Sounds Reviews #14/2016: Bird Traps - Everything must go (2016)

Bird Traps - Everything must go (2016)

Bird Traps' newest composition (released on bandcamp in August 2016) is really touching. It touches with intense tenderness the question of space and time and their relationships to music and perception. It is a good example how music can lever out the only seemingly existing relation between real-time and inner musical time. It is soul-time-music in the deepest sense of these words. Marcus Skinner's sounds are tenderly whispering or murmering Hamlet's famous verses: "I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space". His soundworld incarnates again perfectly the tension between laughter and tears, sadness and beatitudo, almost like Joyce had put it in one word: laughtears. It is a dialogue between piano and strings with an incredibly heartbreaking and ultra-intense beauty. One of Matsuo Bashô's most touching poems perfectly describes the atmosphere Marcus Skinner has created here:

Loath to let spring go,

Birds cry, and even fishes’

Eyes are wet with tears

Sadly, I part from you,

Like a clam torn from its shell

I go, and autumn too

(10/10 Admiration points)

[SKG]

Sounds Reviewed #13/2016: Deathstench & Phurpa - Evoking Shadows of Death (2016)

Deathstench, Phurpa - Evoking Shadows of Death (2015)

(LP Black Plagve 2016, lim. 150 copies)

I am really and deeply impressed by this 12 inch Deathstench and Phurpa collaboration (limited to 150 copies). I have listened to this 26 minutes highly adventurous aural abyss already several times and I am totally bassthrilled or basstatic. This is definitely the best "ultrasounds"-recording in ages. It feels like being scanned or skinned alive in some dark ritual desperately trying to find or carve out a soul under skin and bones, but finding only shadows of death. It is some kind of deeply twisting ultra-dark psychedelia without psyche at work here. Especially when listening in bright sunlight: a truly contrasting mourning music or re-birthing chant.

Deathstench and Phurpa are some fiery-cinder-masters: courageous dead matter (re)visitors and death-matter survivors – melting sounds into an ultra-esoteric chant – morphing ashes into fire and fire into ashes – it's some kind of spooky funeral - living is dying and dying is living - death-becoming-lifedeath or deathlife --- or some Tibetan evocations or dark-buddhist-cave-meditations:"As long as you're enthralled by a lifeless form, you are not free"(Bodhidharma).

Bodhidharma can't close his eyes because his eyelids are cut off (that's a real story!). He perceives only darkness and harpooned sounds in his cave. I really and truly admire this, because it's a non-genre-music rather again a truthful articulation of the life-death-tension or deadly suspension. This is the bomb with (doommaster) Billy Anderson on OM-matic boards ! How will this sound live !! Watch out for more Phurpa and Deathstench (click on the respective tags below) !

(10/10 Admiration points)

[SKG]

Sounds Reviewed #12/2016: The Quash Wagon Reclusion - Eschewal (2016)

"Eschewal" (bandcamp VI/2016) is the fifth and again absolutely outstanding release by The Quash Wagon Reclusion. And it documents again their incomparable and indispensable mantratronic approach to music. It is an eschewal in any case, it is a total avoidance of origins and onto-archèo-logics. It is a "stratégie finalement sans finalité, on pourrait appeler cela tactique aveugle, errance empirique, (...) l'unité du hasard et de la necessité dans un calcul sans fin"(Derrida). The music starts on Unexonerated as if it has never ever started in a subversively almost Mizutanian robotic drum locked groove - slaves to the rhythm. In a way this recording is and is not spinning. It is following the record groove virtual a never ending spirale or möbius band. In this it has a selfdestructive, selfabsorbing or tempophagic groove. It is like an abyssal Dialektik im Stillstand or to put it differently: it plays or spells out Hölderlin's line Schwer verlässt / ​Was nahe dem Ursprung wohnet, den Ort. 

