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Ampersand Etcetera - 2001_4
ambient & microwave & electronica & experimental & lowercase & postclassical & minimal & techno & etcetera

A swag of releases from Staalplaat have resurrected &etc - which is why there’s a few more of the selfunded reviews (which??) So editions 5 and 6 are already in planning.
And hot of the press, one of our favourite labels has two reissues: Alan Lamb’s essential recording ‘Primal Image’ (Dorobo 008) has a new cover stock, but the same magnificent music, while Darrin Verhagen/Shinjuku Thief’s ‘ The Witch Hammer’ has been ‘remastered to a level of crispness and punch absent from the original’ - and the third volumes of the Witch series is being worked on as you read this.
enjoy
jeremy@pretentious.net
&
http://ampersandetc.virtualave.net/ampersand.html
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Maurizio Martusciello
Unsettled Line
Metamkine MKCD027
metamkine@compuserve.com
Following Eric M’s mining of the back catalogue, another despatch from the Cinema pour l’oreille, a 3” collection I have been following over the years. Briefly, Metamkine are giving us an overview of electroacoustic/musique concrete/whatever as it is occuring, with some looks to the past (Walter Ruttmanns’ marvellous 1930 piece ‘Weekend’) through an unfolding sequence of (up to) 20 minute snapshots (with one diversion into a full length concrete album, and discounting the first 2 Metamkine releases).
Martusciello is working in the minimalist tradition here - the 18 minutes is filled with small clicks and buzzes, shimmering insects (electronic or field rcordings?) that jump from ear to ear, echo and fade, sometimes dancing their pulsing rhythm for longer periods. And then an almost silence, before soft pulsing and chitters return. The sound also shifts from almost inaudible to periods of intensity. A soft, tenuous boom: again: whine.
At six minutes the mood is changed by a child laughing, and the insects are joined by a stepping and dragging sound. A ball rolls round, more metallic clickings join the insects and distorted almost words burst in irregularly. Glasses crackle, more laughter, bells and beads. A quite active period before slowing down again as we move towards the conclusion. Still jumping and chopping between sounds, rapid cuts are the go, and the end arrives without any sense of a climax or conclusion, rather an extended period with a quiet drone, a click and sections of laughter which sound like ‘hic’ before a full giggle signals the end.
Not exciting or dramatic but rather atmospheric and delicate, a nice addition to an essential series.
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Hans Fjellestad
Red Sauce Baby
Accretions ALP019
http://www.accretions.com
Last issue I looked at Donkey’s live improvisation album ‘Show’ from Accretions. Hans Fjellestad is half of Donkey and here presents an album of group and piano works, improvised and ‘scored’. It comes with a beautiful insert book by Kinsey: this is largely burnt orange/red. It includes collages of handwritten score extracts, photographs of prepared pianos and possibly Fjellestad, a plasma bag (tasteful) and an ancient worldweary foetus drawn on the cover.This reflects the ‘serious/high’ art nature of the project, as do liner notes about the various pieces (which will be plundered for material below).
‘Slow motion perp walk’ opens with a collage (unfortunately Fjellestad uses the term ‘assemblage’ in his notes which is probably more accurate) of a (homeless?) man singing ‘when I was a ittybitty baby’ with reminiscences (shades of Bryar’s ‘Jesus Blood’), some piano, site recordings of winds, wooshes and the city with other unidentifiable sounds to create a subtle entrance. And a bagpiper playing ‘Scotland the brave’ over some warming-up type gentle explorations is a great opening to the “recorded in a Mormon chapel” ‘Free throw prophet’. The piece shifts between wild drumming and blowy woodwinds, with organ in there wheezing and chording, and slower more restrained periods where the winds seem to talk - and providing a very unusual percussive track is a basketball game, probably recorded in the adjacent court, with balls bouncing and feet squeaking.
In ‘Pulp451’ two texts are read - various Washington’s letters by Carol Ganetti in a singing/speaking operatic voice, while Tue Gaston’s more sedate dry voice delivers 10th century Danish - over a substrate based on ‘pitch and rhythm material derived in part from US and Denmark geographical data’. This is a shifting soundscape from restrained percussive shadowing through plucked strings and clicking electronica buzzes to guitarish fuzz, synths and Tuvan samples. However the geographic data was used, the result is terrific. The final ensemble work is ‘Uncouth vermouth’ where a duo has been rescored for clarinet and saxes, guitar and organ, and the result is squeaking and pumping dancing around and drawing you in.

