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A Polar Visions / Polar Visions Amplitude review of -

Francisco López - a bunch of stuff (1980-2020)

Release date - July 2020

Reviewed format - Francisco López self-released (under the Nowhere Worldwide banner) USB business card, as kindly sent to me as a review copy by Francisco López

Note - you can purchase this release in digital format directly from Francisco López' Bandcamp page here: https://franciscolopez.bandcamp.com/album/a-bunch-of-stuff-1980-2020-40-years-of-sonogenic-composition

Welcome to the first review on Fluid Sonic Fluctuations review in 2021! Today I’m discussing Francisco López’s very large multi-part anniversary compilation a bunch of stuff (1980-2020) which was self-released by Francisco both as a neat USB business card and later reissued as download through Bandcamp in 2020. With this compilation Francisco is celebrating the 40 years he’s been creating immersive sonic compositions in the experimental and underground music scene, practicing his own coined way of sonogenic composition. a bunch of stuff (1980-2020) presents an excellent thematic overview of Francisco López’ discography through a large number of excerpts from his ever-growing universe of untitled compositions as well as titled pieces. The excerpts are organised into 15 parts which Francisco has tagged with his own invented genre names, which both point at his own personal sound philosophy but also have a subtle comic touch to them. Besides the excerpts, Francisco has also included several full-length (as well as almost full-length) as well as rare, unreleased and at the time of the original release still unreleased compositions making the compilations a great mixture of both showcase and rarities compilation. Whilst Francisco’s full-length compositions are often quite expansive in length making them suitable for a full-on immersion in the sonic universe created, the way every chronologically ordered part of a bunch of stuff (1980-2020) flows makes for a different yet equally intriguing and immersive listening experience with creative usage of both fades and hard cuts connecting the tracks together making every part that the full 12 hours worth of listening this compilation consists of a very rewarding listening experience. Francisco’s philosophy on both listening itself as well as his way of composing always originates first and foremost from the experience of listening in a very immersive sense which goes beyond source recognition or surface-level emotions but is very much settled in immersion within the sound world itself leaving the often cathartic, subconscious effects to the listeners themselves to feel and thereby completing the composition. Francisco himself reminds us of his philosophy but also shares some new insights on 40 years of sonogenic compositions in this mini-interview I did with him over email:

Orlando Laman - Over the last 40 years you've released a large number of your compositions, the selection on a bunch of stuff (1980-2020) is organized using your own invented genres. Regarding bringing together selections of compositions as collections through series (like recently, Two Head Snake) or by listeners themselves discovering certain connections between releases, how do you view your full collection of works as a whole, especially in the way all this shaped sonic matter is forming a sonic universe completed by the listener?

Francisco López - Well, as a whole I guess I see it as my way of having a more meaningful and richer interaction with the world. Not through representation (as in canonical so-called 'field recordings') but rather through penetration into sonic matter and its ontology.

OL - From listening to your compositions and interviews with you it's clear that most of the time you create compositions without planning things ahead, creating a system or trying to execute creative ideas through manipulated sound matter. It's a matter of composition that is both improvisatory based on the sounds themselves yet also very refined and perfectionist, which makes the compositions feel very natural but also unpredictable in captivating ways.

FL - This is what I call 'sonogenic composition', i.e., a practice of creative work with sound (and listening) in which sound themselves lead the way; not merely as 'samples' of elements to be placed in a pre-existing structure / grid / idea, but a generators of structure, pace, dynamics, texture and anything else imaginable in a sonic work. That's why I dislike the term 'manipulation'; in this context, I'd rather use 'evolution', which describes more reliably what takes place in this process.

OL -The results are more important than the tools used, however one thing that intrigued me is your manipulation and usage of low to sub-bass frequency layers of sound within many of your compositions, even those from the early 1980s, with low to sub-bass frequency sounds being an area of sonic matter that falls somewhere between the audible and felt area of sound and its direction being hard for humans to discern, how do you view this field of sonic matter relating to your compositions? Is it an area of the spectrum which you intuitively often accentuate in compositions or is this area one which you've gotten used to working with overtime to fully utilize the audible (and inaudible) spectrum of sound we can hear from sub-bass to very high frequencies?

FL - I like rich music, in all imaginable senses. That naturally includes the frequency spectrum, both audible and sensible (we do a lot of our hearing haptically in the low and sub-low ranges). As I've learned to compose largely through an intensive and extensive listening interaction with the world, those low frequencies are a 'natural' part of my sonic palette.

OL - a bunch of stuff(1980-2020) features excerpts which are often quite a bit shorter than your full compositions and releases, your full releases often feature long single compositions or a collection of shorter compositions making up one full "untitled" album release, besides these you've also released a few released a few albums which span several hour up til a full day worth of listening. In the compilation context and with the albums featuring shorter compositions the whole listening experience flows in an intriguing manner at times, with some pieces having a hard cut at the end rather than a fade-out or silence, this can have the effect at times of sudden realization of the composition's finite state within the album. Additionally, releases that span multiple hours can have the effect of the listener's listening mode moving from a focussed listening to a state in between listening and the sounds seeping into the subconscious of the listener creating certain emotions or triggering memories, What is your approach in selecting compositions for the albums and compilation releases, taking into account the listener experience? And further zooming in on time disappearing from our perception as we're fully focussed on the sounds, especially when listening to your multi-hour releases, is there a difference in terms of creating these extended-length releases to your other albums and compilation, relating to the listening experience you present?

FL - I like to be compositionally free to work with time. Traditional limitations like the length of a record or a radio show shouldn't limit our adventures in creative listening. To me, mega-long compositions (i.e., 24-hour or longer, like some of my pieces) generate micro-worlds of sonic experience that suggest a different kind of listening -one that gets closer to a form of 'inhabiting sound', which is tremendously suggestive. Different people will approach such extensions in varied ways, but I believe they always generate an unusual and fruitful potential for a very different, interesting and appealing experience of sonic matter as space and as time.

Many thanks to Francisco López for sending over the physical release as well as answering these questions and sharing such inspiring insights. Before we dive into the analyses of the separate parts as well as thoughts on my favourites tracks on this compilation I’ll mention what you can expect from the physical version of a bunch of stuff (1980-2020). Like most of Francisco’s releases the focus is all on the music and immersive sonic experience itself, so the USB business card itself features quite minimalistic design combined with a lovely photo of fire however. The content of the USB business card itself is a liner notes PDF file as well as the full compilation with 15 folders making up all the parts. Every folder contains the tracks as lossless 16-bit/44.1kHz CD quality files. While the best listening experience of Francisco Lopez’ work is by going into the compositions with a fully clear mind without knowing in advance what to expect in terms of a description or listings of sources used, the liner notes file does list the sound sources for some some of the tracks although Francisco isn’t getting specific about what these exactly consist of so beside the credits and tracklist parts not spoiling anything these source details are still staying cryptic enough to not reveal the workings behind the magic of Francisco’s compositions. Let’s now dive into a bunch of stuff (1980-2020).