Hear or here, suddenly mortified, locked up, petrified, suddenly un-chained to the groove:"les automates s'arrêtent et laissent monter la masse inorganisée qu'ils articulent" like an infant covered in dream-language and baptized with dream-water "le corps plein sans organes est l'improductif, le stérile, l'inegendré, l'inconsommable. Antonin Artaud l'a découvert, là où il était, sans forme et sans figure. Instinct de mort, tel est son nom, et la mort. Car le désir désire aussi cela, la mort, parce que le corps plein de la mort est son moteur immobile, comme il désire la vie". Picking up all these counter productive or counter spinning energies of the locked groove dissecting the standstill even further and further trancelating it into an even more extreme desire to interrupt the forces of inner-musical necessities to begin and end somewhere. As if played backwards or inverse or reverse it avoids developments at any cost in a spectral catatonic soundscape activating strong traditions of musical standstill from Stuart Dempster, Tristan Mural to Luigi Nono meeting a dark Derek Bailey in music never-ever-more-then-zero-land. Guitars cannot hide in camouflage forever.

Guitars are eager to destroy their masks now in an even more desperate final move, yes - yes "l'improductif, il existe là où il est produit. Il est perpétuellement réinjecté dans la production, Le corps catatonique est produit dans l'eau du bain. Le corps sans organes est de l'anti-production". Uninculpated catatonia retrancelated itself back into the anti-productive energies of the non-origin or non-source or non-beginning. Placing the needle in locked groove again. A möbius strip, striving again back to zero which is of course still impossible. A​ metamorphosis made impossible through an infinite filo relecto: "la génèse de la machine a lieu sur place, dans l'opposition du procès de production des machines désirantes at de la station improductive du corps sans organes".

(10/10 Admiration points)

[SKG]

Sounds Reviewed #11/2016: Cave Bacchus - Destroyer of Naivetés (2016)

Cave Bacchus’ Destroyer of Naivetés mesmereyesed me on all mantratronic levels, conseequently eye treyed meye best to enter this maddening of the erectile while carrying headphones. Id contains or uncontains three folded, funny trinitarian sound worlds ur-deranged like borromean (k)not/ds, desiring machines or radiooscillating lacanian earrings (and yes, my lacanian ear still rings in a deep orgasmatronic tinnitus after listening to this again and again forced into a filo relecto (peregrinus ubique !) to fantaseyeze again and again). Anything circles around the three (pour rire, of course) in this try-an-gulation hear. Outfolding itself three folded circling around the three in a deeply diving threeabolic perichoresis immaterializing in Joseph Nechvatal (words), Rhys Chatham (sounds), and Black Sifichi (voice) - "semi-circular configuration eyes dance strewn with irises (...) in one cathartic expenditure (...) less ego more art” (Nechvatal).

At once, once and for all three folded - written, spoken, set to music, ohr: it is simply a verbivocovisual inout-folding of Joseph Nechvatal's amazing erecticlectic, obseen, ink squirting 2015 book poem bearing the same title (Ah, logos spermatikos, neyes to hear from you again after all these years). I even pulled these three folded lacanian formula-gloves - also an anagram of ears, if you like trance-lingual forcings - R(hys)-S(ifichi)-I(osef) or I(osef)-R(hys)-S(ifichi) over my writing hand. Words gave birth to sounds, sounds became gloves handing over words to the ears and deeper towards the belly button (hey, omphalos !)- “genitals in hand (...) atmosphere dark and slumberous” (Nechvatal) - open for further re:joyce-ments: Lord help you, Maria, full of grease, the load is with me.

Id is in any case an ultra-interesting subtle escalation or coalescence of sounds, words, timbres and voices - “infinite transformative possibilities clothed only in the sound”(Nechvatal). To use John Barth’s words:“escalation of echoing cycles into ascending spirals = estellation: the apotheosis of storys into stars”. And ohr Deleuze Guattari's "les forces d'un Cosmos énergétique, informel et immatériel". And Black Sifichi’s voice treyes to mirror or nail down all verbal microshiftings of Nechvatal’s proême from whispering, nervous babellings up to final orgiastic verbal f(l)ickerings and micro-stutterers:"disarray, disarray" (Nechvatal), la schize entre l’œil et le regard.

