e a r p e a c e : audio reviews
black dicematt bua + matt mikas + tom roe
forcefield
hollydrift
massimo
negativland
ralph neri
no neck blues band
pi equals three
pleasurehorse
carly ptak
rattling wall collective in dutch
rubber-o-cement
sightings
the sunburned hand of the man
temple of bon matin
three legged race & rented race
vote robot
(various artists) noise brunch sampler plate
(various artists) soundcd no.1
(various artists) sounds from the maryland state fair
- black dice beaches & canyons cd (dfa)
- black dice lost valley 3" cd (tigerbeat6)
some love 'em as a live act and don't think this cd (also available as a double lp) represents them well. others are blown away by this recording. seen them live once, and i went cuz i heard this cd. it arrived here at earpeace world hq, i tossed it into the cd player, went about my business, only to find myself doing a double take as the music reached out and grabbed me by the ears. yes, there are fewer drums here than the live set, which is drum-driven, but when the drums do come in they make a major impact. everything here is stretched out, taking its sweet time in getting where it is going. comparisons to germaniac psyche-rock experimentalists from the early 7o's are not out of line, if only as some point of reference. i give 'em points for use of the studio to wring the most out of thier tools, which still include guitars, drums & vox, but also include generous coatings of synthy electronical effects. they deserve credit for jumping into the deep end with this drawn out experimental sound. and i think the fact that their friends & foes are arguing about the merits of this record indicates that there is something going on here, as controversy (albeit a minor tempus in a chamber pot) has always been a sign of something worth investigating.
the 3" lost valley ep/single/whatever should assuage the brusided feelings of some of those who missed the drums on beaches & canyons. sounds a lot more like the live show i saw last november. still working in extended instrumental noise/effects extended territory here. i am glad to have this, it works for me as a kind of dessert to the main course served up on beaches & canyons
- matt bua + matt mikas + tom roe of the bridge lp (free103point9)
concept lp incorporating sounds recorded at the (brooklyn?) bridge, mixed with samplings from sonny rollin's 1961 recording, "the bridge". much less chaotic than might be expected from something based in found sound recordings, with improvised jazz-like riffs coalescing around the other elements. side two offers the biggest surprise with several locked grooves at the end apparently formatted for easy access for club djs. repeated listenings seem to alternately congeal & melt into a cohesive ensemble sound with a good idea underlying it & abstract dub-sations.
- forcefield roggaboggas cd (load)
reputedly the soundtrack from their appearance at the whitney bienniel show, which would herald the ascension of forcefield into the echelons of the arrrrt elites. no danger of comprovisation here on this disc, yes, it includes a an insert full o' pictures that eclipse those long ago burned-in images from the kiss alive ii albumen art, lotsa knitfabric central amerind on extended hallucinogen bender gawn mudfukkin amok. its the sounds, stupid. like raymond scott's lost dance lessons for apocalyptiks. melodic enuff that commersh applications as soundtract for assisted suicide adverteasements appear about inevitable. anal log sounding synthoscillashuns confronting beat, working thru gastro-audible issues aplenty. sloshes, twists, gurgles, turns inside of itself, a veritable recording of a tapeworm eating its way thru the carcass of fort thunder. yeah, its perceptibly the outcome of an immersion in living art not as affectation but as everyday eating breathin & defacation. another grand slam on the earplace stadia homeplate. just too damned good to live. kill one now.
- hollydrift this way to escape cdr (public eyesore)
collage-style recordings by madison, wisconsin's mathias anderson, who has a pretty clear vision of what he is trying to communicate with the mixture of sources he uses. including lots of radio/tv spoken word fragments, mechanical sounds, environmental captures, miscellaneous found sounds & sometimes even instruments & vocals. last year i noticed the term "melancholy electronics" in use, and certainly the melancholy portion of that term is contained in these tracks, while the electronics is less obvious, in a good way. most of the source recordings are less scarce in nature, but the way they are combined & layered achieves a unique audio art vision, with nods to other editor-composer projects such as negativland. i do not disagree with his own assessment that this music creates a destination thru context, rather than via confrontational use of volume & pained frequencies. which is not to say that this is any less disturbing, nay... much more so. special thanx once again to bryan day at public eyesore for hooking me up with this one.