a bunch of stuff (1980-2020) starts with first part All In. All In features a collection of pieces that mix various compositional approaches López takes together, with the All In being appropriate as “maximalist” pieces in terms of density of the sound matter or layering. In terms of sound matter I spotted bird and cicadas but there are also some “hidden” melodies in some of these pieces, either through certain resonances within the sound layers used or as series of tones that peek through the textures. López’ signature very low sub bass frequencies (also mentioned in my mini-interview and subtle glitches also appear within these pieces. In my favourite track 2012 - With_In [excerpt] López brings us an eerie tapestry of mysterious swirling resonant wheezing sound that flutters left and right, makes percussive shifting clicks to the left and right side and appears as this cloud of shaky sonic matter we are floating in ourselves. The perspective shifts from within (no pun intended) the sound matter to looking at this matter from a distance but the general experience is definitely very much grounded within the sound itself. The aforementioned hidden melodies appear in this piece too, in the form of hollow resonant diffuse tones that add this mysterious ambience of uncertainty to the emotional situation that might arise from our being in this environment. Whilst quick shifts do occur in some of Francisco’s compositions, the gradual continuous nature of this piece definitely helps the subtle shifting of focus within the layers of sounds as well letting the sonic matter work onto your mind in a certain meditative state. Delusional Cinematic follows, which features chopped up, at times quite abrasive collage like compositions of various sound matter including environmental sounds, movie sounds and music fragments. At times the compositions are stylistically comparable to Noise in their uncompromising more harsher edged nature. The pieces also feature rather clever transitions making for listening experiences that are as captivating as films or TV series themselves but in this case the imagery is purely mind-created.The strengths of my favourite track 2017 - untitled #360 [excerpt] are both in the silent brooding atmosphere of the composition within this longer 10:27 minutes excerpt and the way it progresses from one situation to the other. Starting from this eerie minimalist situation featuring quite a lot of shifting, rustling and clicking high pitched sonic matter there is something quite eerie about the idle space in between the sounds which creates a bit of a vacuum effect within the space and the at times wildly varying spectra and panning of the sounds themselves makes for quite some disjointed bits and pieces being scattered around this space as well, feels quite like being in a medieval village whilst sounds appear and disappear out of nowhere. In its second phase the piece moves into a battlefield of wild low frequency laden combat, helicopter whirling, a lot of (gun)shots and a further brooding mass of low frequency rumbling following up the first phase’s more resonant metallic waves of lower pitched sound. The transition from the battle to the dive underwater in which the battle can still be heard but in a more muffled state is one of my favourite aspects from this piece as it does add such a natural flow to the aural narrative this conjures up in my mind. I’d say this piece does mix Francisco’s more purely textural qualities with an inspired sense of rapid-cut composition making this one of his pieces which you can listen to through filtering and diving into its layers as well as letting your mind make up its own story through the progression from phase to phase within the composition. The next part Drone World features Drone pieces in the sense of especially hypnotic high frequency streams of sound, rhythmic sounding environmental sound matter as well as low bass frequencies and resonances. My favourite piece on this part is 1992 - Hypogeion [excerpt]. The piece is noticeably quite a bit louder than the other compositions before it on this part and whilst Francisco is clearly not trying to make a composition in a traditional manner this piece stylistically does remind me of 90’s Tribal Ambient, albeit in a more improvised manner. Featuring an array of highly resonant and bassy mallet tones as well as reverberant tribal style percussion the except of this piece showcases a particularly intense part of the composition moving into a more laid-back sustained phase. Somewhere in between mysterious factory and Egyptian pyramid sonics it features some excellent mixtures of dense tonal layers blending into each other with the overtones creating diffuse and at times dissonant interactions of sound. The percussive elements are quite high pitched throughout with quite some crystal like sounds flowing throughout the sonic space like grains of silver but overall the layers of sound flow much more like rippling shuddering waves that are often shifting from interlocking to interfering creating that always captivating element of mystery within Francisco López’ compositions. Afterwards in the Lo-Fi Broad-Band Tape Noiselationism part we have Noise oriented pieces made up of collages of sound matter of an Industrial and more organic nature as well as AM radio sourced sounds in compositions that feature some sweet droning and rhythmic sub bass frequencies. The pieces are more minimalist in terms of composition but equally captivating and showcase the more extreme side of López oldest works. My favourite track 1983 - untitled (1983) [excerpt] features most of the aforementioned elements. It’s a raw, lo-fi composition made up of various layers of electronic signals broadcast over shortwave radio with its beginning being the most recognisable in terms of source. However as always with Francisco’s compositions, the immersive experience is much more important than trying to further analyze what the actual sounds are and in this case it’s a particularly physical listening experience. The sound is grainy and often artefact laden, filled with hiss and sharp frequencies and in this fragment there is some kind of pattern of tones recognisable within its first half, as a whole however it sounds more like flying through an electric interference laden sky in which bits of metal are swirling around you in this cloud of disturbance and interference. Unlike some of the other 1980s composition excerpts on this compilation however this piece features a few hard cuts and changes to different clouds of fragile sound. Whilst being a continuous stream of hissy sound matter the piece eventually breaks up into shards of sharp irregular shaped sound movements until the fade-out. It’s definitely quite noisy in a way but I feel it’s also quite organic as all of Francisco’s works are, the sounds flow as freely as nature does and never feel artificial compared to what generally is considered as natural sounds. Following part Medium With No Message moves through various types of recording and playback medium based compositions both analogue and digital but actually does recall a lot of the crackling sounds and resonances from Francisco’s environmental sound matter based works as well. There is some recognisable glitch work in the last piece however but this again sounds more crystalline like than the at times clinical sounding works by other Glitch oriented artists. When we look at my favourite piece on this part 2002 - untitled #128 we find a piece that is minimalist in terms of its textural density. Quite like a breeze of wind subtly increasing in intensity, crackles, ticks, pops and other little grains of sound matter gradually build up a subtle rustling cloud of sound accompanied by mysterious tonal elements. Just like the diffuse spectrum of a light shower combined with how you can sense a lot of details in these sounds within quieter environments this piece offers a lot of depth, ever-changing bits of sounds within the subtly intertwined layers as the fluid qualities of the sound grip your ears and mind in a both intriguing and enjoyable manner. In the following part Mutated Locations we can find pieces based on environmental sound matter which are evolved into repeating rhythms, strange resonances as well as eerie and metallic layers of sound. The first few pieces carry Francisco’s darker Industrial like sonic approach to composition whilst pieces later on within the track list have a lighter (cleaner) sound and utilise the sub bass frequencies in a more intense manner as well as featuring less audible techniques of evolving sound matter. Whilst Francisco’s compositions aren’t really dark, I do often get a pretty eerie feeling from some pieces which I do like a lot and the more directly hitting approach of some of the compositions works better than the forced subtlety that some other sound artists would try to keep within their compositions. In my favourite track on this part, 2014 - untitled #321 [excerpt] we have a rather gripping flow of events. Just like the other tracks surrounding this one there’s quite a lot of depth in this piece and the imagery conjured up in my mind by this composition also particularly feels like looking at this sonic environment from above. As I felt this piece, it’s like a mass of clattering and shifting sounds as well as rather high pitched details quickly increasing in intensity as the layers demand more and more attention culminating into some particularly spooking train whistle like tones which keep hanging in the air at the end of this except until fade-out. The whole track feels quite like exploring one of these areas in which unused train carriages are stored, some of which rusting and degrading away until we’re suddenly transported to a used railway in which a brownish grey transport train is just about heading our way. Then on the following part Nice Noise we indeed have a collection of Noise styled compositions by Francisco which ranges from early metallic sound matter collages forming streams of layered Noise to more glitchy and granulated sounds in later tracks, cleaner hissy sounds with the last track blending these elements together in a similar way like pieces on the All In part. This last track, 2020 - untitled #380 [except] is also my favourite piece from this part. With Francisco combining various approaches from the 4 decades he is active by now within this piece he also created a very captivating mysterious sonic environment within this piece which is less abstract than other pieces but makes for a very unique listening experience with its combination of environmental sounds and brooding hypnotic tones. It’s quite like this dream about a cold dark forest you find yourself in which is “breathing” as one entity, with the animals providing soundtracks to this process of breathing through the hissy and hollow sounds they produce, the strange low thumps at the end, further thicken the surreal plot of this sonic story. Non-Representational Environmental Sound Matter is the part that follows and is in a way similar to Mutated Locations in terms of selection but inverts the compositional approach by showcasing Francisco’s environmental sound matter pieces with less extreme evolution within the sound matter itself but instead use some great layering, unpredictable structures and amplification creating immersive listening experiences in which some sounds are still recognizable at times but form elements within newly composed environments that are like the title says different from just reality. The excerpts on this part are also longer and feature more gradual progressions within which makes for more meditative like listening experiences as you shift your focus through the various layers within. My favourite piece in here is 2011 - Hyper-Rainforest [except]. It’s the longest excerpt Francisco has taken from any piece on this compilation but it’s also especially good that he’s selected a long part of it in the editing process as it’s a rather subtly enveloping composition. There’s a lot of sonic details of the rainforest you can pick up in this one, especially the many different animals within the rainforest, but also various other natural environmental sounds. One of the best things about the way this piece is composed however is the combination of shifting layers with an almost narrative like progression of sonic situations and directions, but all the while staying within the same sonic universe, giving us the ability to travel without moving, but in a different sense. I found it particularly enjoyable to shift through listening modes, at times spotting certain sounds, at other times taking in the effect of the entities within the sound matter and letting the fabric of each of this work on mind as well as sense of depth in the sonic space through listening. Indeed through the shifting layers you also start to sense the location of certain sounds within the depth of the piece as at times having a strangely reverberating acoustic distance to them whilst still sounding as being in the same sonic universe making for a quite magical listen. The progression of the piece towards the rain shower which abruptly ends into a sudden quiet section of soft chirping sounds adds a radio play like narrative element to the piece too as Francisco provides a bit of a frame for the behaviour of all sonic elements within the piece as certain changes that appear within this environment. It heightens the immersion too as not only do the changes make your part of the sonic universe, but they also point towards the deeper subconscious effects of streams of full spectrum sound matter like rain and the many layers of diffusion hidden around the centre of it. In the following part Sonic Seeds and Mega-Evolution Francisco utilises sonic seeds, which sound similar in approach to grains of sound to sculpt mostly unrecognisable sound matter into richly resonant, metallic and often glitchy forms. This part starts with an amalgamation of layers of sonic matter, after which the pieces grow ever more rhythmic and at times recognisably melodic in a way. The results of this sonic approach are somewhat similar to some pieces in the Nice Noise part but in this case the compositions are showcasing more of Francisco’s abstract Glitch like works, differing from his compositions grounded in environmental sonic matter but still bearing some similarities with the organic sound matter in terms of crackling clicks and the usage of high frequency sound. My favourite piece on this part is 2020 - untitled #383 [excerpt] and this one is a particularly glitchy composition. Following a nice gradual progression throughout this excerpt, the composition builds from a cloud of metallic crackles to a final section of glowing droning tones. All throughout we can dive into the various layers of clicky and mostly pointy sound matter that make up the framework of sonic actions that make up this composition feeling somewhere between machinery rhythms and liquid organic matter. The buzzing glitched “bass” tones make for a great ground of the framework, driving the composition forward with quite rumbling low frequencies which when combined with the glowing tones of the final section make for a quite intriguing combination of abstracted rhythmic sound and glowing diffuse sound combined within the same sonic universe. It does remind me a bit of Autechre as well in terms of approach, although in a less chaotic and more organic manner. Afterwards in the part Soundtracks With No Real Subservience we can listen to a selection of soundtrack pieces by Francisco, composed for various films, including art films and documentary. Moving from intense Noise like compositions towards less abrasive compositions featuring concrete and environmental sound matter, Francisco works with sounds within a more narrative type of fashion with the pace of the compositions being quicker and having more of an emotional edge to them. There’s also some more division in sections audible within these pieces as well as the darker qualities of environmental sound matter. In my favourite piece 2016 - Anima Ardens [excerpt] we are presented with another intriguing situation as the piece combines quite peaceful organic sound matter with layers of metallic clangs as well as a brooding diffuse tonal cloud hanging in the air. Quite like finding a mysterious wooden house which is also used as a metal workshop the juxtaposition also makes it feel quite like roaming around in the forest at night. The sharp swirls and clicking sounds, combined with the hollow tones and clangs instantly conjure up quite some magical imagery as these elements start to blend into each other as well as change or fade out whilst remaining a continuous flow of sound keeping its grip on you within the sonic universe. Next part The Ultra-Quiet, Not Conceptual features some of Francisco's quietest pieces. Indeed these are excerpts from his pieces that feature quite a lot of very quiet sound matter and silence moving from a hollow resonant flow of sound to soft rustling and clicks to some surprisingly intense sections of sub-bass frequencies in later pieces within this part. These sub-bass frequency section do also feature in my favourite piece on this part, 2013 - untitled #309 [excerpt] and in this case they’re accompanied by muffled mysterious drones that fade into soft-focus out of the silence. Like most pieces on this parts it’s a very subtle listening experience best listened to on good speakers, including a subwoofer or headphones with a good bass response to properly hear the subtle sonics Francisco builds up in her creep out of their corners. Afterwards on the next part VirtuAural Machines Francisco zooms in on his machinery based pieces. The part features a mixture of approaches to the sonic experience of machinery itself moving from relatively rough softly saturated Industrial like pieces to the usage of percussive mechanical elements to create hypnotic sonic framework as well as eerie sonic universes made up of huge halls filled with heavy clangs of equipment, siren like diffuse, distant tones and pointy and hissy sonics blending together into enveloping streams of sound around us. Whilst some of the sources on this part are at times recognisable in a way, there’s a lot of enjoyment to be had once again by the strange textural qualities of the sound matter as these entities in themselves have a particular enjoyable quality within them here, which is helped by the often spacious panning within the compositions. Favourite piece 1990 - Fango de Euriptéridos [excerpt] utilises the aforementioned spacious panning rather well and also amplifies another aspect of machinery in that it’s based a lot around shimmering tonal resonances reverberating through a large spaces rather than emphasising the (harsh) hissing and repetitive elements of machinery. It features various types of sonic actions but the general sonic focus is on this warm glowing mass of resonance that vibrates in certain ways as well, creating shifting droning tones that seem to make the floor vibrate as well. A quite “temple” like approach to an Industrial sonic universe. Following part Within The Noosphere features a rather different kind of compositions by Francisco in that most of these pieces are built up out of many layers of other music, which are evolved in various manners. Moving from pretty intense tape collages to tumbling Plunderphonics Metal barrages to the rather amusing wailing stretched tones of the old song sampled of a vinyl recorded on the last track it’s Francisco’s compositional work at its most structurally and sonically disruptive. Favourite piece 1994 - Concert for 300 Magnetic Tapes [excerpt] feels quite like a mountain landscape built out of many types of sonic matter. Most matter used within this piece is quite noisy, quirky and quite explosive too but the general fuzzy and crumbling nature of all these bits combined does still conjured up this curious imagery of a mountain landscape made up of sonic material. Recognisably musical and human sounds are at times still audible in between the cracks of the mass of sound, but in a subtle way. The following part Xeno-Instruments features a selection of Francisco’s “acoustic” pieces, in the sense that some of the compositions do feature acoustic musical instruments, at times without much audible post-production. The results are quite mysterious as can be expected from Francisco’s approach, feeling quite like the sound of the earth crust being broken open, sharp clouds of buzzing sonics, thundering percussion rhythms and wooden rumbles travelling through the room. Indeed most of the time it’s not even audible that there are actual acoustic instruments used, which is definitely the quality of Francisco’s work in that he consistently keeps evolving the sonic universes he conjures up and can find richness, “alien” new elements as well as captivating details though any method of composition and with any sound matter he finds making for a very solid but still diverse body of work. The aforementioned wooden rumbles feature in my favourite piece 2011 - untitled #275 [excerpt]. Built up out of rhythmic elements, low rumbles as well as diffused spooky tones the piece progresses in a subtle and deep manner. There’s this great metallic bell like clang that creates regular accents in the first half of this excerpt filling the room with rich resonance periodically. The rhythmically moving wooden elements form irregular patterns that do follow a certain scheme of sections in terms of there appearance and are spiky but also somewhat dampened in nature. Strangely reverberating tones almost form a diffuse melody in the second half which then moves into a brooding cloud of tonal sonic matter. It’s the kind of piece that feels somewhere in between your room starting to create its own sonic universe as well as the sonic picture of an abandoned wooden windmill’s mechanical sounds of past activity. Final part Yes, Humans features compositions that all feature recognisable human sounds or traces of these in various manners moving from amusing locally recorded environmental sound matter to layered children’s choir recordings and a further direction of ever more evolved and abstract sound matter culminating in one of Francisco's most recent compositions (from the last few years) on the final track. This final part quite nicely compiles Francisco's approaches in a way, as radio play like recordings moving in the ever more mysterious abstract and at times cinematic sonics of Francisco’s later works. My favourite track here is the rather short but sweet 1992 - Sofia [excerpt]. In nature is more straight-forward than other pieces on this part but I do find the juxtaposition and sounds themselves within this piece rather nice. It starts with a TV recording of some kind of Soviet TV commercial which sounds all cosy and sweet but afterwards cuts to this Russian Orthodox(?) church in which can hear chants. I especially do like this combination as the commercial seems to recall the memories of the Soviet Union in perhaps a bit overly rosy manner while the church sounds totally loose from anything that might conjure up bad memories and sounds much more peaceful in a way. The way you can hear Francisco walking around the church as well as all kinds of extra noises including a loud cough, footsteps and muffled talking adds to the amusing nature of this piece. The lo-fi nature of the recording also makes the chants themselves feel more like a cloud of tonal sonic matter as syllables get a bit drowned out in the recording. Francisco López’ a bunch of stuff (1980-2020) is an excellent compilation showcasing a great selection of Francisco’s rich discography of compositions which by now reach over 40 years. Full of immersive, uncompromising sonics this compilation is a rewarding listen for anyone who wants to get into Francisco’s music and wants to have a curated overview of his discography to get started diving into his full-length and shorter releases. There’s also some great material in this compilation for fans of Francisco who already have multiple of his releases as the rarer material and recent pieces offer some further sonic enjoyment and the compilation’s selection and sequencing also offers a new more mixtape style manner to enjoy Francisco’s compositions. It’s a recommended compilation for anyone who wants to get into Francisco López as well as fans of Noise, Sound Art, Tape based experimental music, Glitch as well as a uniquely personal approach to sound matter based experimental music, sonogenic composition. Definitely check this out.