Accompaneared by the swirling, swelling, effulgent, haptophilic, hesitating, interstellar or retro-future-tronic, blanks-leaving and sometimes heavily uplifting, erecting or erected dionyseean sounds of Donnergott Rhys Chatham (Rise Chatham, rise !) de(ep)livering some kind of a much Younger Third Dream of the High Tension Line Stepdown Transformer circling cycling around - “waves of electronic energy and immaterial signals” (Nechvatal) - or tuba-trumpet-coloured-harmon-mutes sounds like in Nono’s late masterpiece Post-Prae-Ludium Per Donau (1987) trance-forming seamlessly into guitar-lyre-tronics and flute-like-twitters back and forth and vice versa letting “eyes dance to music of pipes and horns throngs of satyrs dance (...) into orbit around itself ecstatic in the generosity of self-loss (...) blackness begins to snicker with delight art as a vehicle for self-transcendence (...) spontaneously inventive vision a moment of  annihilation independently of time space” (Nechvatal).

(10/10 Admiration points)

[SKG]

(released on Entr'acte, August 2016) All quotes in orange font with (Nechvatal) are taken from: Joseph Nechvatal, Destroyer of Naivetés (New York: Punctum books 2015). Poem written by Joseph Nechvatal nechvatal.net. Poem performed by Black Sifichi blacksifichi.com. Music by Rhys Chatham rhyschatham.net  Edition of 300 copies

Order it here and now !

Sounds Reviewed #10/2016: The Julia Sound - Post-Creation (2015)

This is the impressive third release by The Julia Sound called "Post-Creation". The Julia Sound is always acting out surprisingly out of a foggy clair-obscur. This project is always at the edge of existing using secrecy and seclusion to generate a unique soudworld as if fallen out of time and space. In this sense The Julia Sound generates out-side sounds in the most friendly sense of the word. The Julia Sound has a deep and intense friendship with exteriority: he works simply outside of himself and out of his self. Reworking, recombining or deconstructing the obscure sounds of the 1980's in a feverish aural re-invention. Delivering haunted head(phones) music subversively replaying desperate and disenchanted desires and zentimental robotic psychocandy solitudes back into our own time-zone, hear and now !

In my first review in 2013 I described the soundworlds of The Julia Sound as intense scuba-diver-travelings through the thoughtful realms, undiscovered galaxies and reverb-pluriverses of minimal and obscure electronic music. And again The Julia Sound is reinventing himself here as a huge 1980's reading-writing-deleting machine or as a retro-futuristic signal repeater par excellence. He echoes and reinvents the dark outsider feedback laden electronics from the late 1970's to the early 1980's (say: The Jesus and the Mary Chain (the record uses Jim Reid's voice as an epigram), and eg. Dok-U-Ment, the japanese act Tolerance, Coum Transmissions, Bourbonese Qualk, Ptôse, James Chance and the Contortions, Glenn Branca, MFH) in a unique, refined and inventive manner as if trying to break the necks of possible dancers. It's re-fusion music or de-fusion music in all senses of the words ! The Julia Sound is a real master of musical re- and de-contextualizations .

In any case Post-Creation contains an anarchic cyborg chronotropic-stutterer, or an odd sonic cyberpunk clockwork. (De)humanized or exhumated buried voices (what a unique way to sing, again !) want to enter through piles of foggy feedback spheres (hey, Mizutani !) trying to avoid stalking guitar sounds to escape clubby nighttime drum-machine-time-space-grids. I remember relating his earlier works to Chris Carter and this is true here too and this project hovers or levitates over the BLACKEST EVER BLACK - entre autres - continent without ever landing of course. It would have belonged under the most hidden treasures of Tape Culture.

The Julia Sound places all of his re-invented pasts and futures in an immense post-creational acid-bath giving re-birth to an atmosphere of diabolic counter-creations or counter-cultures. Opening an unheard of nocturnal life of electronics, pain-coated sounds, saxophonic and other corrosions of conformities. It folds back in into sound what is so desperately missing in the globale Kulturindustrie: an act of resistance and subversive counter-culture.This is music for your headphones. Use your head and pump up the volume. Please support this outstandingly gifted project ! Please order some of these beautifully designed and hand numbered boxes (edition of 77, cf. my photos below). By the way, a new track is online on his bandcamp(links below).

(10/10 Admiration points)

[SKG]

Please support this project

HERE and HERE

A Skull and a Rabbit

Surprise ! Surprise ! Surprise !