Of the piano pieces, the ‘Gadfly principle’ is a prepared-improvised solo (with bells, rattles, slides, a music box) which skitters over the keyboard in an active and surprisingly melodic fashion, the left hand providing some occasional depth to the running right. All the while there are the shimmering metallic resonances and vibrations from the preparations adding an extra dimension. Fjellestad is joined by Dana Reason on two duets ‘Zoonomia I and II’, which have been inspired by Erasmus Darwin’s writings about generative processes. Lyrical, with at times a jazz sensibility, these are warm unfolding pieces in which the two voices combine with and play off each other with an engaging subtlety. The album ends with another dynamic solo ‘Three sockets’, and together these tracks constitute a sequence that add a fascinating dimension to the album.
Freeform improvisation - not one of my big genres - but this has variety and a surprising touch of, what class? classicism? structure? whatever, something that makes this engrossing and enchanting by turns. An album which should stand the test of time and work its way into some different sets of ears.
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.386dx
The best of
Staalplaat stcd144
http://www.staalplaat.com
15 great rock songs brought to you through instrumental and vocal synthesisers. Yep, the ultimate techno group (invented and developed by Alexei Shulgin) which has actually played over 40 concerts.
‘California dreaming’ sets the pace - faithful to the original, with a harpsichordish solo, and a gentle computer voice singing over. From there we move through ‘Jumping jack flash’, ‘Should I stay or should I go’, ‘House of the rising sun’, ‘Rock ’n’ roll’, ‘Light my fire’, ‘Anarchy in the UK’, ‘Don’t cry’, ‘My generation’, ‘Purple haze’, ‘Imagine’, ‘Smells like teen spirit’, ‘I shot the sheriff’, ‘Satisfaction’ and ‘Layla’ - a veritable history of rock and roll (but why two Stones and no Beatles?) The voice is a little, how shall I put it, soulless - there is some tremelo and nice sustain, and better than you would expect, but not warm (although some might argue the point: is ‘Layla’ more moving than the original? though the pronunciation is more like Lor-ler). Very growly aggresive for the Pistols, while the ennunciation is appropriately off with ‘Smells like teen spirit’! (However, it could be familiarity with the lyrics - my partner couldn’t recognise ‘I shot the sheriff’)
Instrumentation is good - rather keyboard dominated: the piano in ‘House of the rising sun’ is very realistic, and there’s a lovely organ solo. The pace changes smoothly - ‘Light my fire’ takes a gentle rhythm (which stretches the voice a tad) and again nice piano and harpsichord, balancing the rockier items. A highlight is ‘Imagine’ which reproduces Lennon’s piano and simple percussion, adding a touchingly weird vocal. Drum riffs are handled better (the rhythm in ‘I shot the sheriff’ is very bouncy), guitar solos are shaky, unless acoustic. Sometimes the version moves from the original - ‘Anarchy’ has a wurlitzerish solo, while the vibrato and squeals on ‘Purple haze’ are a perfect touch. Properly pop songed, the tracks are at most 4 minutes but generally 3 or less - just the right time.
The cover is an excellent ASCI version (minus the analog zip) of the Sticky Fingers cover (with the underpants on the disk) - and accurately represents the versions we find here, close but worked within the limitations of the medium. A piece of flummery perhaps, but a lot of fun. Not to be taken too seriously (except as an example of what computer music can do) but definitely will be pulled out and wacked on pretty often before the novelty wears off.
(For windows users the program is also on the disk, and there is a quicktime music video of ‘California Dreaming’ - coincidence: the bloke from the Mammas & the pappas died today)
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Various Artists
LANding
Triton
http://www.mdos.at
http://triton.co.at
This compilation is the audio-record of an Austrian audiovisual installation conceived by Stefan Bidner. Within the booklet there are images from the physical component and a manifesto, written in Austrian or German (by Thomas Feuerstein) and therefore beyond the ken of a simple monoloinguist such as myself, though it appears to relate to aviation and avatars. The images largely relate to flying - both fighter and passenger planes.
As to the music, there are three ‘moods’ or methods which the tracks fit into. The more pedestrian are the relatively straightforward techno pieces such as Martinek and Schon’s ‘Starting skywalk’ with a guitar sample, bass, scratching, female sample chopped up and synth baubles, or ‘CSI’ by Huber a blippy melodic piece: the ‘Major Jurl Alexejewitsch Gagarin USSR remix’ is a very short beated piece with a long name by Bidner, Martinek and Schon. The opening track, Bidner and Fauerstein’s ‘Ignition’, is a short cut-up of space-race media reports which fits the overall concept well, but is let down by the final track (Daughters of the moon with ‘Space oddity’) where an orgasm provides a cliched accoutrement to a orchestral sample and electronica with more space-media.