You can order a copy of the physical USB business card edition here: https://www.blackhole.la/webshop/francisco-lpez-a-bunch-of-stuff-1980-2020?fbclid=IwAR3pcZfCIT-3Y7BR2M7AjTuph_3TWUm2ZHFjwmuNadir21X_imHnv9ODiZk

[fluidsf]

Polar Visions Amplitude reviewing -

John Wiese - Deviate From Balance

Released on 15 June 2015 by Gilgongo Records

Reviewed format: CD album

Connected listening - there are various ways to order a selection of John Wiese’s further discography. The Helicopter mail-order stocks various John Wiese releases as well as Sissy Spacek releases and releases by by John Wiese in collaboration with associates, you can find it here: https://helicopter.storenvy.com/collections/924921-john-wiese

Several solo releases by John Wiese are also available on physical and digital format from his Bandcamp page here: https://johnwiese.bandcamp.com

Many releases on Gilgongo Records are available on physical format through their mail-order store here: https://gilgongorecords.storenvy.com

After looking at one of Sissy Spacek’s recent new albums Featureless Thermal Equilibrium in the previous Polar Visions Amplitude it’s time today for the first of two follow-up reviews in which in this case we’re focussing first on one of John Wiese’s past solo albums, Deviate From Balance. Released back in 2015 on both a 2 LP vinyl package as well as a CD version on James Fella’s label Gilgongo Records our look is on the CD version which features the packed 79 minute album in full and what a collection of pieces it is. While the Sissy Spacek album showcases John Wiese’s talent in mixing Grindcore aggression with monolithic Noise screeches as well as maxing out the energy throughout, Deviate From Balance showcases John’s more restrained side in a collection of 10 tracks encompassing mostly live recorded compositions and improvisations that are leaning more towards intense choppy sound collages and noisy electro-acoustic interplay of acoustic and electric instrumentation with John’s electronics with a more conceptual edge to them. However while some of the titles of the 10 pieces suggest a somewhat philosophical or technical meaning behind these pieces, listening to these reveals a much more playful and raw sense of composition and performances from John and all musicians and artists involved in this album. Whilst John’s sound can be related to Free Improvisation, his rapid-fire editing and manipulation of sonic material on this album is much more complex and dazzling than many other artists and carries John’s signature knack for surprise, high frequency distortion crunches as well as shifting and abusing lo-fi sound recording equipment and electronics in as many ways as possible, almost as if they turn into crumbling fragile rocks. Disintegrating broken sound and dadaist absurdist humour is a recurring theme in John’s sound, making for an album that is much more enjoyable than overly academic contemporary Tape Music can be at times. Besides John’s sonics the involved musicians on this album are definitely an important element that adds many rich colours to the 10 pieces, featuring musicians like guitar virtuoso Oren Ambarchi, violin artist Jon Rose, sampling expert David Shea and drum machine musician Ikue Mori as well as many others. Before we’re diving deep into the 10 tracks on Deviate From Balance, let’s have a look at the packaging design of the CD version. The CD comes in a neat glossy oversized gatefold sleeve showcasing John Wiese’s minimalist design, artwork as well as a very colourful artist photo of John by Martin Escalante on the back. In terms of artwork I do like the photo-collages and art pieces on the inside of the gatefold a bit more than the cover this time as while the cover does highlight the general collaged, choppy nature of the album well in a visual manner, its subdued grayscale grainy images aren’t as striking as John Wiese’s other album covers but still, it’s a decent cover and the typography is quite stylish and repeats on the spine in a similar manner. The aforementioned imagery on the inside of the gatefold showcases both grayscale abstract art in the form of archaeological artefact style fragments on the left panel as well as a film roll like photo collage of a rather disturbed looking lady blowing up a balloon. The abstract images are a bit similar to the album cover though with darker and more distinct contrast but the photo collage also adds another good visual reference to the packaging regarding the tracks themselves in that balloon like squealing and screeching can be heard on some of the pieces and it also seems to refer to the album’s quite off the wall type of abstract humour. The left panel additionally features all album credits neatly laid out so you can find out all about the involved artists and recording locations plus sources. The CD itself comes in a convenient little black envelope with plastic protection and features a more LP like label design featuring simply the artist name, album title and Gilgongo label logo, somewhat similar to a Japanese mini-LP replica package. Now that we’ve looked at the package, let’s pop in the CD and dig in.

Deviate From Balance starts with Wind Changed Direction which is one of the most atmospheric pieces on the album. The piece blends organ like drone, chopped up distorted recordings of what sounds like children’s voices, machinery as well as other Industrial noises together to form a quite surreal mysterious soundscape. Quite like the title suggests the music sounds quite like you’re floating through the clouds right after the wind has changed direction. The drone feels both calming but also a notch ominous whilst the auto-panned chops of sound are both vaguely abstract and at times recognisable with John varying between distorted and resonant shards of crunchy sound and cleaner metallic elements. The voice samples hint somewhat at sonified memories, they sound like fragments from the past, conversations or event you might remember from childhood though the actual words are unrecognizable. This first piece is definitely one of the most straight-forward compositions on here in terms of structure with the drone both introducing and rounding off the piece as in both cases it eventually fades into the background. A quite lush start of the album. Following piece 356 S. Mission Rd continues the soundscape like approach but in a more ominous manner sounding quite like a cross of dark sounding orchestral music samples with strange hollow metallic resonances and washy shifting noises. The metallic resonances bring plenty of subdued Industrial shine to the piece but the aforementioned orchestral samples are what draws me into this piece the most as the screechy dissonant strings combined with ever so slightly differently timed horn crescendo suggest an ever apparent danger which is getting closer but just like in an abstract nightmare is stuck in a loop with the danger never reaching further than a certain indiscernible point. The shifting noise elements add some rawness to the piece which suggests some kind of turntable manipulations going on in the piece, a lovely brooding collage piece this is. Segmenting Process For Language, the next piece, is where things start to get more chaotic and free-wheeling though still very much controlled. The track featuring a live performance recorded at East Brunswick Club in Melbourne, Australia consists of wild and inspired mixtures of saxophone, (junk) objects, percussion, drums, guitar and noise as the musicians move into always differing “segments” made up of shards of sound, wildly swirling melodies, chords and tones. This does make for quite some literal clashes of sound but rather than being one of the more random sounding Free Improv performances the sections of interplay follow a much more recognisable structure in that certain droning tones as well as feedback lays somewhat of a base underneath the bursts of sonic mayhem. Whilst there are a whole lot of things happening in this recording I would like to name a few particularly enjoyable bits. These include the short bursts of squelchy synth swirls, resonant ground vibrating feedback laden noise, the hilarious goofy but still playful wordless vocalisations spat out by the musicians but also the at times disturbing dissonant chords which are formed and culminate in an absurdly, almost 50’s Horror film soundtrack like waves of organ droning at the ending of the piece after which we can hear the only applause that could be fit in on the tightly edited CD. An inventive juxtaposition of out of the blue musical absurdism with the more dadaist lightning strike like approach of collage based Harsh Noise carrying John’s seal of quality. The next track Superstitious does match its title rather well in terms of the sounds within and it’s the most Noise focussed piece on Deviate From Balance though still more along the lines of a layered soundscape. After the instrumental interplay of Segmenting Process For Language we’re back to a more noticeably composed piece which moves through various phases emitting a definite ambience of superstition through somewhat disturbing concrete sounds, noise and tones. Its beginning featuring chopped and quite heavily scrambled recordings of a scared woman wailing as well as various other waves of distorted sound and tone overtime moves to the climax of the piece which is an extended section of the aforementioned noise from by a nicely low end grounded stream of screechy sound featuring especially piercing high frequency sound manipulations quite like some kind of dystopian alien machinery, though your interpretation might definitely be much different. Regardless of how you interpret it, the piercing noise does give off quite an intense feeling of dread and fear and while the sounds used in the piece are sometimes somewhat recognisable, like dirt like crumbling sounds, coffee cups, car related sounds etc., again they’re manipulated and structured in such shifting and distorted manners that they feel like sudden waves of mind imagery than things you can really grab onto. The finale of the piece in which John frequency manipulates a continuous tone is quite gripping too and Superstitious as a whole sounds quite like both a physical and mind gripping piece. Cafe OTO is the track that follows and it’s obviously a live recording that was made at Cafe OTO. Moving back to the more improvisation based style of collaborative group performances that John Wiese has done together with other musicians this piece has a more continuous flow of sonic events and instrumental interplay and a generally might lighter edge to it than some of the other pieces. Especially the percussion blended with effect manipulations and saxophone performances are particularly good on here with percussion clattering, clinking, jumping around the room in quite hilarious surprising manners moving from crystal like tinkling to shells and wooden percussion whilst the saxes wildly swirling melody lines and screeches form sweet tonal abstraction that are wild but not going overboard and staying well in tune with the other elements of the performances. The “spat” out vocalisations are quite matching with the saxophone performance and whilst somewhat more subtle for most of the recording, there’s also some tasty, albeit less abrasive crashes of objects near the end of the recording. Again, John Wiese’s talent in highly abstract but always varied and uncompromising electronics and instrumental performances combined with the excellent inspired energy of all musicians that appears in his group performances shines through with the fun and details in the layers created making this suitable for many repeat listens. The following track Battery Instruments (Stereo) does work quite like an extension of the sounds from the Cafe OTO recording, though in a bit more minimalistic fashion being made up of mostly small, clicky and quite sounds. A collage of instrument, objects, electronics as well as short vocal bursts the piece puts the freely moving aspect of John Wiese’s group pieces into more of microscopic lowercase territory. It’s the shortest piece of the album at 2:12 minutes and works as kind of transition from Cafe OTO to the quite abrasive walkman Noise collage piece Memaloose Walkman, showcasing various crackling, scraping, spiky sonic details, a mysterious subdued drone as well as some quite tasteful bass string scratchings all panned quite widely (as this was originally a multi-channel piece). A sweet short piece this one. The aforementioned piece Memaloose Walkman then follows and it’s quite straight-forward in nature consisting of a mono tape collage of various recordings of gunshots. Besides splices and perhaps a bit of pitch adjustment there’s not much manipulation added to this but as a Noise piece it’s quite effective letting you hear the different swishing phased textures of shots from various guns as well as some bits of talk and music in between with a layer of crunchy saturation on top of everything. Simple but effective. Afterwards Dramatic Accessories continues within the Noise territory as a piece of quite a lot of instrument / object and especially turntable abuse featuring quite a lot of bassy and wild distorted screeches mixed with chopped recordings all presented through some crazy panning. One that will especially please harsh heads, within Dramatic Accessories there are various sections in which John and the other artists involved use all kinds of methods to create a variety of sounds ranging from the shifting kind of turntable warble, clicks, grating washes of distortion, chunks of feedback, amp hiss and metallic ringing. However whilst there are a lot of distorted sonic events happening within this piece, there is some sense of dynamics within however, created by the wild panning as well as shifting the phase and using some of the room acoustics and feedback of equipment to create some loud / softer / loud sections leaving some headroom for the sounds to not fully max out and become a bit overblown. The garbled object and instrument chops are clattering around often but strange distorted disturbing recordings of voices are also thrown in the mix making for an at times frightening but thrilling ride of unpredictable sounds. One element that is recurring throughout the wildly fluttering barrages of different sounds are certain grounded tones that bring forth some kind go base for all sounds to lean on as they continue changing in at times rapid manners. All in all Dramatic Accessories is another enjoyable sonic ride on Deviate From Balance in which rich and uncompromising textures are brought out in memorable ways through some fine inspired performances from all people involved. Solitaire follows, which is one of the two longest and final pieces on Deviate From Balance, at 11:15 minutes. In terms of approach the piece is somewhat similar to Dramatic Accessories but with the difference that rather than using vinyl, tape is being used here as one of the elements that create the various sounds within the piece. Solitaire follows a more continuous structure than other pieces on Deviate From Balance in that it’s mostly based on a set of repeating patterns within it's structure acting a bit like the compositional and performance equivalent of mechanical processes. Whereas Dramatic Accessories featured experiments with both clean and distorted sounds, Solitaire moves more into a quite crunchy rough direction featuring shards of chopped up instrument and music recordings, junk objects, voices as well a various especially percussive and resonant concrete sounds that ever continue to change in form. These repetitive patterns do give some kind of rhythmic drive to the piece but change often enough to not become sampler like and are more akin warbled broken tapes as the recordings are mercilessly abused through speed manipulations and ever increasing distortion. This is combined with a constant shift of stereo phase, through which on headphones you get the idea that the shards of sound are flying over your head and are forming 3D shapes in between your ears. A great listening experience which even works as the distortion gets quite murky and harsh nearing the end of the piece. Whilst the pattern style, on the fly pitch warbles and crunching noises carries on throughout, it’s great how some depth is slowly forming near the end of the piece, in which soft ticking percussive bits are being scattered between out ears and rimshot like ticking sounds are added for nice clean percussive accents. A very fluid piece in terms of progression and sound work which shows that whilst John Wiese’s solo and band works might at times sound very free-flowing and chaotic, he’s always got quite some noticeable control and focus within every piece, inspired and always different. Final piece Segmenting Process (Oregon) is indeed somewhat related to the earlier Segmenting Process For Language although in the case of this recording the segmenting of the several parts of the piece is even more clear. Being the longest piece on Deviate From Balance at 21:45 minutes the piece is also one of the most introspective and “organized” sounding tracks on the album as in here we can find the by now familiar mixture of acoustic, electric instrumentation with both electronic sounds and manipulations but also a more restrained approach to the Noise elements John Wiese has explored in various ways in most tracks before this one. Rather than almost overtaking the non-electronic instrumentation either through loudness or sharp (harsh) frequencies, the Noise is more in tune with the instrumentation as being a part of a blend of various sonic elements. This is also helped by the fact that with the larger group setting featuring brass, percussions, drums and more the piece required a larger venue to be performed which gives the piece some welcome acoustic space, adding some room ambience and keeps the piece nicely dynamic. Sounding most similar in approach to Electroacoustic Improvisation the pieces segments blending vibrant instrumental performances which vary from fluttering percussive tones, noises as well as more drone focussed falling and rising tones with crackling, noisy, humming, distorted, sample based and glitchy electronics sound quite like the piece is based on a mixture of dreams. Like a sonic interpretation of a dream world the piece moves from segment to segment with all of them featuring somewhat recognisable sounds like the instruments themselves or voices mixed with shaped abstract noises but everything carries some kind of mystery within it, which is especially caused by the somewhat unnerving textures created by the brass instruments within the performance. The absurdist humour element is still apparent within the piece however with at times goofy squeaky noises, drum kit hits, tinkling bells and other pointy bits of abstract sound keeping things nicely playful and light but still powerful as always. The flow of the piece also helps to keep things captivating and interesting throughout as its length might take some listeners a bit to get into it but with so many different events happening throughout there’s never any idleness in here. And with this last piece I’m getting into the conclusion of this review of John Wiese’s Deviate From Balance. I award this album a Polar Visions Amplitude of 85 dB, recommending you to definitely check out this album. Deviate From Balance showcases both John Wiese’s compositional and performance talents through a varied selection of recordings in which you can hear John’s approach in various settings ranging from surreal sound collages, Noise infused instrumental improvisations to rough tape manipulation and Electroacoustic Improvisation. Never resorting to mere academic musical studies John Wiese’s pieces on Deviate From Balance keep hitting the ears and mind in excellent and inspiring manners and will be a great discovery for fans of free spirited contemporary music, both analog and digital based sound collage works, (Harsh) Noise fans as well as anyone into inspired improvised music and will be a great addition to the collection of fans of John Wiese and Sissy Spacek.