- massimo hello dirty cd (mego)
well, if you are expecting little laptop bleep & bloops ha on you. while constructed using laptop & horn, the content here is one overdriven sequence rhythm fragment with melodic overtone damage piece after another. reminds me of kevin drumm's sheer hellish miasma in the well, sheer, overwhelming exuberant audacity of the torrents of whacked-out (or should i say "whacked-off", considering the twisted hello kitty-lampoon artwerk packaging) braying sounds. first heard this loudly in my car while driving way too fast across ontario feeling somehow like i was gonna get in trouble bigtime any moment now, thought it was the setting but revisiting this in the (relative) safety of my home brought back the immanent violation expectation dread within seconds. redundantly, i say, there is rhythm & melody but it has been perverted into a uniquely triumphant ego splatch doo-rama.
- negativland deathsentences of the polished and structurally weak cd + photo booklet (seeland)
negativland drives deeper into the black heart of amerikka with this "found art" project. originally discussed on a npr show, (which can be found here), this project consists of an oversize book of pictures accompanied by a cd. the book contains stuff (pictures, notes, lists, letters) found inside various automotive wrecks that were found in the junkyard. some of which were pretty poignant, including one note: "joe: vigina siad you don't want to talk to me so we are thru with each other and i am getting a borchen i don't want your baby so leave me a lone love sandy", next to an ultra sound for one sandra mathers, bearing the legend "baby aprox. 11wks". another item is a certificate of completion of a drug & alcohol program, with the corresponding picture being of a trunk littered with beer bottles. taken as an audio project, the titles of the 12 pieces are taken from a found cassette cover, but the sounds themselves are composed of bits of audio detritus, the things that would otherwise be discarded, equipment malfunctions, etc. eerily, it provides an apt soundtrack as you peruse the voyeuristic glimpses into the artifacts left behind by people in their crashed automobiles. it spooked me enuff that i didn't want to listen to it on a trip for fear of life imitating found art, you know? didn't want to crash & burn & have them find this sitting on the seat next to me. this is the first negativland item i have gone looking for. given the increasing amounts of ppl culling "found art", i thought that the confluence of auto transportation lifestyle and accidents of life, it seemed appropos. the packaging carries the motif even further, with the cover die-cut in the form of an auto owners courtesy envelope, such as you would find in many gloveboxes, and the cd sleeve refers to an "acoustic feedback (afb) system". more than well enuff conceived to prickle the psyche.
- ralph neri early michigan progressives 1 cdr (american tapes)
the story of the discovery of this tape in a stepson's bag in the front seat of a ride in a northern michigan outpost of a black dice/wolf eyes mixdown session should be printed somewhere on the inside of this. totally outsider of anything analog synth + factory field recordings + varispeed spoken wurds = madness = this don't get far from my cd player. "volume 1" promises more of this illk? another essential emergence from the depths of john olson's american tapes. now, how do i subscribe to the at release club?
- no neck blues band re: "mr. a fan..." lp (trade mark of quality)
idiotically, i missed what may well be the only time this entity plays the detroit area. somehow, tho, some or all of their set from 4 july 1999 at the detroit contemporary finds its way onto this release. unusual, even for nnck, packaging tribute to those early 7o's bootleg labels, such as tmoq, rubber dubber & music for fans. the music sounds pretty roomish live indirect sound, for most of it, but after repeat plays i seem to be able to hear more & more, bass, percussions, multiple gtrs, chanted background vocals, flutes, kitchen sink, more, such as the thunderstorm sounds on side 2. i dunno if i can remember them flirting so closely to song forms, with vocals seemingly extemporized from the event at hand, "4th of july", "i hear storms" & so forth. there is a place where i could swear i hear the influence of "don't worry, kyoko" plastic ono band, and that pushes a friendly and close to home button fer me. still very much in that vein of what some might dismiss as post-hippy twaddle, but signif in that they are dedicatedly dogged in pursuit of a scrappy mystic inspiro muzik. what the fuk... i like it... to hell with you.