(photo by SKG)

A Skull and a Rabbit

What's up, death ?

Are you too stupid to catch a rabbit ?

(photo by SKG)

ICE and SNOW #33

Ice and Snow #33

Photo SKG

Artworks: Frank Stella (7)

 

Frank Stella - Tuxedo Junction (1960)

The 45SIS No.1 - VII,2016: DREKKA

Anish Kapoor

Dear Readers,

[#a general remark#] I am proud to present the first 45SIS (45 sentences, infinite sounds) featuring the absolutely amazing american sound artist DREKKA. The 45 SIS is a Questionnary consisting of 45 sentences to be completed. This feature tries to close or at least bridge the gap between contemporary philosophical theories and contemporary sound-production by asking their most important contributors. The public reception and perception of sounds/music seems to be stuck in a weird consumer-convenience and commodity-oriented approach since ages. But music and sound are and should be more than this: an excess of the minimal and the maximal: the invisible and the secret, maybe. Over the months and years a serious encyclopedia of debatable positions in the aforementioned field will be build up by giving leading artists and theorists a space to present themselves without further commentary by the editor. 

[#the portrait#] DREKKA is one of the most versatile and poetic sound artists today. He is a master of "camparative accoustomology" to say it with James Joyce. He uses his recording machines like a canvas - close to Robert Rauschenberg's "White Paintings"(1951) - letting sounds arrive, come and go like clouds in the sky. Allowing them to build up patterns on their own, disappearing or re-forming themselves again and forever. For DREKKA sounds have aerial roots - they are close to insubstantial almost virtual. They need air to breathe and to resonate - without air no sounds. Without differing or different ears no sounds either. Consequently listening and producing sounds is a trance-personal and trance-generational contract for him. No chance ever to be an owner or an originator of sounds in an absolute sense. There will always be an excess of aural possibilities. This excess will have always already transcended the final recording. Further re-writings, re- and de-codings, re- and re-re-cordings and re-re-mixings are inevitable and an integral part of DREKKA's projects. In this DREKKA follows the deepest traditions of American Music from John Cage 4'33'' to La Monte Young "Eternal Music" (being themselves rooted even deeper in a now almost lost tradition of music) having at least a few reservations about commodifiying sounds. Consequently Mkl Anderson opens processual windows and unforseeable futures for him, for "his" sounds, for the other and for future and virtual others having yet not even materialized and countersigned his works. His highly impressive discography gives testimony to this co-operative idea of music and sounds. So please take a closer look into his list of archived performances (here) that documents his working procedures so well. His working ethics and procedures seem to be close to La Monte Young, who once wrote: "I could see that sounds and all the other things in the world were just as important as human beings and that if we could to some degree give ourselves up to them, the sounds and other things that is, we enjoyed the possibility of learning something new. (...) If we are really interested in learning sounds instead of trying to force them do things that are mainly pertinent to human existence. If we try to enslave some of the sounds and force them to obey our will, they become useless."

[#discography/links/contacts#] I highly recommend to take a deep look into DREKKA's impressive and cooperative anarcheology of soundworlds - or shorter his disco-graphy. Among his most recent works are "DREKKA reworks ANNELIES MONSERÉ - 'Verjaardag'" (May 2016),"Funkhouser reworks DREKKA - Within the Realm of The Unknown"(April 2016), "Unknown Labor - (Drekka Rework by FIIT)" (April 2016) and his most recent work under the name DREKKA called "Unbeknownst to The Participants at Hand"(September 2015). Please consult all his internet sites to learn more about the poetic world of DREKKA, his friends and affiliates. Click on the links to get access to:the DREKKA-facebook, the sounds of DREKKA on DREKKA-bandcamp and DREKKA-livearchive-bandcamp, his video channel DREKKA-youtube, his label and the sounds of Bluesanct on Bluesanct-bandcamp, Bluesanct-The-Label and on his Bluesanct Tumblr.

[#the presentation#] The white font shows the grid of my 45SIS-questionnary, that will remain unchanged for each featured artist. This makes each contribution at once singular and comparable. The answers by each featured artist in this case DREKKA will always be presented in green font.