Deviate From Balance is available on CD from Gligongo Records mail-order store here: https://gilgongorecords.storenvy.com/products/20648396-john-wiese-deviate-from-balance-cd-gggr-077

[fluidsf]

Polar Visions Amplitude reviewing -

Sissy Spacek - Featureless Thermal Equilibrium

Released on September 4, 2020 by Helicopter

Reviewed format: CD album

Connected listening - there are various ways to order a selection of Sissy Spacek’s further discography. The Helicopter mail-order stocks various Sissy Spacek releases and solo works by John Wiese and associates, you can find it here: https://helicopter.storenvy.com/collections/924915-sissy-spacek

Sissy Spacek’s releases on both physical and digital format are also available from their Bandcamp page here: https://sissyspacek.bandcamp.com/music

For an overview of Charlie Mumma’s solo releases as well as the releases he’s featured on as part of various bands, you can check out Discogs here: https://www.discogs.com/artist/1491175-Charlie-Mumma

In a similar manner, Jay Randall’s solo and band releases can be found on Discogs here: https://www.discogs.com/artist/393304-Jay-Randall

Several solo releases by John Wiese are available on physical and digital format from his Bandcamp page here: https://johnwiese.bandcamp.com

As I mentioned in the previous Polar Visions Amplitude review on this blog, 2020 has proven to be quite a fruitful year for both new Noise releases as well as reissues of classic Harsh Noise albums, mentioning the recent Helicopter / Troniks batch of CD releases and today we’re going to start diving into these with a review of one of the most recent Sissy Spacek albums, Featureless Thermal Equilibrium. Sissy Spacek is a John Wiese formed band which as being one of his most well-known projects not only carries a very prolific discography of a big number of albums, EPs, singles and many miscellaneous releases but is also an ever-changing line-up of extreme music artists and performers from various directions of experimental and contemporary music. This makes Sissy Spacek a rather versatile band with the kind of music / Noise you’re going to get on every release being quite unpredictable at times as this could vary from monolithic Harsh Noise to gritty Noise filled Grindcore to free-wheeling electro-acoustic cut-ups of instrumental and vocal recordings created by John Wiese. On Featureless Thermal Equilibrium we get to listen to Sissy Spacek as a raw power filled anarchist Grindcore unit which is continually blasted through with screechy Noise courtesy of John. Sissy Spacek’s core of John Wiese’s streams of Noise (and vocals in this case too) and Charlie Mumma’s fiery thunderous drums and vocals is strengthened here with Jay Randall (of Agoraphobic Nosebleed and various other terror-filled extreme Grindcore and Harsh Noise themed projects) providing particularly aggressive and appropriately screechy screamed vocals to the general energy-filled chaos that is this 24-minute new album. The album is one hell of a ride of dissonant murky noisy sonic energy that blends John Wiese’s screechy layers of Noise with surprisingly crisp sounding vocals and drums which in the case of this album still have quite a dynamic and roomy sound to them, creating some kind of balance in what in other cases could end up being more of a wall of Noise with all elements blending into eachother. Before we dive into this speedy album, it’s good to mention the neat looking presentation of Featureless Thermal Equilibrium, designed by John Wiese. The CD version of the album comes in a sturdy thick 6 panel digipak featuring some great minimalist artwork. The cover artwork is quite striking with its eerie grainy image of a face (which looks familiar but I can’t quite place where I saw it before) with the name of the band and album title set in some quite classy looking serif type. It has quite the classic LP sleeve look to it which purely based on the cover could suggest that the music contained within would be more like Hard Rock or Metal but its grittiness does express the actual music rather well. Other than the cover artwork the imagery on the digipak and CD face feature mostly grainy undefined composed textures that do very well carry that visualised Noise look that best expresses the crumbling shapes of texture that Noise can often conjure up in your mind when you dive into it and start to notice its many subtle variations. John Wiese’s signature type-writer style typography is looking great on the album’s digipak as always with the spine featuring the more recognisable all-caps Sissy Spacek “logo” with wide spacing and while the extra dirt John applies to the letters to make them look more degraded (again matching the music) can make some text a bit harder to read, especially in the credits listed on the back of the digipak, the design looks excellent and adds to the experience of the album’s raw power in visual form. Besides the artwork itself looking great, I also want to point out that the artwork is also printed in very cool looking silvery metallic ink making all art reflect and shine in a subtle manner, giving it some premium edge and the attention to detail that I appreciate a lot in the design of music releases even when it’s extreme music which often carries a much rougher, dirtier and at times lo-fi edge to it which might make it seems like premium artwork isn’t fitting its aesthetic that much. Now that we’ve looked over the presentation of Featureless Thermal Equilibrium, let’s dig into the album itself.