- pi equals three i laughed>>>everyone stared cdr (pi=3)
got curious about these folks after seeing a post (by wolf eye's aaron dilloway... i think?) raving about their crazed performances as openers. it took a little while, but they got the cdr to me (there are mp3s here). they aso intermittently keep up a pretty funny web site, tho i miss the descriptions of their live shows. i have been listening to this for a few weeks now, and it is a tough egg to scramble into words. sounds like the result of a lot of different sonic experiments. either that, or they are very adept at getting very interesting events recorded. either way, this cdr demonstrates very good instincts, from the variety of audio wreckage presented, to the sequencing. they come at you fast & then are gone, followed but an entirely different flavor of damage. one piece will sound like it is some sort of under-recorded ambience, then you are hit by analog/digital hardcore damaged thrash, followed by some computer voice speaking out on subjects i have yet to fathom. here is an accordion bit with wobbling sounds behind it, which followed a short sequence of distressed stressed seriously messed with keyboard. there is a speaker testing screech of a recording error followed by a submerged voice behind a technically challenged punk outburst. i imagine them getting reactions, like "what were you thinking?" and "why did you do that?". this is one of those recordings i hear that makes me wish i had done it. i dunno if they will keep going, i hope so, but either way, they will have left behind this amazingly fucked-up document. there is definitely something wrong with the water in edinboro, pa.
- pleasurehorse bareskinrug cd (load)
one man band project featuring drum machines, drum machines, some bass synth pulses & more drum machines. the cover pix all show the guy all sweaty, i can well imagine that live it would be a hot show. there are some pieces that successfully mine this territory for some impact, but overall too much sameness in sounds, like hearing a full-length of a drum corps. when ikue mori does her solo drum machine works, she integrates samplers to a great degree to keep things varied. the beats themselves here are worked well, they rarely stay in the same place for more than a few seconds, and there is very little regular predictable 2-4 strokes, the rhythms are all mixed up which is a very good thing. the sounds are all pretty much delivered at a similar level, and this suffers after a short while from this limitation of sonic pallette. some of the sounds remind me of lo-fi bitrate sampled drums i used to work with on amiga programs. i think a piece or two mixed in amongst other things is ok, and live, with some physical interaction with the performer & crowd it might work, but i doubt i will be pulling out this one again.
- carly ptak housebound cdr (heresee)
first time i listened to this was on headphones, which is probably not recommended for maximum effect. came back to it & let it have some more space, crawling around the empty rooms of my house at high volume while i rattled around within. a lot of ground covered here, majorly extended. those elements usually compressed into brief sets are here cut loose to roam, i can only imagine what it should sound like on 4 speakers. voices, drum machines, indecipherable sources moving. not a disposable work, more like something i will not begin to get a handle on for some years. i am guessing, at this point, that the visual aspects of the performance space would help me find my bearings, but i think i wouldn't mind continuing to be lost for awhile longer.
- rattling wall collective in dutch slide five cdr (phonophore)
20-odd minute long set of understated instrumental mixes incorporating electro-acoustic & electronic sounds. not a confrontational recording, rather it weaves more gently thru the ears. not tame, either, but something worthy of repeated considerations, which can be difficult considering the prolific recording pace achieved by rwc. doesn't overstay its welcome, exudes a kind of humility about a nontheless dogged pursuit of new turfs. i'd love to sneak this on in place of muzak in some dentists waiting room, cuz, for me, small conquests like this are a necessity.
- rubber-o-cement high speed electronic cardboard cd (toyo)
this one caught my eye in the display case at reckless records in chicago, and am i glad. i had caught rubber-o-cement live on that sensory overload tour with scummerai, krankenkabinet et. al, and other than having to admire the monster costume, didn't hear much that stuck with me that night. this release is another thing entirely. plies the noise mart, but delivers customer service with a saucy insouciance that is oft-promised, rarely-delivered elsewhere. synaesthetic visuals abound, pieces of synths flying away from some entropic disturbance, things are scraped, stroked, poked, murmerings, unknown rolling spiky things in the dark, lotsa low growly vari-sped tracks all tickling & delighting me way too much to be healthy from the first moments i heard it. but who wants to be healthy anyways? especially when imbibing this kinda sicko concoction of a potion. i'm hooked, bad, cuz it just connects so well to my synaptic aural taste buds, located in my digestive tract. who is selling the cement colon back catalog now? comes packaged in a very sweet (mmm... mine tasted delicious) silk-screened. wrapper around a comic... err, graphic novel? (mine was a hellraiser) with the cd & some inserts hiding inside.
- sightings audio dispatch 06 cdr (free103point9)
folks at free1o3.9 sending me stuff, i'm getting to it, gotta give 'em support cuz they are doing the collective distro promo thing with aplomb, ma-a-an. interesting to listen to this live set by sightings after spending time with sunburned hand & nnck, cuz this trio is doing a distinctly related thang. mebbe they would prefer to be compared to early pil than ya ho wa 13 but we're still listening to ppl exploring the available spaces within the lesser (obviously) structured conduits of the sticks, strings & throat formata. and it's growing on me. i totally missed the mucho acclaimed michigan haters record, but its working its way into that cold space where my heart used to be (thats another boring story). more of a grinding sore throb than a cosmic fluttering jam. they persist and squeeze some truth out of the place where punks might still think you can experiment with expectations.