[SKG]

This is The 45SIS, No.1

brilliantly completed

by DREKKA

[1] “Music” and “Musician” are concepts ... what one person considers "music" and another considers "annoying sound" is very subjective ... and much of what people generally consider music, I find just annoying sound; high pitched, ultra-compressed annoying sound. I used to tell people I was a musician, or that I played music, but now I generally refer to myself as a producer or composer or sound artist. Many people want to understand what I do, but they understand the cultural reference points needed to explain it succinctly. I have found the easiest way is to explain that I do modern experimental composition... and then I ask them if they have ever listened to the sounds in the background of a horror of sci-fi movie. I explain that this is sound art, and this is what I do. 

A friend of mine once came into my office to see if I was listening to something. She said that she thought the refridgerater was broken, but that it was just whatever I was working on in my office. So, with friends of mine I joke that I make "refridgerator music". 

[2] …….. the term “Sound-Art” ……………

[3] Like a film maker, a Sound Artist, or at least some of us, becomes hyper aware of the sounds or the world around us. I have always been very interested in sound, always aware of the sound in things like movies, TV... the sounds around us and how it changes the mood or feeling of a situation.

[4] I love finding pre-existing sounds, either things I field record myself or take from various sources, and juxtaposing them, altering them, re-using them in different ways... inventing implied narratives and sort of... films without images, where each listener has a different idea of what they are hearing.

[5] I grew up poor and strange. The other kids, in their brutal youthful honesty and social hierarchy, did not take much interest in me. This forced me occupy myself and find where exactly I did fit. Over time, awareness of the sounds around me, the sounds within me, and the sounds I imagined, all helped me find my own sense of self and place.

[6] The obvious tensions between classical systems of musical notation and composition, sound-sourced field-recordings, free-improvised-real-time-composition, and technology based sound processing makes me glad I never went to conservatory to study more formal approaches to music.

[7] For me, composition is more like writing a screenplay... and editing is where I spend most of my energy, honing and sculpting the finished work... which is never totally finished because I endlessly revisit works and combine elements of past compositions into new constructs. 

[8] The main theoretical aporia, existential tension or trigger that keeps me producing and/or made me produce (and/or: writing about) sounds is …………..………

[9] The immense scope and variety of musical inventions forced into canonized music history and its basic distinction of music and non-music in the XX.Century (say) since “Arnold Schoenberg” and the counter-explosions of new underground music paradigms, non-europeans traditions and playing techniques since the 1940’s …………..……

[10] Time, Space and Volume: Time x (Space + Volume) = Drone.

[11] A musical instrument can never be fully explored or its potential exhausted as long as technology exists to add new possibilities to its voice and interaction w/ others.

[12]The musical encounter of my dreams would be something I would spend many hours attempting to replicate after waking.

[13] The point zero ..……………………

[14] Sounds present invisible sculptures, and these sculptures will be perceived differently depending on where they are perceived, by whom they are heard, and by their relation to the space around them.

[15] Sounds(capes) should be allowed to exist and play with others. Sometimes they get a long very well, other times... not so well.

[16] Sounds and destruction are ………………………….

[17] The human voice ……………….. disappear ………

[18] Listening is more important than anything. If more people would simply quiet themselves and not be afraid of silence, they would realize there is never true silence (outside of anechoic chamber). That is not to say that the human voice should disappear. Just that if one sits and listens, they might learn a lot from the people they have been talking over all the time... and one might also realize that the timing belt on their car is shot.

[19] The commodity factor of monetizing one's work is something I am not very interested or good at. Perhaps if I were better at it, it might interest me more. But, I have never had much luck the times I have tried to 'get my stuff out there'... and it only made me feel crazy and alone. Additionally, I have no mind for social media and that end of things. I have grown over the years to simply make myself focus on the work itself, and focus on the tours I do to support the works ... and to leave it at that. Being on tour and having a chance to directly interact with and discuss things with audiences is the most satisfying part of creating things. As for commodity, I do like to make tour tshirts and whatnot to make the money for the fuel to get to the next show... but, is that commodity, branding, or just good business sense? I am not sure about any of that. I just think it is really cool when I see someone wearing one of the shirts I designed.

[20] Programs and algorithms and modifications can all wait until later. I like to just press record on my field recorder and deal with it later.