Just like what I found to be often the case with Grindcore or Grindcore related albums, Featureless Thermal Equilibrium is best to be listened in one go as being one long track as the 13 listed tracks are actually split up into at least 40 separate tracks especially about half-way into the album. It’s pretty much blast after blast after blast of raw and particularly rough power rooted in almost absolute dissonant chaos that with its relentless energy over so many blasts becomes an exhaustive but especially thrilling 24 minute ride that keeps the group on point throughout and proved to me that length doesn’t matter that much with this kind of album as it’s better not to let the band burn out after its first half but keeps things as consistent as Sissy Spacek are here. Amusingly the track titles (Fffff Eeeee, Aaaaa Ttttt, Uuu Rrr Eee) directly seem to reference the choppy nature of the blasts as well as spell out the album title, pointing out how Sissy Spacek themselves also point out that the album is like a continuous 24 minute recording rather than a collection of tracks recorded over several weeks or months (this is also confirmed on the back of the digipak as this album was recorded in a single day). Whilst this album is really best enjoyed by rocking out wildly to the energy blasts the band provides to let it all out, listening to this album on headphones does reveal some nice shifts in the separate layers that make up the bands sound on this album. Let’s start with the Grindcore layers of vocals and drums. The vocals are made up of these murky groaning lava like rumbling screeches with the “lead vocal” (most likely Jay Randall) driving the tracks themselves with rough gravel like screechy grumbling in words that are mostly quite indiscernible though you could guess mostly along the lines of “you motherfuckers” and related aggressive words thrown at us, as I heard. The lead vocals vary in intensity throughout with the shorter blasts being moments when the grumble layers take over at times with the lead vocals quickly returning with further bursts of grit but what I generally noticed from the album as a whole is that they form a bit of a circular pattern, starting off intense, falling a bit in intensity in the middle until rising again the most right at the end of the final track, Equilibrium as being a final screechy Harsh Noise finale to burn up the last remaining drops of fuel into a sparkling explosion. The drums in the pieces are somewhat between rumbling bass layer and an almost Free Improvisation like acoustic edge to the tracks, varying from blast-beats to many different often cymbal filled fills. The first few tracks showcase Charlie Mumma’s tumbling but tight drum performances with some surprisingly clean sounding tom tom and aforementioned hi-hat fills that also literally fill in most of the stereo field within the mostly centred noise and vocals that have a rougher more mono sound to them. The short blasts obviously mostly feature very fast blast-beats but after the lengthy sections of short blasts Charlie returns to the more free-flowing mixture of slower blast-beats and drum fills at the end of the album, but definitely blasting away at the finale of the last track however. The noise layer within the pieces never changes that dramatically, being quite like a gritty hazy mass of extra lava that drives the sonic mayhem forward however it’s noticeable that it does shift from screechy, mid / high frequency focussed sharp lines of Noise to lower rumbling streams during the short blasts until reaching a critical state at the finale of the last track. Interesting to notice is how most of the time the sources of the Noise are pretty hard to discern but within the first few tracks a few notes and even bass tones can still be heard throughout the continuous streaming screeching, giving away how the Noise within is created on this album. In the end I can say that Featureless Thermal Equilibrium showcases Sissy Spacek’s strengths especially in its focussed thunderous dissonant energy and excellent interplay between the performers but also does offer some rewarding subtle variations within the screeching streams of manic gritty sound which make for an enjoyable listen on the performance level too. This is another entry within the ever-growing Sissy Spacek discography of ever-inspired sonic freedom and anarchy, a recommended listen for fans of Grindcore, Noise and Sissy Spacek’s other (noisy) albums and with awarding this album a Polar Visions Amplitude of 90 dB I do recommend this album very strongly.

Featureless Thermal Equilibrium is available on CD and as a download from the Helicopter Bandcamp page here: https://helicopter.bandcamp.com/album/featureless-thermal-equilibrium

[fluidsf]

Polar Visions Amplitude reviewing:

Dave Phillips & Hiroshi Hasegawa - Insect Apocalypse

Released on April 13, 2015 by Monotype Records

Reviewed format: review copy of album as lossless WAV 16-bit/44.1kHz CD master files. Many thanks go out to Dave Phillips for sending over this album as a review copy.

Connected listening: more works by Dave Phillips are available through his Bandcamp page, including digital and physical releases: https://dave-phillips.bandcamp.com

Hiroshi Hasegawa has uploaded a selection of works under his own name as well as his project Astro on his Bandcamp page: https://astro-hasegawa.bandcamp.com To find out about his physical releases it’s advisable to use Discogs as a reference as just like Dave Phillips he’s very prolific and has released music under a large number of projects: https://www.discogs.com/artist/95156-Hiroshi-Hasegawa At the time of writing, reissues of classic albums he released as part of the Japanese Harsh Noise group C.C.C.C. through Helicopter / Troniks are still available (reviews of these will also appear here).

Monotype Records is nowadays active mostly as a pressing service for independent / underground artists and labels under the name Monotype Pressing, but some of the label’s releases up until 2017 are still available on physical format through various online shops and mail-order’s including Soundohm: https://www.soundohm.com/label/monotype-records

The second half of 2020 is ending up like a particularly fruitful time for great new (Harsh) Noise album releases and reissues with especially Helicopter / Troniks keeping us busy with very neat line-ups of releases including Sissy Spacek, Incapacitants, The Cherry Point and C.C.C.C. (as mentioned above) additionally the Bandcamp pages from artists like Dave Phillips are being updated with downloads of all kinds of curious older releases both solo and in collaboration. Indeed Dave Phillips & Hiroshi Hasegawa (of C.C.C.C., Astromero and many more) are the main characters behind the release I’m reviewing here today, Insect Apocalypse and indeed this album is a good way to be both introduced to the sonic approaches of both artists and discover what their amalgamation of sonics sounds like. Insect Apocalypse was released 5 years ago this year on CD through Polish label Monotype Records and features Dave and Hiroshi collaborating in the layering and manipulation of various field recordings from insects, birds and other sounds of nature recorded mostly in Asia with Dave handling the source field he recorded and Hiroshi manipulating these through various filters and effects in oftentimes quite fiery, at times harsh manners. The result is a 76 minute long album spread over 6 lengthy pieces that seems to imagine this dark, nocturnal jungle landscape infused with Industrial machinery and strong washes of vacuum sucked air with the reverb in the mixes adding quite a lot of depth and space to the pieces that does make the layers of the pieces more discernible and dynamic being more of a gradual than wall approach to Noise. Both artists have a background in radical approaches to sound as well as creating radical sounds with Dave Phillips already making noise through various extreme Rock bands in the 80’s like Fear of God afterwards moving towards creating music and sound works under his own name as well performing radical physical body-based actions together with Rudolf Eb.er, Daniel Löwenbrück, Joke Lanz and Marc Zeier as Schimpfluch-Gruppe. Dave often uses field recordings of nature, especially animals and embeds environmental activism in his sonic works and live performances with a focus on the misbalanced relationship between animals and humans being especially apparent but does this in a very creative and subconscious manner that also enriches his works artistically rather than feel like purely activist. Hiroshi Hasegawa’s approach is similarly immersive but rather in a more psychedelic and at times emotional manner as he approaches Noise and Harsh Noise through an improvised varied manner in which through his chains of effects, synths and other sound sources he’s not just looking for the harshest Noise but instead providing us rather with otherworldly sonic experiences through indeed oftentimes loud and harsh Noise. As I’ve heard on this release his approach is quite unpredictable and thereby even more fun because of that. Before we dive into Insect Apocalypse, let’s have a look at the version of the release I’m reviewing here. The review copy I got here features the album’s 6 tracks as the original CD masters in WAV format and interestingly they feature the tracks without their final titles, but rather denote a certain set of sections in every file name, possibly hinting at either the sections the pieces are built up of or are simply markers used in the CD mastering process. Whatever the case, it’s an interesting insight in this album’s creation if these filenames indeed point at sections. Besides the WAV files the review copy features two PDF files featuring the layouts used for the printing of the CD packaging, including the Digifile artwork and CD label. The artwork features lovely compositions mixing illustration, 3D imagery and manipulated photos that feature various funky and elegant looking bugs as well as the equipment used by Hiroshi Hasegawa, it’s a bit more light-hearted than the ambience of the compositions on Insect Apocalypse themselves are but they definitely give the album an inviting appearance to get into.

Insect Apocalypse starts off with Scrap Breeding (Insect Apocalypse 1-6 on the review copy) and we’re introduced straight away to the mixture of sonic elements Dave Phillips & Hiroshi Hasegawa present to us in these 6 tracks in various shapes and structures. Consisting of an ominous high frequency whining sound, metallic cricket and bird sounds, swirling streams of squelchy effect manipulations, washes of harsh distorted sounds as well as thumping low-frequency bangs the piece imagines the first scene of events happening in what to me feels like this mysterious nocturnal jungle landscape that is by now disrupted by Industrial activity with man-made machinery making hissy, metallic noises. Dave and Hiroshi’s layers of sound and noise fluidly intertwine, sometimes overshadow and flow through the stereo space in adventurous at times eerie but so recognisable natural textures in which the field recordings are often already so much metalled into steel but some birds, owls, distant voices still peep through adding some lovely details that are at times reverberated through the metallic layers. The piece has a certain brooding, dangerous ambience to it in how the high frequency tone and low end bangs seem threatening but with quite a lot of animal sounds still being recognisable the piece also seems comforting in a strange way. Sounds of bats are mixed with high frequency tones as the abstract Noise sonics keep on flowing and mutating in the calm but fiery active nocturnal jungle landscape. This piece finally also introduces an aspect of Hiroshi’s approach to Noise that becomes quite recognisable in this album which is the “sucking” like sheets of wildly fluttering noise mixed with the high frequency tones with Dave being responsible for the at times quite magnified landscape ambiences. Afterwards Hexapod Retaliation follows (Insect Apocalypse 7-12 on the review copy) in which we find ourselves in the middle of some kind of mechanical process happening in the middle of the jungle which not only disrupts the quiet sounds of crickets and soft sweeping wind of nature but also chops up these sound in wild ways adding to the metallic processing we were introduced to in the first track. These chopping effects wildly swing the cricket sounds around the stereo space but also distort them even further with fiery delay time manipulations making for screechy bended waves of mangled sound. However besides these effects the source field recordings are also a bit cleaner in this track, making for a more subtle blend of natural and effected sounds in the beginning of the piece, in the second half however things start to get much more abrasive. Warned by low end thumps in the first half already, the Industrial process hacks much more into the landscape in the second half of the piece in which growling and buzzing waves of flanger effected Noise move into the sonic landscape. This Noise subtly grows in intensity and changes all the time moving from harsh raw crunch to the aforementioned sucking streams of sound that wildly morph into rippling waves of psychedelic sound. The piece does continue with a theme from track 1 however in that it also does feature some kind of mechanical high pitched whining tone throughout the piece alongside with other bits of glittering high frequency sounds that retain this cold mechanical ambience within the piece but yet also don’t completely disrupt the peaceful aspect of the jungle we’re in in Insect Apocalypse. Mixed with the crunchily bassy thumps this second half does provide a great ride for Noise fans in particular but the dynamics and space in the piece also gives some breathing space and retains that lovely depth in the piece that makes deep listening easier. Besides enjoying the noise this also does make the piece (as well as the other tracks on Insect Apocalypse) more emotional in a mysterious subconscious manner like a night out exploring the jungle. Then we have Radioactive Darkness (Insect Apocalypse 13-15) which is the shortest and also (relatively) most straight-forward piece in terms of its Field Recordings based Noise approach. The piece hovers entirely around a soundscape featuring a mixture of more prominent bird sounds and crickets (which amplifies the jungle aspect of the album some more in this case) with scattered LFO manipulated squelchy Noise patterns as well as even wilder delay, pitch and reverse effects manipulations within its second half. This piece presents the nocturnal jungle in a less Industrial manner but rather lays more of the wonderful vibrant animal sounds bare however still with embedded sheets of distorted field sounds which this time form more of a wall which evolves over time giving us an inspired blend of the more idle (and subtle) kind of Noise Wall and meditative deep listening. It’s also one of the most peaceful sounding pieces on Insect Apocalypse as even though the meditative state gets disrupted by the sudden burst of squelchy chopped and scratched manipulations in the second half, we’re this time allowed to sink into the ever-continuing landscape itself rather than be confronted with mechanical disruptions which do make things a bit darker in meaning perhaps. The usage of the repetitive LFO pattern and disassembly of the elements as the piece fades out also does force us to get our listening mode into more of an awaiting state as well as shows us the constructed aspect of the piece directly in the case of the disassembly. Besides the rhythmic pattern there’s also plenty of great filter and flanger wildness in the piece however and things get proper psychedelic again in this one. Anuran Mutant (Insect Apocalypse 16-21) which follows is more subtle in its approach and is also both the longest (at 23:52) and most dynamic piece on Insect Apocalypse. Whilst the piece uses sonic approaches in terms of filtering and effect usage which are by now familiar to us from the previous pieces, Dave and Hiroshi bring more of an extended meditation session through sound in this piece rather than the at times wilder approach of the pieces before and also layer the sounds used with more depth and less focus on the Noise side of things. That doesn’t mean that the piece doesn’t have its Industrial edge however as quite a few parts of the piece feature mysterious rumbling metallic throbbing bass drones that sound somewhere between large trumpets used to signal an army in ancient times and a huge engine within a factory speeding up and down, alongside bubbling low end glitches. However in terms of structure the piece follows a much slower and more gradual path, showcases mixtures of crickets and at times whooping bird sounds, often metallic and irons blended with hollow streams of Noise, accelerating and decelerating mangled effected sounds, high pitched tones and sucking flanger effected noises. The separate layers are more easily discernible in the piece, with wider panning and not being obscured as much by the noise and at times fade into the distance to come back in different shapes later on. I’d say this is like the Noise equivalent of a Drone piece in which cold metallic mechanics signal their place in the soundscape but are still overshadowed by the chirping and loud sounds of the rich world of nature. If the previous piece where more of a close up of the landscape, this piece zooms out and gives us more of an overview of the full size jungle that we are currently exploring. Anthophila Genocide (Insect Apocalypse 22-25 on the review copy) in a way continues onwards from Anuran Mutant but in this case the machinery has definitely fully disrupted the landscape with the low end throbbing drones returning alongside more violent intrusive metallic manipulations of the cricket and bird sounds. Interestingly the bird sounds themselves are actually the ones that lead the iron sound of the piece as through the manipulations and pointy compressed sounding repetitive patterns in their noises the bird seem to replicate ring-modulated and LFO modulated squelchy iron sounds not unlike what we hear in the effects themselves. The full piece seems to document some kind of process going on with a lot of focus on crumbling, scattering and ominous sounding streams of metallic particles and signal like tones ever changing with the low end at times breaking through the landscape in crackling abrasive thumps. The process is suddenly cut off at the end however with a reverb following the cut like an event taking place in the jungle suddenly being disrupted but this is quite deceptive as the climax of Insect Apocalypse is to follow in the last piece. Arthopod Frequency (Insect Apocalypse 31-38 on the review copy) is this last piece and follows a slow build from clicky bird sounds and crickets to the aforementioned Noise climax. It’s in this piece where Dave and Hiroshi let their approaches to sound intertwine in the most extreme manner as we get both the discernible sources sounds by Dave peeking through the metallic manipulations as well as Hiroshi’s abrasive heavily expressive distortion and effect performance. Beside the metallic reverberating birds and crickets we also get new layers of different animals and further amplification of the field recordings in this piece as croaking frogs can also be heard in the climax. The build-up of this piece is quite gradual but also more subtle than you might expect as while the first fade into reverb of the bird sounds at the beginning might hint at something significant happening, the wall of Noise, “wind” and madly fluttering and croaking animal sounds that form the climax appears to happen quite late into the piece accompanied by distorted but also muffled vocal like noises that are more in the background that piercing sharp. This is the piece where Dave Phillips and Hiroshi Hasegawa both amplify their sounds the most but without beginning overly crazy and psychedelic but rather more as a kind of expression of what might be a shocking event in the jungle like a sudden change of weather waking up all animals which leads to them bursting out screams and shouts to each other backed by heavy mechanical Noise expressing the same tension in a colder abstracted manner. This final piece is not as dark or ominous as other pieces on Insect Apocalypse but does end with a few exciting intense low end crunches disrupting the whole flow in a fiery manner. A great finale to this excellent album. Insect Apocalypse is both a collection of compositions based around insect, bird and nature field recordings manipulated in various manners by Dave Phillips and Hiroshi Hasegawa as well as great sonic nocturnal journey through a mysterious semi-Industrial jungle that has equal deep listening as abrasive but also psychedelic Noise enjoyment embedded within its 6 pieces. Helped by Riccardo Mazzo’s great mastering which enhances the album’s clarity of both field recordings and Noise effects as well as keeps the dynamics and loudness of the pieces nicely intact Insect Apocalypse is a great listen for listeners looking for a great hybrid of nature recordings with Japanese style Noise as well as fans of abstract soundscapes that blend organic and effected approaches together for a unique experience. I give this album a Polar Visions Amplitude of 95 dB and highly recommend you to check this out.

