, cars, just to name but a few I could sense myself.
So, does this six-piece make any difference compared to a smaller line-up? It certainly does. For one thing, the use of guitars makes for an interesting change that I like about this CD. At times you hear metal-sounding guitar riffs in combination with free improv use, all blended nicely in the mix of drums, electronic noise and strange sounds. Both tracks have so many layers and so many sounds that We Want Epic Drama deserves many rounds in the player. I find myself discovering new things every time. As with the March edition(Jazkamer – The Monroe Doctrine), it also triggers a lot of happy places with me. It is hard, loud, massive, energetic and guarantees excitement for me yet another time.
(Southern Lord)
What We All Come to Need is Pelican's first full length release on Southern Lord and and continues their elusive path of powerful instrumental rock. Southern Lord have also announced a tour with stable mates Wolves in the Throne Room, which has the makings of some must see gigs.
Esoteric
Forever doomed to be remembered as the one hit wonder god of hellfire, Arthur Brown is surely a true British eccentric maverick in the tradition of Syd Barrett, Peter Hammill and Genesis P. Orridge.
After The Crazy World split, Arthur Brown put together the similarly theatrical group
Label: Chalice Format: CD,2LP
1. As I reclined in my sketchy little world and allowed the gasses to go to my head, I became overpowered with the notion that I was being carried away. Silly flashes of Communion-like images of alien beings lifting me and placing me against soft chrome and sprayin
The Tape-beatles - Synthety No. 5: Good Times
Label: Staalplaat Format: CD
Stepping to an appropriately martial, mechano-deconstructed beat, The Tape-beatles' Good Times weaves a mix of political speech snippets, training-film educational banalities deleivered with the wooden certitude of a rigi
Po Na Na's, London
2nd November 1998
Po Na Na's is a bit of a new venue in London, emerging from underneath a pub on the increasingly busy (musically as well as with traffic) Highbury Corner, and decorated in a faux-Moroccan style which actually suits the sounds emerging from The Third Eye Found
Invada
David Wrench received an epiphany while trapped in the worthy nu-folk purgatory of the Green Man Festival last year. Surrounded by polite and twee young indie kids who had discovered acoustic instruments and woolly jumpers, he despaired at how a once radical and iconoclastic social force h
Barfly At The Monarch, Camden, London
9th August 2001
OK, so it's a promotional gig for (the once-proud, now suckers of corporate cock) Xfm. OK, so the other bands are yer average guitar malarkey. Fair enough. But if 2nd Gen's on, then why the fuck is no-one dancing? Huh? Answer me that and win
Komedia, Brighton
22nd February 2000
First round on a rare night of electronic experimentalism in Brighton, held in the converted supermarket cabaret venue Komedia and hosted by Semiconductor was Lucky Kitchen, an electronic duo between Alejandra Salinas and Aaron Bergman (AKA Alejandra and Unde
@ RoTa
Notting Hill Arts Club, London
21st February 2000
There's a great sense of expectancy generated by Chicks On Speed tonight; buzzing chatter from the West London cool squad building up a tension upon a foundation of eclectic Electro DJing. When the Chicks come on stage in decorated paper
The Underworld, London
28th January 2000
Dead Voices On Air are conducting a bit of an experiment on the London leg of their tour, starting off loud, noisy and danceable and trailing down into ambient passages of extended mood workouts. Mark Spybey and Darren Phillips man the keyboards, sequence
Crystal Antlers - Crystal Antlers EP
Touch and Go
From the Comets on Fire school of sunshine-and-reverb-addicted, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink meltingpot psych come Crystal Antlers, the band with possibly the most unjustly off-putting name of the year. If you’re interested, the contest for
Thrill Jockey
I wasn't expecting Super Roots 10 to sound like this, which is what I have come to expect from the Boredoms and the Super Roots series. Super Roots 10 contains "Ant 10" and three remixes of it, and lives up to the impressive legacy Super Roots lays down. "Ant 10" itself continues th
Kenneth Gaburo - Five Works For Voices, Instruments, And Electronics
Label: New World Format: CD
Voices and instruments are phrased in very strange intervals, giving the appearance of the cut-up - but, as we all know, it's all in how you say it. Horns, brass, voice, etc. Like wandering through a
The Peel Sessions Live
Queen Elizabeth Hall, The South Bank Centre, London
3rd June 1999
The ongoing, haphazard selection by John Peel for his live Sessions continues with the welcome return of Stereolab to live performance after an absence of a year or so. Peel comperes in his usual style, jov
The Institute for Contemporary Arts, London
30 January 2008
