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Ampersand Etcetera – 2002_20
Ambient & microwave & electronica & experimental lowercase & postclassical & minimal & techno & etcetera
The last hurrah for 2002. Typically eclectic.
Thanks to all the labels and artists (and Dense promotions) who have supported me this year – it is obvious that without you &etc wouldn't exist at all. I hope that the relationship will continue in 2003: while at times this can become overwhelming, in the long run it is exhilarating, exciting and satisfying. And for others who have thought of sending stuff – please do!
As to my readers – thanks for not un-subscribing, at least I can imagine you are reading this! And those who are still reading – thanks, and feel free to send any feedback, I would love to hear from you.
As usual, no final summing up for the year – best or worsts. Someone asked me if I usually find something positive to say about what I review, and that's true. I have an enthusiasm for new sounds and experiences, and give most of what comes through here a go – there are only a few albums which I couldn't get a grip on. Part of that is a self-censorship/filtering: people can see what I enjoy and get an idea if they would fit in before sending it to me, and a couple of times I have suggested people don't.
My aim is to try and describe what's going on – to give some impression of what you might hear if you bought it. On the whole I would think that no-one puts out stuff they think sucks – but we would all agree everyone won't like everything (hence some reviews come with a caveat). Part of what happens here is my education – exposure to noise or improv has increased my appreciation/understanding of them.
An exciting trend is the cd-r labels: the explosion mirrors the cassette push of past decades. The ease of burning and packaging options has allowed small operations to develop. A big (and growing) proportion of &etc this year has been with these labels, and we are proud and thrilled at the prospect of further expansion in the next edition (and continued here with TwoThousandAnd and the first Alien Projects). Not that tape has given up the ghost – Slapart (http://www.slapart.com) has a cassette series coming out (limited editions of 25).
And of course MP3 continues its value – many of the releases addressed here have audio samples available which give a value beyond my descriptions. A note of Fallt's latest – Invisible Cities: a collection of 20 5 minute soundscapes made in various cities around the globe in range from direct to abstract. A great range of names creating the pieces too.

Anyway, have a great time over summer/winter, whichever part of the globe you are in, and whatever you celebrate, and I look forward to bringing you the musics of the new year – 3 from Bip-Hop already waiting in the pile
Jeremy
PLEASE NOTE THE NEW EMAIL ADDRESS – jeremy@pretentious.net will bounce back.
ampersand@pretentious.net
&
http://ampersandetc.virtualave.net/ampersand.html
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Anthony Guerra
Spool [#2]
TwoThousandAnd 2++5
http://www.twothousandand.com
TwoThousandAnd were introduced in 2002_13 and Joel Stern's release was covered in 2002_18 – it’s a small, London based label, producing improvised works in increasingly sophisticated packages. This is in folded balck card, with a colour photo pasted on the front (what looks like a prison) and another as an insert card. Anthony Guerra is co-founder, records with other-founder Michael Rodgers, and was also part of the Variable Resistance exhibition whose 'sampler' was reviewed last issue. Guerra plays the guitar, or rather, plays with the guitar – contact mikes are used to record 'regular and tangential sounds of the electric guitar' which means we hear few guitar-sounds, but rather sounds of the guitar.
This approach is manifest in the first track – high siney-tones, sometimes layered, create interference patters, becoming a little buzzy later. Simple, intense. In the second scittery clicks scrapes and buzzes and rhythmic delicate and loopy, building a fuzzytone, fluttering.
The third track is by far the longest and starts with a looped scrape and strange little backwards sounds and knocking; a big drone joins, with a high tone that rings in a period of warmth and resonance, the crackles dropping away, and some light distortion; then chords seem to be working their way through, becoming dominant and creating a quite noisey layering of guitar, tones and river washing; then the buzz-sawing guitar and drones fade to a tone with pulses in that eases to the end. Subtle developments have led to these changes – evolution and development rather than drama.
The fourth piece has high singing and backwards pulses, some guitar chords, abstract and edgy with a distant layer of complex drum machine that hide behind the drifting guitar-sounds, creating a juxtaposition not seen elsewhere in the album; the track ends with some deep bass work. Finally a simple Fripp-er guitar loop solo (not derivative, but my main reference point).
A balance of restraint and restraint have led to an album of evolving microsounds that is impressive and intriguing. The richness of the Cd-r label explosion demonstrated once more – another one to keep a close eye on.
(The label has a subscription process which gives you access to subscriber-only releases).

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Lux Mammoth
Hertz Circus
Bloodstar BS002
Smidrin
Coming Into Existence
Alien Projects AP001
http://alienprojects.cjb.net
Two disks from West Australian Dr Alien Smith – one with his group, the second in collaboration with W.I.T. (see 2002_04) on his new label.