Insect Apocalypse is still available from several online shops including Corticalart: https://www.corticalart.com/product/dave-phillips-hiroshi-hasegawainsect-apocalypse/

A download version of the album is available from Dave Phillips’ Bandcamp page here: https://dave-phillips.bandcamp.com/album/insect-apocalypse

[fluidsf]

Fluid Sonic Fluctuations reviewing:

Euglossine - Blue Marble Agony

Released on October 4, 2020 by Genot Centre

Reviewed format: review copy of album as lossless WAV 24-bit/48kHz files. Many thanks go out to Ondřej Lasák of Genot Centre for sending over this album as a review copy.

Connected listening: you can check out other releases by Euglossine on digital format through his Bandcamp page here: https://euglossine.bandcamp.com

To find out about the other releases Euglossine put out over the years his Discogs page is a good reference: https://www.discogs.com/artist/2654864-Euglossine

You can check out Genot Centre’s discography of both physical and digital releases on their Bandcamp page here: https://genot.bandcamp.com

After the previous review of Gamardah Fungus’ excellent new 10 Years Compilation release I thought it’d be nice to return to the review copies and see which releases I liked the most to feature on a “regular” Fluid Sonic Fluctuations review and that’s how I decided to select this recent new Genot Centre release by Euglossine titled Blue Marble Agony. To people who’ve been following FSF for a longer time Genot Centre will definitely be a familiar name and indeed over a short time I’ve reviewed quite a lot of releases from this Czech Republic based experimental tape label. Genot Centre’s release are always something different with every new tape coming out but I’d say a recurring theme is that the music is often a blend of styles and approaches to making experimental music which can often be quite quirky yet always changing shape. Such is also the case with this new album release by Blue Marble Agony. This is definitely one of the best recent releases Genot Centre put out and whilst the label has put out tapes with more recognizably melodic music before, this album is another surprise in how after two more abstract tapes (by My Cruelty and adammmmmmmmmmmm) we now have an album whose music is actually moving into a much jazzier if still abstract direction. Euglossine is the project by American multi-instrumentalist and composer Tristan Whitehill who blends jazz instrumentation like guitar, bass and acoustic drums with synths and beats to create music with a laid-back but also quite exploratory and psychedelic edge to it. Euglossine has released quite a lot of albums and EPs so far, mostly on tape format on labels like Orange Milk Records, Hausu Mountain and Beer On The Rug. Besides his music Tristan Whitehill also codes various computer programs and creates 3D animations and artwork. Looking into the contents of my review copy we have the familiar elements of the press release text file and various image files accompanying the 9 tracks of the album (in this case in the form of high-resolution 24-bit/48kHz WAV files). When we look at the image files it’s great to mention the excellent cover artwork by Lenka Glisníková & h5io6i54k. h5io6i54k's work is recognisable from his organic collaged futuristic landscapes, scenery and at times mangled Black Metal band name like drawn letters but Lenka Glisniková’s a new name to me whose art is also inspired by nature and fluid imagery but with more of a blend of recognizable nature inspired shapes as well as a lot of her work being exhibited as at times touchable installation form. Looking at the cover of Blue Marble Agony the artwork expresses the music contained in a quite recognisable manner, with mangled distorted rose like dark reflective shapes being mixed with very realistic looking flowers as well as strange bluish liquid like shapes and squiggles in a way showcasing both the warm atmospheres of the album’s tracks as well as the quite trippy and wild synth and percussion work in the music making things that much more mysterious and abstract. The interplay of Lenka Glisníková and h5io6i54k's approaches is seamless in the cover but dissecting the art of both artists from the image I’d say Lenka’s approach is especially recognisable by the flowers and blue liquid shapes in the image, a great cover image indeed. Whilst already sold out by the time of writing this review, the tape version of Blue Marble Agony came as a “wilderness pack” which featured the tape as well as a nice sticker but also a sweet piece of fabric printed with the lovely artwork by Lenka and h5io6i54k for that physical experience. Now it’s time for the aural experience of the music on this album however as we dive into it now.

Blue Marble Agony starts off with Skyblight, a track which is quite laid-back and straight-forward in its melodies but does already hints at the general sound Euglossine is going for on the rest of the album. With a mixture of warm synth pad tones, both acoustic drums and drum machine patters, acoustic guitar, recorder and sung vocals the piece plays like a Vaporwave influenced piece of lush (experimental) Bossa Nova with an ethereal quality to it. The melodies seem to be ever rising but at the same time also falling (this is a theme which Euglossine will return to later on on this album) giving the music this mysterious but also quite peaceful atmosphere in which the focus is both drawn to the flourishing swirly melodies which especially in the case of recorder and voice make for a great seamless blend as well as the playful contemporary psychedelic overtones with bass and drums being performed in a jumpy unpredictable and discontinuous manner giving the music a more abstracted feeling than the recognisable ever flowing “river” like vibe you’d usually get from this kind of laid-back music. The buzzy low bass synths having some Deconstructed sound to them also add to Euglossine richly varied sonic palette here. Zea Field Infinity is when things start to get a bit more spooky. The piece starts with quite the opposite of the melodic direction of Skyblight in that the starting sampled strings + vocals melody descends all the time but afterwards moves towards the relaxing Jazzy kind of sound we heard in Skyblight with a similar instrumentation. The acoustic guitar is a bit more prominent here with two different guitar performances being layered and panned quite wide to mix strummed chords with melodic phrases laid on top of the warm flowing string melodies, drum machine patterns and pointy flute tones. The compositional direction of the piece takes a mysterious turn as its reaching its end however, as if Euglossine is suggesting a nice picnic in a park in spring that actually hides some possibly dark secret. Indeed it is a theme of the Blue Marble Agony album to spin the lush, warm and relaxing (instrumental) music into mysterious at times a bit dark directions but as you notice now already, Euglossine uses quite a lot of tropical influences of atmosphere in his music (including pitched sampled mallets) in any case meaning the ambiences aren’t necessarily eerie in general. Brains In The Vat follows which despite the creepy morbid title is not quite as dark as the title suggests. It’s more of a loop kind of a track in which the music follows a gently swinging Easy Listening kind of melodic flow created by the combo of drum machine, acoustic guitar, flute and bass, the recognisable elements but this time accompanied by metallic and squelchy abstract synth effect patterns and a swishing layer of flanger effect laid over particularly the drums and synth effects adding a mildly Industrial edge to the sound design of the piece. The music is also auto panned for a big part of the piece, giving it this psychedelic Lo-Fi kinda aesthetic that is a bit similar to Outsider / Lo-Fi House tracks but utilised more subtly. Once again however Euglossine at first gives us the impression that we’re listening to pleasant easy music like a rippling river but whilst the music flows calmly along with the guitar and bass melodies moving into subtle variations the piece’s synth effects and metallic shine grow in intensity with urgency near the end of the piece like hinting at an artificial quality to the lush landscape you could imagine with this music that is much colder and constructed than we might think, the mystery is ever apparent. Ego Chaise then enters into the ever rising melodic theme I mentioned earlier on as the piece centres around the ever rising (acoustic) guitar melodies backed by diffuse string sample chords, piano as well as squelchy and heavily modulated synth melodies that are almost entirely filtered metallic shine. With its ever rising but never quite reaching the destination approach, the piece blends the jazzy Bossa Nova approach with a soundtrack like electronic edge of subtle foreboding, like an interlude or moment of sudden confusion in a film of which we can’t yet be sure what its meaning is. All we know is that we seem to be on a hunt looking for something obscure and are definitely enjoying the journey to that, whatever it is. N-tropic moves into a much different direction in that the piece doesn’t carry as much mystery as Ego Chaise but it does involve a much more electronic focused direction of style than other pieces before. Based around subtly rippling melodies consisting of a sweetly tumbling marimba like synth pattern, liquidly filtered synth tones as well as quite sharp subtly distorted washes of heavily reverberated drone the piece has a more minimalist nature to it. Besides these melodic layers the music also features hybrid acoustic and electronic drums as well as squelchy synth effects and quirky pitched vocal sample melodies. The whole has a quite entrancing effect with the repeating melodic phrases being like the sonification of a mantra but the heft of the drums as well as sharpness of the synth drones also adds some more intensity to the piece giving it a bit of an impression of a tribal ritual in that sense. I’d say that whilst being one of the more electronic pieces on Blue Marble Agony, this piece is also one of the most Jazz influenced tracks here in the way the melodies and rhythms interplay in a polyrhythmic manner and the vocal sample melodies are improvised, the whole has a quite free expression like flow to it that feels more like a recording of what Euglossine felt like playing than a planned composition, quite spacey and free-wheeling and a great longer instrumental exploration in this track. The short interlude like track No Species that follows is a bit of a throwback to the start of the album featuring the signature Jazz influenced instrumentation but now accompanied by quirky glitch like liquid synth particles and a more prominent bass line, Euglossine’s Smooth Jazz like vocals are particularly entertaining in this track though the piece’s jazzy chord progression does continue the recurring mystery I feel taking up the ambience of many of this album’s pieces. Afterwards title track Blue Marble Agony follows which is definitely one of the most mysterious pieces on the album. The piece continues the jazzy style of the previous pieces once again with mostly electronic drums returning but the melodies are evermore abstract, taking strange unpredictable twists and turns with the music moving through various phases in which we can also hear filtered samples of what sounds like a child, pitched down music samples, and fluttering synth squelches and drum effects. The piece mixes the jazzy influences with Deconstructed Club elements (especially with the bassy kicks) creating melodies and a structural ambience that is always exploratory and morphing in an intriguing juxtaposition of textural sculpting and inventive melodies. Feels quite like an alien form of Jazz, but in a mature well-developed manner rather than being goofy and quirky just for strangeness sake. Eco Fascist Dethroned moves the music into a more straight-forward direction and it’s also quite a sweet little banger actually. After the beatless introduction of the warm repeating melody (most prominently on recorder) backed by squelchy river like auto panned synth effects the music moves into the groove of which the base is a quite continuous thumps acoustic / electronic drums hybrid backed by organ like synth phrases as well as widely swirling glittering synth textures. There’s quite a lot of playfulness in this piece especially on the electronic side and forms a nice contrast to the more abstract Blue Marble Agony track, nice one. Tubingensis Mould rounds off the album as the final track and in a way it does mashup the full album in a single track with the jazzy sounds even leaning a bit towards Chill Out especially in the guitar melodies (though this track is much better than what you’d find mostly under the Chill Out tag). The piece does feature a rather abstract intriguing composition however in which Euglossine’s twirling melodies float around like butterflies but the electronic elements and especially glitches, pitch manipulations and distortion are taking over the lush ambience to add some wild edge to the music. With the LinnDrum grooves returning in this piece, there’s quite a lot of buzzing experimentation in this piece, like the lush textural landscape of Euglossine is quickly getting manipulated by machinery and digital technology leading to a freeze frame at the end, fading the music out as it becomes more idle, leaving us wondering about the final destination of the piece. It’s great how Euglossine leaves us off with a new puzzle piece of the imaginative and layered puzzle of melodies, textures and manipulations that is his music rather than finishing the puzzle and keeps the imagination going even after listening. It’s definitely music that seems easy going but is more creative and varied than it might seem at first. I award Blue Marble Agony a Polar Vision at the frequency of a pleasant intriguing musical journey through warm melodies, psychedelic textures, mysterious twists and turns and an excellent personal musical voice. Enhanced by Angel Marcloid’s mastering, who did a good job letting the separate layers shine and keep the music punchy whilst still retaining most of the dynamic range, Blue Marble Agony is a highly recommended album that you should definitely check out. Fans of Jazz inspired electronic music, the warmer side of Deconstructed sounds as well as listeners who are into playful and especially Progressive instrumental electronic music will find a lot to enjoy in here in particular.