- sunburned hand of the man the book of pressure cdr (manhand)
- sunburned hand of the man the agoraphobic christcycle cdr (manhand)
- the sunburned hand of the man headress lp (records)
the book of pressure starts with the title piece exuding a kind of psychedelic religious fervor, with some one (cooper?) preaching up a monsoon, accompanied by earthy-sounding percussions and continuously strummed acoustic guitars with some answering vocals reinforcing the mood. the rest of the cdr consists of percussion-oriented jams with minimal contributions from other instruments. #11 manages to up the annoyance factor with the repetitions of the word "robot" over & over. the cdr ends on a solid note with a well-developed acoustic guitar instrumental that incorporates some very well place hand percussion & flute.
the the agoraphobic christcycle cdr was actually sent to me by accident, i didn't even know it existed, but i am very happy to have it. credited to sunburned hand of the man, but almost entirely consisting of recordings by chad cooper in full-on shamen mode. this cdr bakes brain matter mercilessly. i actually very much enjoyed the more singlemindedness of this as contrasted with the communal dissipation of the collective recordings. uses lots of percussion, chanted vocals, wood flutes, tribal-sounding like some kind of new englander cargo cult. it's very loose, but there is a focus of the dementia that i particularly enjoyed, a fun kind of mad craziness.
after emitting skads of seemingly self-replicating breeder cdrs, an oaf-fish-ull lp, headress, sticks its gooey head out from between the legs of... would you believe, funkadelic??? oh yes, boyz & girdlez, it was 19 seventy-free in the studio when dese jamz was wrechorded. a definite funk is smellible, and hips are grinding, we just never do here ol' geo. clinton weigh in. lots of earthy percussions augment, and guitars & keys percolate while people just about chant up a druggedly inspired strum-drang pretty much off-mic. sounds much more fukked up than it is, it seems pretty together, and very homagely towards the p-funkers in a way that big thief seems to have managed to always miss by a mile or 2. its been awhile since i heard that snare echoing along for a few beats and that just-about-lost but oops-found-it grrrew-roo-roove. i like it for what it is but wouldn't dare to pull out maggot brain to compare for fear of making this disk melt in shame.
- temple of bon matin cabin in the sky lp (bulb)
loosely organized set of recordings with a retro lofi sound. there were parts that i thought resembled the "freeform freakout" familiar ugly sections of the red crayola's parable of arable land, but i wasn't sure exactly how, unless maybe there was a lot of things going on in the room not necessarily closely-miked and mixed together from not many source tracks. maybe. starts & revisits some old-timey songstuffs like "muleskinner blues" intercut (often very abruptly) with garage-rock riffs & some very drifty jams. the whole thing comes out very cloudy, and i am not sure what or if there is any unifying concept here. it is interesting, and it is apparent that a lot of work went into this. there is no clarity here, likely by design, and the various elements cause me to be reminded of other, older recordings more than it gives me an idea of its own identity. sounds like it was fun to make, tho.
- three legged race & rented race half day rocks! cassette (american tapes)
liked this one a lot right out of the box. side 1 exploits the noise avenues not unlike kevin drumm in that this climbs out o' the heap with its flava. the thing with doing straight up noise music is ya got to have a feel for it making it interesting & then keeping it moving around so as to avoid the (usually) inevitable within the noise idiom boredom factor. side 2 is more drawn out, lotsa reversed sounds & less interesting, but hell, that is quibbling. the focused inzanity (that word tm -john olson) on the front side was enuff to put me on the hunt for more stuff by 3 legged race (no hair police members were harmed in the making of this review).