[21] Names, words and titles of compositions give the listening a suggestion of my intent or narrative for a piece, but ultimately they are just suggestions and whatever conclusion the listener comes to for themselves regarding a piece is equal to my own conclusions.

[22]Duplication, sampling, sound-sourcing and manipulation create an endless source of reworking ideas into ever flowing takes on what eventually become archetypical concepts within my work ... possibility, memory (and lack thereof)... works becoming the source of new works becoming the source of new works, until the original material is unbeknownst even to myself, never mind the participants at hand.

[23] Replay-Machines, architecture ……… the listening…….

[24] Knowledge can interfere with intuition if one is not careful. Thurston Moore once said that the worst thing he ever did was to really learn to play the guitar (he said something to that effect). At the same time, knowledge can help with the fluidity with which one can manifest ideas... I have been using the same live gear set-up for over a decade now, and the fact that I know exactly where everything is on the table and what every piece of it is capable of - that I can literally perform without even looking at the table if I want - means that instead of worrying about the physical aspects of performance, that I can immerse myself in the sound and be open the possibilities that each room, each night, each audience offers. I always make a setlist of ideas which I plan to present at a show. But, over time this exercise has become more of a last ditch safety net or just a sort of vague suggestion on how a show might go... but, once the sounds starts to flow, I quickly stray very far from the original flowchart I had in mind.

[25] The materiality of sounds ………………………………

[26] To connect sound and psychology …………………

[27] The eye, the ear and the brain all work in conjunction when listening to music whether we realize it or not. Auditory information, such as sound and musical tones, are processed by our two temporal lobes. When lyrics are involved, our language centers and frontal lobe interpret the words and suggest their conveyed meaning. In these Drekka soundscapes, a narrative is constructed. If we use the musical narrative as a tabula rasa onto which we project our own characters or plot, we use our occipital lobe, ironically located in the back of our heads, away from our eyes, to imagine visuals of the narrative. The Drekka film soundscapes take advantage of our brains' capacities for imagination and invention. (guest answer by Drekka archivist, Andrew Eley)

[28] Sonic processes …………………… mimesis…….

[29]Life and Death should both include a healthy relationship with and appreciation of silence.

[30] My deepest ……………………………. audible……

[31] The distinction sound/music/noise is subjective, and to worry or focus on such distinctions is to create a constant underestimation of the potential for new ways of seeing and hearing the world and its people.

[32] The ……………. to a constant underestimation of …………

[33] Live performances is where I present to the audience my intention and my narrative; where my mind interfaces with those around me, inviting discourse, community, and tribe building. Live performances are also the genesis for most Drekka works, whether it is the performance itself that creates the song, or is a recording of a Drekka live performance that then becomes sampled, modified, and reorganized as a catalyst for a new and completely different Drekka song. Old, forgotten demo cassettes are rediscovered as found sounds and a source of inspiration for new tracks, sometimes decades later.

[34] Sounds travel from hand to hand, ear to ear, through space and time, with each interception bringing a new perspective for the receiver... even if received multiple times.

[35] …...…. 4’33” ………. a window …..……..

[36] Privacy, Secrecy & Sounds ……...

[37] Singularity, originality …………...… musical genres……...

[38] The total liberation of sounds is silence, and/or death.

[39] Free form music or sound …….. into …..

[40] Cryptic minimalisms …….. techno …..

[41] Outsider sounds belong to my tribe. We come before and linger long after.

[42]Electronics, electro-acoustic, Modular Synths …… interstellar …….

[43] Sounds …….…. time-space manipulations ……...

[44] The severest misconceptions about me and my sounds, my music, and my theories is that I am working towards commercial ends (mostly this misconception comes from my well meaning parents). While I would like nothing more than to have the luxury and priviledge of supporting myself financially from my works, I have always worked under the assumption that my ideas has no commercial potential.There are ways to make things fiscally viable, but that involved a drive and hustle that I do not have. I am pretty much solely interested in present moment interaction and communication of ideas.

[45] The sentence(s) I wanted to see published for an eternity is/are the ones signed "L.Cohen".

Cordial thanks, MKL,
for your contribution !



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