Blue Marble Agony is available as a download from Genot Centre here: https://genot.bandcamp.com/album/blue-marble-agony The tape is sold out at the time of writing.

[fluidsf]

Polar Visions Amplitude / Fluid Sonic Fluctuations - Cross reviewing:

Gamardah Fungus - 10 Years Compilation: Singles, Rarities, Remixes

Self-released on September 9, 2020 by Gamardah Fungus

Reviewed format: review copy of the Gamardah Fungus self-released compilation as lossless WAV files in master-quality resolutions up to 32-bit/44.1kHz. Many thanks to Igor Yalivec for sending this over.

Selected connected listening: More music by Gamardah Fungus in the form of albums and compilation tracks is available on physical format and as downloads from their Bandcamp page (https://gamardahfungus.bandcamp.com)

The Metempsychosis compilation as well as other dark experimental Ukrainian underground music is available from Khatacomb (https://khatacomb.bandcamp.com)

Most Monocube albums are available on physical and digital format from this Bandcamp page (https://monocube.bandcamp.com)

Gamardah Fungus is a name that you might’ve come across earlier on through this blog if you’ve been following this blog for a longer time and indeed I have reviewed a track of theirs earlier as featured on the excellent Kaleidoscope compilation released on Flaming Pines last year. After the release of their excellent new album Natural Storm on Hidden Vibes at the end of that same year, the Ukrainian duo consisting of experimental musician and sound artist Igor Yalivec and guitarist Sergey Yagoda recently returned with a new self-release on CD celebrating the 10 year anniversary of this project. Titled 10 Years Compilation: Singles, Rarities, Remixes, the CD includes a selection of compilation appearances as well as remixes of 3 Gamardah Fungus tracks by associated Breakcore and Drill & Bass infused Drum & Bass project Submatukana (which features Igor Yalivec). Gamardah Fungus combines Drone Doom inspired guitar performances by Sergey with Igor’s rich electronic and electro-acoustic layers forming a kind of Ambient that blends at times lush calm atmospheres with the darkness of Metal, hazy distortion and elements of Noise, field recordings as well as looped drum recordings into their signature style. It’s because of this interesting mixture of Ambient with darker underground music influences that I’ve tagged this review under both Polar Visions Amplitude and Fluid Sonic Fluctuations as the music encompasses various crossing approaches to sound and melody. This variation is also apparent in the quite diverse approach you’ll hear on this compilation, differing from track to track whilst still retaining the melancholic, somewhat hopeless but also calming feelings Gamardah Fungus’ music radiates, with the three remixes being more consistent and similar in approach. The CD obviously enables you to check out Dmitry Khabarov’s excellent cover artwork printed on a nice cardboard sleeve but also in the digital format of my review copy (similar to the download version) it looks great. The tribal like ritual style from the etch like black and white image makes me think of imagery depicting ancient gods and various animals sacrificed to theses gods in auspicious times above the fire. It’s got a lovely non-symmetrical style to it with creatures, flowers, elegant decorations flowing around the square making this a lovely “classic” kind of artwork that does match the more organic elements of the music on the album, especially those featuring nature recordings. Further into my review copy I have the promo PDF and the 10 tracks in the format that they were mastered in, 16-bit/44.1kHz but with track 1 being in 16-bit/48kHz and track 8 in 32-bit/44.1kHz. Several tracks on this compilation are indeed remastered or remixed but the sound quality is consistently great throughout and there’s no jumps in loudness too. Now let’s jump into the 10 tracks featured on this 10 Years Compilation.