Here is my ATP festival experience. I always seem to miss the bands that I wind up liking the most. So, having missed Fuck Buttons at The Nightmare Before Christmas I wasn't going to miss them again when they came to Ithe CA, and they mor
Fysisk Format
There's a lot to like about Necropsalms, Obliteration's second album, unless you don't like doomy death metal that is. But, of course, everyone likes death metal. Obliteration hail from Kolbotn in Norway, that's the home of Darkthrone amongst other bands. Their first album was relea
The Mean Fiddler, London
27 April 2003
I'll be honest: I went for Peaches. Her 93ft East show last year was one of the most bacchanalian gig experiences I've had in recent years, a benevolent riot of loud, fired sexuality and abandon. But, truth be told, I'd really enjoyed the lyrical audacity /
18 Kingsland Road, London
7 March 2001
18 Kingsland Road is not a squat, but looks a bit like one, or that it once might have been. It's now an art gallery and occasional music venue, with steep leg-endangering staircases twisting into the depths of the improvised cellar bar among the salvaged c
Nadja
Bardens, London
22 March 2009
Having missed Nadja in 2008 I was on a mission to get to Bardens in Dalston. Despite the whole of East London being inexplicably gridlocked this particular Sunday evening, I wasn't going to miss Nadja a second time. Fighting my way through the traffic was wor
Label: Ralph (America)/EuroRalph (Europe) Format: DVD, CD (soundtrack only)
There have been plenty of strange and powerful musicians and groups out there for many a long year. Captain Beefheart, Coil, Wesley Willis, Ken Nordine an so forth, each extending the realms of taste and disrupting th
Meltdown 2007
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
18th June 2007
The smoke and glitter which characterises Chrome Hoof's performance at Meltdown 2007 is something of a wonder to behold. Unleashing a brain-boggling riot of progtastic disco - complete with intoned disclaimer for any responsibilty for t
Label: Ignite Music Format: DVD+CD
I'm never really sure how to review live DVDs. This is partly because I don't buy them often myself, except as records of gigs or tours I've seen in person. But also it's because they don't really fit with my music listening habits. Thankfully, although I wasn'
The Water Rats, London
27th October 2007
Even though it's about as far from the stuff he plays these days as a non-executive directorship is from a proper job, the spectre of Swans' Cop weighs heavily on proceedings tonight- particularly its mantric repetition of the phrase "THE HEAT… HURTS!
Brigadisco
Instrumental surf music seems to be making something of a comeback this year, and a most welcome one too. I’ve recently thrilled to the live sounds of excellent Welsh twangsters Y Niwl on a couple of occasions and now the tide has just washed up this split 12” featuring two groups
Khan
Kosmische
Upstairs @ The Garage, London
23 June 2001
I'd never heard of Khan (aka Can Oral) before hearing about this gig a few weeks back, but his odd background (Finnish mother, Turkish father, grew up in Germany) and his array of current collaborators (Kid Congo Powers, Diamanda Gala
Pica Disk
Musica Non Grata is the second release in Jazkamer's 2010 monthly series, and the CD has three long tracks. To make it clear and save you wasting time reading further: this is a study in feedback! Those who are still reading might like to know that this full length CD from the trio agai
June 2000
People Like Us is Vicki Bennett, a resident of Brighton on the South coast of England and creator of extraordinarily witty cut-up film and music projects which take the cultural critique of Plunderphonics into new dimensions of layered reference and dissociated signifiers. As wi
Red Rose Club, London
16th September 2000
A night of drones on Seven Sisters Road, strangely light on traffic in the aftermath of petrol protests, but still teeming with North London's variegated Saturday night fun seekers and the requisite fully made-up Goths on the 253 bus. The Red Rose is no
The Water Rats, London
2nd November 1999
The Water Rats seems like a broken place, barely still pulsing with the life of the twenty or so people inside. I wonder if it was once posh, evidence: rubbed-off velvet on the too few bar stools, forgotten glass cases built into dingy walls, and a mid-si
Drifting Falling
London bliss-rockers Kontakte continue their journey into the outer reaches of motorik rhythms and chimingly elevated guitar work with an EP which works around the theme in differing ways. "Superbug" itself boils over with tightly-wound energy, surging from twinkly psychedelic gu
Kranky
I have to admit I'd never heard of Disappears before this record landed in my lap, so I looked them up online. (Research, see? Professionalism and that. That's what seperates us real professional music writer types from the blogroll masses.) A noisy Chicago four-piece, refugees from the sa
The Underworld, London