Hertz Circus is a big dirty and complex sample-noise work. Layers of voices, dark-tonality, a Middle Eastern singer and banging swell and are distorted in 'Device wise length', a slow filmic atmosphere that eases to whooshing white noise whistles and drones, rumbling sustained dark-mood, modulating to muffled thuds and voices to a nice conclusion. Mysterious muddy bass and guitar in 'Dirty water' with noises and metallic tinkles, builds to a head before a long metal rumble pulsing outro. 'De-luxe' opens with a dense multilayered rhythm bed (loose cable crackles, pulses, bangs) and a slow synth cut through with a recurring rapid rhythm section. Strange metallic calls and tortured synths cry out in this thick swirl, radio squrrls and samples in the gloom, chugging into the distance.
More subtlety with 'Ballards dream' that starts very quietly – distant radio crackles, a low throb, little noises – a tapping and possible violin enter, echoed and building, then bass and western-guitar play parts in what becomes an improv excursion surrounded by tones, more intense yet with more space, taken out with a Theremin-y echo. The guitars continue in 'Bustline nightmare' with rapid picking and different solos in left and right channels – buzzes and other electronica are in there too (including what sounds like a mobile phone), this is more restrained, even tending towards melodic, and ends very abruptly. Finally another dark density – 'In his own blood' is samples with a slow chugging beat, bass and high squiggles, voices whooshes swirls, a loop sticks and distraught voices slowly distort away, finally beating into an extended sample from a dental film.
A solid album – intense but with balancing colour and light, but possibly trying to do too much: but doing it knowingly.
With Smidrin, a very different mood and sound has emerged, perhaps reflecting the fact that with a postal collaboration you maybe have to have a bit more restraint? In 'Combine' there is a pulsing together with a watery flowing noise, crackling pulse grows through it and finally some PC-crackling at the end. An electronic desert in 'Cycle' where a wind blows through creating high tinkles and a scratching. Strange animal calls, gentle drift, slowly changing in the moving air. The lightness of touch continues in 'Purr' with layered cycles and clicks, tones and an easy pulse, rumbles and buzzes coming through the musical tonalities.
Metal gongs or pots, slightly filled with water, reverberate and shimmer through 'Section' where some light production work adds to the drift. More buzzy in 'Scarab' whooshing and bangs, drilling and a treated voice, building in 'Dilation' with dense grumbling machinery creating a storm, strings in there, resolving to a tapping buzz extended fade. More minimal with 'Close' where a vent blows and some backwards sounds twitch, a tone drifts through as does a sample, motor-like, ending with extended tones.
'Fragments' is as its name suggests, 4 disparate parts from a crackling storm through a table tennis match into swishing scritches and then jumping cds. An organic, natural feel to 'Arrival' where winds blow and build to willy-willies, insects chitter, metal is scraped and an organ builds into a metal percussion. The tenth and final track is 'Seven'(!) – and a spooky very slow voices creates a base for machine loops and another clearer voice, distorted, switching to a clean tonal and percussive section, soft crackles and a rumble, that fades away.
A well balanced album, combining some nice glitch work with more rounded sounds to create interesting soundscapes. Good to see another label come into existence.
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Seth Nehil & Jgrzinich
Stria
Erewhon CDWhON008
http://radiantslab.com/erewhon
Stria – layers, the overplaced sounds that make up these compositions; strings, the connections and movements that work through them. In 'Tome gather' for example, both these aspects are heard as the piece elides from: burring tones, modulated tonal metals with longer tones and pulses in there as a hidden music; the burring becomes less pronounced, emergent long drones, dense and gorgeous with a percussive note; becoming more voicelike, edgy high tones; the drones start to diverge, becoming more pulsing and noisey; to an atonal conflict of purer tones that interfere-pulse, disturbed voices. There are no points of change on this journey, more gradual modulations, and layer lays on layer.
Building percussive clicks and clatter in 'Arboreal' are rhythmic, slow washes through, sounds separate and rejoin (stringed together), a rapid flowing, then fluttering to the end.
Finally 'The mirrored corner' is buzzing metallic with a clicky click, shimmering and pulsing; a resonant echo deep emerges and is a dark hollow voice that becomes more voice-like; the middle section simples-out, more clicks. A dominant tone develops, shimmering with a sine pulse and a sequence of melodic ringing tones ebb and flow before a brief climax and fade.
The line notes suggest Nehil and Grzinich take recordings of large groups (playing who knows what) in the first two tracks, and wire drones in the third, and then 'compose' them. Interestingly Nehil is the credited composer of the first two, Grzinich of the last (with additions by Nehil), and the pieces have taken a number of years to create. There are some liner notes that may help understand their process – there are hints in terms of 'unfocus' and an overseas collaboration – but it is very trendily obscure. Anyway, irrespective of their methods, the results are dramatic e(in)volving minimalist works.