Developing from that group are the more glitchy beatpieces such as the masterful ‘Lilith’ (Mayer and Wazac) where a small rising/falling tone (reminding me of an early Cabaret Voltaire sound which I interpret as ‘mich ael’) runs through the whole piece to have added clicks and blips which build to a merry rhythmic dance before winding back down again to an ambient fade. It is followed by Hammer’s ‘Assembler’ where a sine pulse creates a strange sense of dread, and metallic chitters and pulses gambol over the top. Two very nice works. Fon with ‘Fluck’ treads a similar beaty chittery pathway. The third group are the more experimental, amorphous works, which are presaged by a couple of hybrids. Fon with ‘Fonplant’ this time, is built from a drone and chopped up fragments of white noise - largely regular but shifting into some blurting and tonal sections, while Pomassi’s ‘Aircra IBK’ is a slow clicking and crackling, with a distorted voice entering at times and leading to a noisy crescendo which should be the end of the album.
In the more abstract pieces ‘Alien engineering from genotype to audiotype’ has a computer voice reading a sequence of DNA (probably Feuersteins) with some buzzy stuttering chitters over, which could be distortions of the letters. The Groiss remix of Graf’s ‘Something’ and ‘Infra-red-resonance’ (Voicecrack) are long metallic explorations - the first more dense with buzzes growing and modulating, the latter a more minimalist squiggling building to some quite intense sections.
The range of material across the set could confuse some people as it moves from quite mainstream techno into experimental and glitchy areas. However, to those who like an eclectic mix, this has got a good range of interesting musics.
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Ryoji Ikeda
Matrix
Touch to:44
Akira Yamamichi
Semilogie
Fire.inc f-21
http://www.fire-inc.demon.ni
Since first hearing Ikeda through the Dorobo and Iridium compilations I have kept in touch with a majority of his releases, and find his sparse clear clinical sound strangely appealing. This set got a relatively poor response from my local retailer when he first got it, but he reappraised it and enthused.
Disk one, ‘Matrix (for rooms)’ is a pair of intersecting sine wave pieces which are designed to intefere with each other, creating different patterns as you move around. I first heard it in the chamberlike Peril Underground where there was a physical intensity to the effects. It was still on when I walked out into the laneway between the store and MacDonalds, pulsing from the outdoor speakers. So ‘surreal’ hearing this otherworldly music in a grotty laneway (where, to be honest, you are more likely to here Marilyn Manson or NIN) that I had to get the album. And the first disk does work best in that sort of space - it is still stunning at home but not as overwhelming. Humming and pulsing, slowly changing, it has the insistance of his Raster ep. Some wonderful low throbbing comes in, there are various small changes as the parts interact, and with it all a mechanical beauty as it gradullay rises in pitch through the hour. Like other sine wave pieces (the LOSD reviewed a few issues ago, for instance) the tones bury themselves into you head, seemingly bypassing your ears, sensed in some almost wholebody manner.
The second disk ‘.matrix’ consists of 10 continuous shorter pieces which work the pulse/click vein. It opens with a heart-beat, some gentle crackling, static and a building pulse which reaches a mind singing tone before sequeing into the second track where a keyboard sequence of two-three notes forms a base for the singing tone. And for the remainder of the disk we get a masterful play of tones with crackles, pulses and beats, changing pace and focus sensitively, moving through some complex warm stages such as 8 with a modulating pair of pulses interfering over a softthud droplet, and ends with a sinewave worthy of ‘matrix’ accompanied by a slow almostguitar. Clean and ringing, as with the first disk it is not for the faint eared, but it is an excellent work.
The album comes with two card inserts with mysterious landscape photographs - fuzzy horizon lines and lights - which are quite beautiful and shed a different light on the precision of the musicworks.
Akira Yamamichi first appeared with a track on Ikeda’s ‘Statics’ compilation, had a track on ‘Chikyu(u)’ (both reviewed for ambience), a 3” ep reviewed here ‘pulse beats’ (back in v1.8). Here he gets an album, though shortish, to work his pulse beat magic. And magic it is. His aesthetic is more oriented towards rhythms than Ikdea, though he uses clicks, pulses and crackles to build a beat - the full title (or text on the front) is ‘Semiologie de la metamusique. Mixage fonctionelle dans le cadre d’une semiologie’.
The first 5 tracks are ‘variations of pulse beats’ and through their titles (’Deep reverb edit’ or ‘Infrasound edit’) suggest a working through of modes and methods. Whatever, they do build up very pleasant, moving beats - ‘Infrasound’ is high pitch speaker separated and jumping beats, joined by a scratchy squelched subtext which slowly emerges, while ‘Rhyhmic fission’ or ‘Subway soundscape’ are complex layers of tones, chinks, percussive loops and beats and trills (and a whistling wind in the subway). ‘Rhythmic fission’ by contrast is more static while still complex. His approach is perhaps more playful than Ikeda with less intensity on the sounds and more interest in rhythms and beats (which does appear on some of the pieces in ‘.matrix’)