10 and 12 February 2008
The day after a chunk of Camden Market burnt down, Southern Lord's finest black metal act touch down in The Underworld. Thankfully the conflagration was at the other end of the High Street, so the gig continued as scheduled with the only hint that s
The Albery Theatre, London
from 4th April 2002 for 11 weeks
Based on Heinrich Hoffman's dark fairy-tale Struwwelpeter, Shockheaded Peter originally opened in 1998 and last year alone played to an audience of some 80,000 West End theatre-goers. For its 2002 production, David Thomas & Two Pale
15th Anniversary Show
Queen Elizabeth Hall,
South Bank Centre, London
4th December 2000
As usual, I arrived at this show in a rush, a little late and with no idea of what to expect. Straight into complete darkness and tracked by lovely ambient sounds and an over-zealous usher trying to get me
Pacou - Symbolic Language Remixes
Label: Tresor Format: 12"
Once again, we can rely on Tresor to der the goods. Think Jeff Mills, think Adam Beyer. Pacou is in that vein, with a slab of tough minimal techno. Symbolic Language Remixes is a belting EP, nasty hard and fucking groovesome. It sweats
Klangbad
Longevity in the fickle world of pop music has traditionally been an undervalued trait and Cluster, now well into their fourth decade as a musical unit, have long been an elusive presence as they've sailed through the decades since their inception in 1969 (with fellow electronic pioneer
Label: On The Fiddle/Proper Music Distribution Format: 2DVD (PAL)
The Levellers are a bit like Marmite, really. You either love them or you can't fucking stand them. I'm pretty much in the former camp, but, also like Marmite, I can go for ages without them. Then one day I'll fancy some toast, and
Applebush/Easy Action
The world finally caught up with The Stooges when punk exploded, while Iggy himself ingeniously morphed into an alienated teutonic modernist, simultaneously retaining his appeal with the punks while appearing several steps ahead with his two 1977 Berlin albums The Idiot and
The Scala, London
20th November 2007
This has been a long time coming. Last time I tried to see Jesu (supporting Jarboe, in this very venue) it got scaled down to a Justin Broadrick solo perfomance as Final, which consisted of him hunched over his laptop making incredible noises. Now, while this m
Label: Music Video Distributors Format: DVD (Region 0, NTSC)
Blind Eye Sees All is a true classic of the live music video genre, and now receives a long-awaited DVD release via those thoroughly hardworking people at Music Video Distribution. So why is it essential? Apart from featuring the world'
Royal Festival Hall
South Bank Centre, London
25th October 2000
Faust were originally asked to improvise a live score to F.W. Murnau's classic expressionist retelling of the Dracula story for an outdoor vampire film festival in Germany a few years back. For some reason the promotors asked them
AIMsoundCity
Lisa Dillan is a vocal improviser originating from the northern parts of Norway. She is a trained and educated jazz singer, but many years ago she moved further away from the jazz, and started exploring the possibilities that lies within improvising with the voice and creating variou
Irregular #5
The South Bank Centre, London
8th-10th April 1999
The last five to ten years have seen an exponential rise in the number of intriguing events at London's premier Arts Council-funded cultural centre on the South Bank of the River Thames, thanks to an innovative booking policy and th
Label: Freeborn John Theatre Company Format: CD+DVD (PAL)
Originally released in 1996, Freeborn John was Rev Hammer's folk rock opera about the life of English radical “Freeborn” John Lilburne, who fought in the Civil War and dedicated his life to liberty and freedom. A natural subject for Ha
Earache
This isn't what I'd expect from Earache at all. Cauldron are a "traditional" metal outfit from Canada. Not a hint of Grind Madness here. Maybe Cauldron are a sound of things to come. Growling and evil has dominated metal for quite some time now. Yeah it can be great fun, but its a lit
The Barbican Theatre, London
26 June 2010
The Necks have had a pretty good upswing in their fortunes with London performances over the last few years, with sold-out runs of nights at The Vortex in Dalston so successful they added in extra shows late into the night, followed up by a triumphantly
Tufnell Park Dome, London
2 September 2001
A history lesson... Everything you think you know is wrong. The last ten years never happened. Mrs. Thatcher's still in power, The Dome's still standing (Tufnell Park that is... not the Big Tent), and Conflict are still gigging. We are ruled by a bunch
November 2000
Bobby Conn does his very best to be the model of a post-Modern underground superstar. His two albums to date, Bobby Conn and Rise Up!, have placed him somewhere in a grey area between parody and genuine adulation of crooners, cabaret singers and all-round stars of the spangly stage.