- vote robot five score six bicycle lp (catsup plate)
i've been on a vote robot kick lately, tracking down their earlier 2 lps (r.u.r. & versions, which partially masquerades as a remix project) + assorted other appearances, so i was looking forward to this release. a good month later, i am still pondering. 1st thing that i notice is the apparent surface noise on the copy i got, tho vr are notoriously lo-fi & analog, so i figgered, well, this fits. then i keep listening to this trying to find a handle to put on it, and it keeps avoiding me. finally, i think i have come to grips, so to speak with five score six bicycle. vote robot, for me, seems to be about inhabiting the listening place, with various sound objects place seemingly here & there to bump into. what i have liked about them, since 1st hearing in meorm na, was that underlying the first look randomness & low volume noises (shades of sukora- kinda) was an emergent sense of pleasure in the way those broken little melodies interacted with the not-quite malfunctioning rhythm fragment, shards of timbres achieved thru all kinds of abuse of tapes, record heads, resampling, working the analog environment to get to warm places missed by & contrasting with cold digital electronics. i find it friendly & convincingly unconventional. after repeated listens i always seem to find myself surprised by something coming out of the speakers, as severe expressions of recording process dysfunction emerge from the disturbed tranquility.
- (various artists) noise brunch sampler plate 2x 3" cdr (crippled intellect productions)
nice souvenir of event featuring 1 person bands. someday maybe someone will explain to me why one person would need a band name, but what do i know, just showing that i am not hep with the skids. mike shiflet starts off mini cdr 1 with some wavy guitar-derived sounds that inhabit space, but don't really seem to do much else. ernst karel similarly lays back with sustained tones that shift & deflect attention. aerospace soundwise moves in with field recordings with subtly applied electronix that somehow manage to have more happening in them than the two previous instrumental pieces. irene moon, a personal fave of mine over the past year, contributes a piece that some have compared to laurie anderson, but i perceive an intensity & use of voice, repetition, white & other colored noises with the relentless entomological subject matter to make her mark in a specially interesting way. the way she alters the sound of her voice from near monotone to evocative confessionals, plus the vocal insect or synth sequence sounds makes this memorable. still looking to get my hands on a full-length by her. pod blatz' twangulations und vibrating nose hairs deliver much more impact than the live performance i witnessed last month. guess i shoulda picked up that cdr. someone could send me one for my birthday, or mlk day, or groundhog day... or take an unsaintly curmudgeon to the secret museum day. lots seems to happen, stuff warbling in there behind the all-too-brief keyboards & stuffin as it flourishes.
mini cdr 2 kicks in strong with the zombi assault on senses wailing wall o' noise, aptly depicting the pain of "hands into bees" until sudden stop. indeed. goat sucessfully creates an aura of menace with one of the longer pieces of this sampler. i kept waiting for the cascading waterfull of noisemuzik to be punctuated by the sound orf an overturning equipment table, but no such. great progression thru streams, circuits, crystal structures and drowning creatures. mammal plays naked wet twister with psuedopodia dangling from electrical sockets. once your hair stops smoldering, you can do tha 1-2 ow! 4-5 (repeat) step-beats. rob ray cuts-up rap & drops it down a burning oil well. vertonen wraps up the selection with an electronic lullaby successfully somnambulistic. well-placed in the sequence, tho i prefer to put these 2 discs in the old 5 cd grammavictorolaphone & let the shuffle mix these with 3 or so other cds, adds spice to whatever else you're mixing. they're probably all gone by now, but just in case here's the link, i recommend you at least try and score some of this.
- (various artists) soundcd no.1 2cd (soundnet)
culled from various performances at the angels gate dusk & sound series' recorded in san pedro & west hollywood, featuring an interestingly curated mixture of experimentalists in sonic arts & improvised music. compilations like this serve mostly as source material for various mix tapes i might make. the stuff on here that grabbed me would be the extended organ, solid eye & the various permutations featuring marina rosenfeld, joseph hammer's "phonomontages" (remixing prerecorded materials using vintage analog recorders) & joe potts (of lafms). the jazzy more trad improv stuff interested me much. nels cline had an effective ensemble piece combining cello & bass clarinet with bass, percussion & guitar. the non-guitar solo pieces also had their moments, but the stuff that will be added to the earpeace playlists will be the stranger art noises.
- (various artists)
fairfeild recordings present sounds from the maryland state fair cdr (heresee)
recorded by none other than james twig harper, and edited down to pointed bits of sound. includes such nuggets as "sledgehammer game", "pygmy goat pen", "charismatic barker" & "human side show". i love playing this at work at seeing yet another level of surprise on the regional design unit m'ployees faces as they scurry by my "office" for more coffee, followed by the rattling sounds of compulsive headshaking, swelling cranial incidents and then the slow thud of their collapse into the voided sanctity of the break room. i said it 4 times, i'll say it again... if it is on heresee, just get it, or miss the undercutting edge of baltimoronic culture.
~ b . w i l d e r e d (except where noted)
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