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Michael Gendreau
55 pas de la ligne au no. 3
23five 23five002
http://www.23five.org
Gen Ken Montgomery
Pondfloorsample
XI XI126
http://www.xirecordings.org
These two artists sit together as they play unusual instruments – perhaps work with would be a better term.
Gendreau plays the record player – placing sensitive devices that pick up vibrations on various machines while playing run-out grooves and antique vinyl, a strange music emerges. There are two tracks: 'Two worlds for now' is nearly seventeen minutes long – a deep rumble, squeaks tapping and strained whirring are the motors gears and bands turning away, a click and the sound becomes a soft rumble, then returning to the noisier mode with scraping and a high pinging. Perhaps some very very faint horns, a whirring, strange bird-call from the machinery, dropping to a very deep rumble, a click and the turning quickly stops.
The title track is more than twice as long, and similarly structured with clicks precipitating changes, much longer development periods: but also more variation between quietly meditative parts and scratchy squeal and pops – with dismembered voices stuttering somehow in the sounds – a twangy mechanical sounds, then puttery buzzing with more voices and a hint of music. As with many impressive albums, description is difficult – it takes the rumble that you sometimes notice and adds layers of subtle and less subtle textures over that. It is surprisingly varied as it shifts intensity, and I have happily had it rumbling away while I work or listened more closely at times, with a number of repeats.
Gen Ken Montgomery appeared in 2001_12 with his disk Icebreaker on Staalplaat – a recording of the eponymous kitchen gadget. Now XI records (following their Niblock retrospective 2002_15) present a double album of soundworks from 1982 on. The first disk is a set of studio tracks. The early work 'Static/Hiss' opens the set with a minute or so of buzzing noise static from Montgomery's equipment. The third to ninth tracks are from his Domestic Release sounds - recorded from various domestic (in a broad sense) settings or equipment, usually unprocessed. The liner notes suggest 'it is far more interesting to them without knowing their sources (so listen to this track before you read this!)' (and I won't name the tracks, in the same spirit) but these are more than mere 'mystery sound' puzzles. There is tapping fizz and banging; building whirrs and clanks; buzz tap; arhythmic tapping echoed with gurgles; cracking squeaks and gentle calls; scratchy rubbing echoed; and a noisey machine. Intense decontextualised audio views of the world.
A series of works recorded in Spritzenhaus take the same theme, but with more 'composing' – rhythmic cycling, chopping with chime notes in 'Egg slicer and…'; whirrs pulses ticks buzzing of a fusebox; a pulsing breathy sound loop, echoed, with a building pump; billowing angelic static with hidden voices and more tones from 'Shortwave band'; and clink whirr rumble scratch of 'Storage devices'. And finally, another Domestic Release finishes the side: recording of a film projector, used in many live works.
Careful readers might notice no mention of track 2 – this is a long piece 'Father demo swears' recorded live in Arcane Device's studio in 1989, and is a little out of place. There is rattling, static, street sounds (engines, dogs) from a microphone hanging out the window, shimmers, tones (somewhere a violin, but hard to pinpoint), rattling; whipping feedback in layers; it ebbs and flows as an amorphous sound piece, intensified by the application of some of Arcane's devices.
Disk 2 is live pieces – the brief title track is silent, and then almost an hour of 'Droneskipclickloop' a recreation of one of the four-channel stereo works, this one created with dancer Andrea Beeman, whose movements affected and added to the mix. It is a piece to immerse yourself into – an opening movement of camera whirr, crackling, birds, a plane slides into an extended central section which slowly modulates a thrumming, pulse, crackling and humm in a spellbinding mystery. Near the end the natural ambience re-emerges as a ringing is accompanied by water backgrounds. As Thom Holmes very varied listening instructions suggest, this works as a focus, as a background, as an addition to an environment or the environment added to it.
'The aquarium fishtank symphony' is a crunchy crackling hissy piece with voices coming and going, more active and varied in its shorter span, and created out of a strange range of equipment. Finally, one of Montgomery's favourite instruments (the laminator) briefly gets into some 'Knackerbrot action' which combines the drone of the machine with the impact on a crispbread. An important overview of an unusual musical career.
(The title track, which 'appears' on the album, refers ironically to a mail-art piece that Montgomery has been sending out – the liner notes on this set are a delight and add to the experience – after a first listening).
Both of these albums make the familiar strange and the strange familiar (to quote unused Eno album titles) and revel in a real and revealed intensity. Thoroughly recommended to &'s sonic explorers as the edge moves towards the centre.

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Graziano Lella
Arg
Sirr 2008
http://www.sirr-ecords.com
http://web.tiscali.it/argart
The album just says Arg, and in his note Graziano called it his project – so just look under Arg.
My Sirr-experience suggests they are working into the minimal electroacoustic market, and this set fits that objective easily. There are four pieces in the set and they share methods and acoustic space.