Then there are two tracks which are ‘Works for pulse and percussions’ featuring the introduction of live percussion into the mix which is an exciting move - broadening the sound palette and making the works even more effective, and includes a electric piano in ‘Pulsatile’. And the final section ‘The sonance to be aware of silence’ takes yet another tack, with ‘Processed piano 1’ where acoustic piano loops and sequences are given a light touch of electronica, but mainly they work in their own soundspace, with Yamamichi layering and adjusting them in this short, cagean (dare I say it) piece, providing a surprising finale to this excellent album
Both releases are fascinating and engrossing examples of the Japanese end of this genre. Highly recommended.
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Jeffrey Fayman and Robert Fripp
A Temple in the Clouds
Tranceportation/Projekt Projekt102
http://www.projekt.com
http://www.tranceportation.com
An tricksy beast this one - it claims to have been recorded at a temple of Anapraxis on a small Greek island - the Temple of Past Remembrance. However, the Projekt website includes an artist statement where Fayman tells how Fripp wanted to record with his (Fayman’s) band in 1992 after hearing a demo tape. A visit resulted in two hours of Frippertronics, which as the band disbanded lay mouldering. Last year he decided to revisit them, and his response and embellishments to those basic tapes is the result.
At that time Fripp was still using the tape-based system, so the basic sound for most tracks here is that slow, looping pulse style seen in his early solo albums (God Save the Queen and Under Heavy manners for example) and his input to other albums (or FFWD), rather than the more active and varied Soundscapes of recent years. ‘The Pillars of Hercules’ demonstrates this most clearly where an extended Frippertronic piece is given some very subtle, and sympatico, tweaks: some added tones and washes, a horn-sound here, there some bells, to add highlights rather than a make-over.
‘The sky below’ is a short but active interaction between the Fripp tape and Fayman’ additions, before the main piece on the album, the 31 minute title track. Here the ‘collaboration’ is more extensive. The Fripp tape is more aggressive, and is joined by a short Tuvan sample which loops through the whole track, there are more of Fayman’s percussion forefronted as single sounds and clusters of noises together with buzzy metallic tones plus washes and sounds as on the other tracks. The changes that are wrought move slowly and an almost static minimalism is edged onto but never quite fallen into - the slight changes keep coming. It is either a fairly boring 30 minute ride or treat, depending on your point of view.
The whole thing concludes with ‘The starts below’ acknowledged as an excerpt from 2006, indicating it is a modern soundscape, and includes voice tones and rising string effects through the full Fripp system.
This is not a return to Fripp and Eno territory or to the beauties of the solo soundscapes, but rather a revisiting of their style but perhaps with a softer lens. An interesting addition to the broader Fripp catalogue, an enjoyable trip but not essential.
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Michel Banabila, Hannes Vennik and Bobby
Cards on the Table
Staalplaat stcd153
http://www.staalplaat.com
While not quite one of the Material series (two more next issue) this ep is packaged somewhat similarly - clear case (printed, not etched), clear rim AB-CD, with a piece of tablecloth and a playing card in the tray: typical Staalplaat attention to detail.
BV&B are soundartists who came together with sounds over a computer and integrated them using, among other things, a pack of cards as a process randomising tool - and we are asked to shuffle the 28 tracks that make up this 19 minutes.
The fragments vary - some are film and sound samples with dense backgrounds, abstract musics created from loops and sounds, cracked and slowing drum loops with expressionist keyboards, horn loops over surface crackles and more spoken words, distorted melodies, site recordings, big bands and loops, quite a few percussive pieces (Bobby is a drummer), glitchy crackles, industrial drones, atmospheric moods, soundtrack slices: a broad range. A few are over a minutes, most less, some only a few seconds.
All of it is interesting, but frustrating: before you can get a grip on a piece it ends and another fragment skips past, and then the whole thing is over. Shuffling will offer new experiences of the pieces, and they are engrossing (and set to repeat will give an everchanging aural wallpaper). But, as with other disks like this, I would rather that BV&B had spent more time and created a soundwork with more stucture and substance: that they had presented a winning 10 spades hand, rather than a few cards from the deck.
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And of course, all past issues, with hundreds of reviews, on site.
Copyright for these reviews remains with me, Jeremy Keens. Artists and labels are free to use and quote them as long as they acknowledge Ampersand and don’t mess with my words! And if anyone else happens to mention one of these reviews, do pass on the web address or my email address so new readers can find

 

 

 

 

 

 

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