Fabriquedecouleurs - Imite Moi
Label: Dorodine Format: CD
Emmanuel Allard, AKA Fabriquedecouleurs, revels in jagged sounds and digital distortion. At points his music is harsh and distorted, a chaotic barrage of abrasive static crackles and aggressive shortwave squeals. Keyboards pushed to the p
(Load)
The centrepiece of the recent All Tomorrow's Parties documentary is a clip from a Lightning Bolt set at the festival back in 2006. The band, true to form, is set up on the floor of the venue and the crowd is jostling around Brian Chippendale's drumkit in a claustrophobic huddle of beards a
Viktor Wynd Fine Art, London
22 & 29 January 2010
Strange Attractor Journal, now in it's third edition of writings promoting unpopular culture, has long been intertwined with the visual, musical and performing arts. For January 2010, the Strange Attractor machine has moved into exhibitionist
Queen Elizabeth Hall
South Bank Centre, London
7th May 2000
It's City Slang's birthday - ten years old and going stronger than ever at the interface of good old-fashioned Post-Indie Rock, Country dispatches from the edge and exuberent German Electronica. Tonights show is the first London event,
(Sinnbus)
I Might Be Wrong come from Berlin and are, apparently, "supported by the Initiative Musik Non-profit Project Company Ltd. with project funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media on the basis of a resolution passed by the German Bundestag."
Splendid! - how ca
93 Feet East, London
9 July 2001
"Bosses, They're all cunts, pricks wankers and shits - does anyone here like their boss?" Well, those were similar words to the ones I muttered when Simon Breed nearly trampled me in his stampede to the bar pre-showtime. He was allegedly referring to his boss,
The Astoria, London
7th September 2000
Ween are one of those bands who emboby the Indie dream, the American Dream even. Starting out as lo-fi geeks with too much time, dope and a four track recorder on their hands, they turned their undoubted talents to warped and wonderful ends over the last te
The Slimelight, London
1 November 2003
The Pressure Point, Brighton
2 November 2003
The Legendary Pink Dots return to their founders' home country after an absence of a good few years is always a welcome event - that they then play two gigs in a mini-micro tour is an added bonus. First surpris
The Borderline, London
9th November 1999
A night at The Borderline, a night for Americanism. We arrived too late to hear the first set, a band called Kenny Process Team, so no insights there apart from the appropriate(d) soundtrack feeling their last couple of songs gave me as I took in the set
April 2000
I arrived at this gig a little late and in much overdone panic. First of all we were in South London, and more importantly, I had forgotten to pick up a blank tape to record this interview on. As soon as I located Arrington de Dionyso, which took about twenty seconds in the dimly
The Scala, London
26 July 2009
Southern Lord have been doing good business resurrecting their roster from the first time round, with some spectacularly lavish re-releases from Burning Witch, for example, making it strange to reflect that their twentieth anniversary isn't too far off yet... So it
Riot Season
In which New Zealand polymath Campbell Kneale (Birchville Cat Motel, Our Love Will Destroy the World, Lugosi, Sunship, etc etc etc) sets about recreating the thunder, chaos and crushing despair of one of World War I's bloodiest battlefields, using sub-bass guitar drones with occasiona
Ipecac
Unlike a lot of remix albums where an artist gets a song to work with, the artists on Chicken Switch were given whole Melvins albums to work with. So each track is a remix of a whole album. The Melvins chose experimental electronic artists for Chicken Switch, with such names as Matmos, L
(Percepts)
Apparently, Teleseen is the ‘primary alias’ of producer Gabriel Cyr, who claims to be “on the vanguard of combining dub and reggae with experimental electronic music” – a claim that's true only in the sense that Daz really is a 'revolutionary new product', ie., not true at all.
Interference
Union Chapel, London
30th October 1998
The cold snap is just hitting London in time for this event, set in the chilly North London church (OK, technically it's a chapel, but it looks and feels more like a Gothic construction, all pointed arches and uncomfortable pews) which has pl
Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts
25 February 2001
The present-day composer refuses to die, according to Edgard Varese, a man with legendary eyebrows. He also influenced the guy whose music an eager bunch of resurrectionists revived in the Paul McCartney Auditorium. The Liverpool based-ba
Kosmische/The Sausage Machine
The Vibe Bar, London
11th June 1998
I was foned on Wednesday night by Iain, a friend who I hadn't heard from for a little while. He asked if I liked Fridge. I asked whether he meant my fridge or whether I was merely well disposed towards refrigerators in general.
The Garage, London
7 May 2002
There's been a fair amount of good press come Bobby Conn's way since he last visited these shores in February. Appreciative album and live reviews in the national papers. A full page photo (wearing a lurid 80's shellsuit) and enthusiastic write-up from Ted Kessler in t
Thrill Jockey
Lazer Crystal come from Chicago and this is their first full release. The title MCMLXXX is a real declaration of intent, or at least a real advert to the albums contents. And it is, but at the same time it isn't. I've heard many bands that are really stuck in the 70s or 80s to the p
Featuring the films of Jean Painleve (1902-1989)
Only Connect @ The Barbican, London
20 April 2002
Although Yo La Tengo are most often described in terms of the Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth and Can, you only have to take a look at a setlist from one of their annual fund raising "request" sho