'Classer l'enface/La vie qui dort' is an audio tribute to Georges Perec created from concrete sounds, baritone sax and computer elaboration. There are three parts, but I heard four. The opening section has little pops and scrapes, crackles that move in space, with fragments of identifiable sounds, deep tones develop under building to a big rumble with sounds flying about. Then a section of sqky distorted voices, fragments of speech. A long section from the sax component – pop squeaky chopped, voicey blows, rapid clicks; and finally another voice piece, female fragmented layered, shifting and possibly reading titles or sections, accompanied by computer tones.
High tones, pulses, chitters, deeper pulses are the bed of 'Pliciclo', built from voice sounds but far divorced from there. Rattles clank across and high pips pass as it builds an abstract arhythmia. Taking another instrument, in this case a prepared bass, 'Pomeriggio a rovaniemi (a Robert Bresson)' demonstrates little of the original sounds. There is electronica and clicks with some string bass sounds, moving around and varying the oblique noises, with sudden bursts, then a longer bass-based part into a sticky rumble end.
Finally, a concrete composition 'Pupille gustative' decontextualises sounds to create a shifting soundpiece – lots of small noises, some identifiable (longer samples, for example) with rumbles and chitters, pulses and buzzes around. The final few minutes feature a nice prepared/manipulated piano resonating as the sound of a child sobbing builds and fades in waves. This section is quite disturbing as the sound is too recognisable and begs its context.
An intense album of Musique Concrete that is skilful and subtle, and should please those interested in the style. Finally, among the intriguing images from M.Behrens on the cover, there is a wonderful picture in the booklet. At first glance it looks like a dense tangle of electric cable, then when you look more closely it is red and barked branches of a bush, just budding, with a blind or fence behind.

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Various Artists
Delay Makes Me Nervous
Karate Joe Records KJ006
http://www.karate-joe.at
In the spirit of counterintuitive titles, like boredom is deep and mysterious, come Delay Makes Me Nervous – which is a problem if it does as none of these tracks offers instant gratification nor is there restraint from delay. But beyond that, the counterintuitively named Karate Joe (sounds more like a hip hop label) offers some deeply mysterious ambient glitch.
The names mean nothing to me – so let's dive in.
'Umgebung_0.2' by Florian Bogner – a provisional collection of emergent rising tones, with clicks shudders and hollows, some piano notes, sounds of static in a static movement, delicate cycles.
'Kwatsh', Srob – a garden, insects, clattering, electric buzzes, chopped percussive samples – strings shimmering in a light electroacoustic composition – frogs, and finally a lawn mower to inject a finely tuned humour (though the mower isn't), with insects reclaining the night.
'Driveby', Oliver Grimm – a modulated static, tones in deep, the static steps down, fades over a long period – very minimal.
'Playing: bluter 1 (my god is a drummer), Thermodynamic Superstar and His Gardeners: clicking crackly, created from strange sample sounds, percussive cut and paste, twinkles and spins. A very short '1.2 bb-extended' at the end of the album adds choppy vocals.
'Deka dent ((one special day in the dungeon))', Gilbert Handler – takes the album in a different direction again – a Dada-esque vocal piece, deep Tuvans, higher speech, some manipulations (cutting, tones), ranging from the depths to falsetto, a weird, decadent, opera.
'Revision', Max Kircher – a percussion piece with gongs surrounded by computer tones, a brief rhythm, then bells, squarls, deep tones building to a noise that drops to an ethnic drum loop with some touches of electronica.
'Zero generalizability', Viewnix – a deep drum, chordal tones and a distorted vocal loop slides into a flowing techno, with some lovely organ. The voice seems to be saying 'we're not disco' – virtual-tongue in cheek?
'Blubberwrap', Oliver Maklott – real glitchy crackles, with long screeches among the rapid jumpy tortured computer sounds.
'Zwingen und zwingen lassen', Jakob Polacsek – a disco plunderphonica with dubby squirly electronica shifting to the samples messed around lightly with bloopy blurty sounds, the some more orchestral/watery noises before a quizzical end.
'Vous etes belle', Gilbert Handler – vocals return, not so much Dada as sleezy club: this reminded me of Yello as a loungey organ melded with some edgy electronica has a semi-sung lyric over with the hook 'mademoiselle, que vous etes belle', with Swingle singers doing the breaks, and a more lyrical voice singing a chorus. A hoot.
I presume these people are part of Karate Joe's roster – anyway, it makes a nicely balanced compilation: there is enough similarity to create a glitchy/electro mood with some interesting excursions into other modes (electroacoustic, not-disco and plunder-disco) to broaden the appeal, especially with some touches of humour. And like most compilations there are some here that could interest you over a whole album, others who perhaps aren't unique enough yet, but all work well in the time given them.
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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 (But you can correct typos)! 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 me. Thanks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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