10 Years Compilation starts with Zen Garden, a lush atmospheric piece that can bring you into a quite relaxing state of mine as suggested with the title. Featuring calm minimalist clean guitar melodies over a warm flowing mellow drone and subtle field recordings of crickets the piece is the quietest track on the whole compilation but already does have some mystery within its summery warm ambience. Tube-like resonant tones flow through the piece like the eerily braking distant trains and the phaser effected sound of the guitar gives it a bit of a more psychedelic edge than other pieces on this compilation. Clanging metallic sounds like the bells ringing near a railroad crossing add some surreal imagery to the mixture which sounds both calming but also a bit foreboding. A sweet calm start to the compilation. Human Or Not follows which moves us into darker, more dystopian territory, featuring an electronic ambience that’s a bit more stripped back the piece revolves a lot around the heavier distorted melodic guitar phrases that tumble and scatter around the stereo field. The atmosphere we have here is more one of a certain threat, uncertainty about the future, an inner struggle. With the title Human Or Not you can already guess that indeed there’s some kind of question the music seems to ask continuously. Am I Human, is this technologically ever advancing world overtaking the humanity and natural things? The flowing drone background is ominous in its subdued texture through which sharper tones periodically chime like an alarm tone sneakily disguised as a friendly notification sound whilst the guitar expresses the aforementioned struggle through sad repeated tones, gliding and brittle clicking string noises. Like on the previous piece Zen Garden, guitar and electronics interplay in this track in a great manner with both elements embracing each other in waves of tone and sound that rise and fall in an almost improvisatory manner with both guitar and electronics at times rising to the foreground to express their urgency or fragile underlying emotions. On the next track Fetus Crying Gamardah Fungus brings us a more straight-forward piece of music which follows a more traditional compositional structure. The piece is pretty much a slow droning Metal track though the drums of the track are actually looped drum recordings rather than a studio recording of drums with slow sombre clean guitar riffs slowly building towards a distorted hazy distorted climax until building towards the clean ending melodies of the piece that softly fade out afterwards. In terms of sounds the piece is not the most distinct track on this compilation with the electronics taking quite a background position here, though vinyl crackles can be heard alongside the guitar and drums giving it a bit of a different flavour but it’s an enjoyable good and intense track nonetheless and keeps up the dark eerie ambience we’ve gotten into from Am I Human onwards rather well. With Clean Eyes Of My Childhood Gamardah Fungus returns to the drone-based approach of their music in a piece which features some tasty creative improvisational aspects to the guitar performance as well as an eerily calm pulsating quality to the drone driving the piece. Sergey Yagoda plays introspective and contemplating melodic phrases which he breaks up more and more with clicking, at times wooden sounding string noises and harmonics which combined with the reversed delay on the guitar add to the organic narrative quality of the guitar. Igor Yalivec’s electronics follow more of slow crescendo in this piece with the warm resonant pulsating drone often showcasing a rich brightness every time it rises, soft cello-like tones also fading in around half-way into the piece to ever grow in intensity in the second half though never overshadowing Sergey’s guitar. With its intriguing combination of warm electronics and a free-flowing guitar performance which carries rawer distorted sonics the piece makes for a great listening experience blending lush “classical” Ambient elements with Avant-Garde improvisation. Afterwards on Sea Salt (with Monocube) we dive into darker territory, with Monocube’s deeply flowing electronics centred in the stereo image, Gamardah Fungus’ layers within the piece, guitar and sampled drums make for a cinematic sombre listening experience that again feels quite “classic” in its approach with the music feeling quite organic and like a live performance. Feeling quite like the soundtrack to the environment of a deserted landscape or a terrifyingly quiet city Sergey’s guitar performance leads the piece with subtly narrating, clicky melodic phrases, a times running through crunchy edge of high-end distortion. Monocube’s electronics create a metallic river of mysteriously flowing droning tones and wide stereo-panned high pitched screeches, not quite emitting a feeling of dread but things aren’t looking to good for us they seem to be saying. The scattering low pitch-shifted drums and vinyl crackle add abstract percussive elements to the piece that aren’t driving the music but rather seem to be rhythmically transported shards and debris of demolished buildings and rubble, not very harsh but quite murky definitely. The rising and falling pulsating quality to Monocube’s electronics do remind me a bit of the previous track but have a more Industrial quality to them, being less glowing and more inherently metallic. This is definitely a great mixture of Gamardah Fungus’ sombre droning atmosphere’s with Monocube’s refined approach to Dark Ambient, a fine piece of music again. Forester Blues follows, which is a much lighter piece of music in comparison. Featuring more minimalistic electronics in the form of a looped field recording recorded in a forest forming the backing of Sergey’s guitar the piece feels more like a melodic natural soundscape. The melodic phrases on guitar are this time repeated by a looping pedal / device with which an ever growing structure of looped layers of melody, overtones as well as subtly scratchy tones is created, flowing in a calm but also mysterious fashion creating the ambience of sitting somewhere in the middle of the forest around a little campfire at night hearing all the surrounding sounds of shifting leaves and wolf-like noises. These aforementioned sounds can be directly heard in the field recording in which the guitar is placed as if the sound is softly reverberating in the forest. Besides describing the ambience of the forest this piece could also be interpreted as actually being the soundtrack to a walk through the forest at night, with the ever increasing number of looped guitar layers expressing the ever-increasing awareness we suddenly get whilst discovering all corners of the forest, the secret nocturnal animal activities that are suddenly laid bare to us. All in all, it’s an intriguing different sonic approach Gamardah Fungus brings to us here and another great chapter within this increasingly varied sounding compilation. Afterwards we have the last original track on 10 Years Compilation, Kyiv Underground. At 13:56 minutes it’s the longest track on here and also the most guitar-focussed one with the piece essentially consisting of an extended guitar solo by Sergey backed by manipulated hazy and Noise like field recordings by Igor creating the most Metal / Noise like music that you can find on here. Sergey’s solo is focussed around a dark dramatic droning note that he returns to quite often as the base of the swirling melodic phrases that plays. The phrases have quite a lot of passion and energy within them, with Sergey varying the melody from screeching wails to wavering overtone rich laments, afterwards returning to the base tone with ever-increasing thick layers of noisy gritty distortion. The melodies start of quite slow at the beginning of the piece but move towards fiery high-pitched speed acrobatics that still do carry the dread-filled mysterious ambience that’s much enhanced by Igor Yalivec’s murky and strange sonic manipulations. These manipulations include the sounds of the metro underground, including an announcers voice, noises from the subway trains themselves as well as indiscernible bits of voice and vary from ghostly washes to strangely electronic blips as well. It also sounds like Igor’s manipulating the guitar melodies themselves too at times with tones at times sounding like falling into hazily diffuse shadows of darkness adding to the stereo delay effect that already makes for a nice scattered effect of the guitar melodies. Kyiv Underground is the most melody driven piece but also one of the darkest and noisiest on the compilation without the layers blending too much into each other. It showcases Gamardah Fungus’ harsher and more abstracted side rather well and I feel this piece could also be a great entry point for listeners with more Noise / Industrial oriented tastes. Afterwards we got the first of the three Submatukana remixes that close off the compilation which is the Submatukana Remix of Burning Church of Eternal Sorrow. As mentioned in my introduction these remixes fall into the Drum & Bass territory mixed with influences from other related styles and this first remix indeed does feature some nice breaks and buzzing bass tones accompanying the chopped up guitar melody. In the remix Submatukana use this guitar melody in a looped manner as the melodic base around which the synths and bass hover featuring a warm bell-like “classic” Drum & Bass style tinkling melody as well as rhythmic pulsation in the bass synth line. The breaks themselves are quite familiar sounding in nature but Submatukana does chop them up rather nicely and they build up the remix in a quite progressive manner, gradually increasing the number of layers and afterwards dissecting them in a subtle manner. Just like the two remixes to follow the music is more straight-forward in nature than the original pieces but the music is nicely produced and enjoyable as it never gets repetitive. One thing I did notice however is that these remixes, like unfortunately happens more often with Drum & Bass tracks have rather boosted high frequencies in the mastering which make the hi-hats and cymbals become a bit washy and close to masking some of the other instruments but the sound quality is still good in any case. The Submatukana Remix of Advocatus Diaboli which follows uses more of the melody from the original track to build up the remix with a large chunk of the distorted guitar melody mixed with clean arpeggios being used as base of the bass melody of the piece. Sombre and dramatic in nature the melody gives off a great doom-laden ambience which mixed with the full-bodied breaks and scrunchy bass makes for an energetic piece of music but there are also some nice creative touches beyond this like the Ukrainian (?) voice sample and funky electric piano in the first half of the remix adding some quirky vibes to the remix as well as some sweet filter usage on the breaks in the second half of the remix. Definitely a fun and varied listen. After this we have the third Submatukana Remix and final track from the 10 Years Compilation, which is of the track Opium. I’d say that in approach this one is the most minimalist with Sergey’s moody dense guitar melodies being mostly used as a hazy background to a quite stretched out section of squelchy bass wobbles forming the Dubstep inspired sound of the remix. The drums are a bit further back in this remix being more a programmed but also crunchy distorted type of Industrial Techno rhythms. At the end of the remix we do have a rather nice section of glitchy tones and clanging metallic percussion too. Overall the remix makes a pretty interesting Eastern Asian kind of mystery out of the dense guitar melody from the original track with flute like synth enhancing this influence and the bass wobbles are varied enough to keep the energy at a consistent level throughout the remix. A fine closing track to this excellent compilation. With 10 Years Compilation, Gamardah Fungus brings us a great varied selection of original tracks and sweet remixes that showcases both their warm atmospheric and their darker more mysterious side. The creative merging of flowing, pulsating electronic and field recordings of Igor Yalivec and Sergey’s passionate and at times improvisational guitar performances makes for a compilation that takes you on a sonic journey to various emotional states of mind as well as walking through the rich mysteries of nature. I award this compilation a Polar Visions Amplitude of 95 dB. I highly recommend this compilation and there’s plenty of great music in here for both fans of lush Ambient and more experimental darker styles of underground music. Check this out.

You can purchase 10 Years Compilation on CD as well as a download from the Gamardah Fungus Bandcamp page here: https://gamardahfungus.bandcamp.com/album/10-years-compilation-singles-rarities-remixes

[fluidsf]

Polar Visions Amplitude Listening Set 1 - Daniel Menche exploration - Reviewing:

Daniel Menche - Soundtrack for the book "D'entre les morts"

Self-released on November 12, 2018 by Daniel Menche 
Reviewed format: 16-bit/44.1kHz ALAC download of the EP

Connected listening: further self-released works and reissues by Daniel Menche on his Bandcamp page (https://danielmenche.bandcamp.com/music)

The second release in this first Listening Set (which is now fully themed around exploring releases by Daniel Menche) on Polar Visions Amplitude is Soundtrack for the book "D'entre les morts”, a digital reissue of a soundtrack that Menche made for the novel D'entre les morts by Guillaume Belhomme and which was originally released with this same soundtrack included with the book published by Éditions Lenka Lente. The French publisher / label has released numerous other novels with accompanying soundtracks by Nurse With Wound, Vomir, Andrew Liles, My Cat Is An Alien and others as well as several books on Jazz and Avant-Garde music, at times in bilingual editions. As Menche mentions in the description of the download of this release the story of D'entre les morts is about a man on a train who’s eating glass. Menche’s approach to soundtrack such a strange story was indeed to use various sounds of crunched glass and trains but the result is even more eerie than you could guess from the description itself. This piece is more cyclic in nature than Desiccation but equally strong and immersive in nature as you will find out soon. In the case of this reissue you’ll find the music in the form of a single CD quality track, identical to the physical mini-CD but with cover artwork by Menche, a dark grayscale photo (in line with the other releases on Menche’s Bandcamp page) of what looks like a tree-trunk but also eeriely seems to resemble a skull of some wild animal, intriguing imagery. Let’s dive into this soundtrack now.

Soundtrack for the book "D'entre les morts” carries some similarities in sonic approach to Desiccation, even though the source materials used are much more of a mixture of acoustic and electronic elements with the piece being built using quite clearly defined layers, some of which hover around the stereo field. These layers can be separated into metallic, screechy and squelchy electronic. The metallic layers form the main drones that carry the piece forward, a mixture of glowing resonant struck iron, hammered metal bars (sounding somewhere between a coat hanger and the kind of triangle “bell” you sometimes see in prisons in films announcing food breaks) as well as further overtones that are audible especially in the first half of the piece. The screechy sounds in the piece are all the layered train recordings of which especially the train brakes give them a note of harshness but besides the brake sounds you can also hear some clattering, wooden like sonic details from the trains. Menche hasn’t utilised the train sounds in a very explicit manner in this piece, feeling more like an accompaniment to the metal works than a steady clattering rhythm that is a bit obvious as others might have used them which does elevate these sounds above connecting them too much to their own source. The squelchy electronic sounds add a bit of Noise to the mixture, mostly aesthetically pleasing but in the second half growing in intention, the stream of the water like liquid scratchy texture appears to imagine the novel character’s disturbed brain in quite a literal but on-point manner. As I mentioned in the introduction, this soundtrack features a more cyclic kind of composition in which the separate layers are active in various phases, some short, some longer. The hammered iron droning appears for the majority of the piece and changes ever so slightly in pitch though the tones themselves mostly stay the same and is working together with the iron resonances in the first half of the piece, in the second half these hammered tones become much more prominent however, also becoming a bit more minimalistic and repetitive in nature. This does make the second half feel a bit more focussed on the “deep” of the deep listening method of experiencing this piece as the effect of these tones creeps into the mind mostly as a kind of hypnosis with some of the other sounds falling a bit out of focus (in my experience at least) but it does allow the squelchy electronics to subtly grow more intense in this second half to eventually overtake the main focus of the piece in the ending fade-out of the piece, a crackling soup of crunchy noise softly seeping away into the distance. Looking into the general immersive effect that this soundtrack has on the mind I felt that besides the actual story from the novel the piece especially relates to a kind of hyper-sensitivity of sounds. The imagery conjured up in my mind was especially that of a man locked up in the living room of his house, scared of all the sounds around him, whether its a chiming old clock or even a bit of creaking in the walls, all sounds appear to be piercing into his ears and mind likes knives stabbing him. The subtle minor / major key shifts of the resonant drones of this piece also further hint at an unstable state of mind with the piece never quite falling into a musical kind of “tones” or chords but remaining in that signature Menche field of eerie abstract tones. The aforementioned cyclic nature of this piece also makes the piece feel quite more like a summary of events, layered over each other rather than the traditional progressive form of a soundtrack / soundtrack composition but the variations that do appear over time still do keep the piece flowing forward too even though dramatic events never happen within the piece. Soundtrack for the book "D'entre les morts” is another great entry in Daniel Menche’s extensive discography and features some crisp mastering by experimental musician Andrew Liles who creates very interesting and imaginative solo music as well as part of several avant-garde groups the most well-known of which Nurse With Wound. Liles especially brought out some great warmth in the mid and high frequencies of the spectrum and brought out both the sharpness of the metals and the clarity of clattering and squelchy sonic elements in the mix. I award this soundtrack a Polar Visions Amplitude of 95 dB. This is another highly recommended listen within Menche’s discography and once again showcases Menche's imaginative, enjoyable and deeply felt creativity in the field of abstract Drone inspired Industrial music.

You can get Soundtrack for the book "D'entre les morts” in download format from Daniel Menche’s Bandcamp page here: https://danielmenche.bandcamp.com/album/soundtrack-for-the-book-dentre-les-morts

[fluidsf]

Polar Visions Amplitude Listening Set 1 - Reviewing:

Daniel Menche - Desiccation

Self-released on January 7, 2019 by Daniel Menche 
 
Reviewed format: 24-bit/44.1kHz ALAC download of the album

Connected listening: further self-released works and reissues by Daniel Menche on his Bandcamp page (https://danielmenche.bandcamp.com/music)

The first release in the first listening set of my new Polar Visions Amplitude writing project focused on Noise, Power Electronics and further radical and obscure underground sonics is the 2019 album Desiccation by Daniel Menche. Daniel Menche is an American abstract sound musician who is active since around the start of the 1990s, with his first releases being in the form of self-released cassette tapes. Later on in this same period Menche released albums on Soleilmoon Recordings, Aube’s G.R.O.S.S. tape label, Banned Productions but also Bernard Günter’s Trente Oiseaux which released many albums falling into the lowercase style of radically soft Sound Art and experimental music. Over the years Menche has also collaborated with a number of well-known names in the Noise and experimental music scene including KK Null, John Wiese, Joe Preston and Kevin Drumm. Daniel Menche has self-released a lot of his recent works on his Bandcamp in digital format and recently limited edition physical releases but also keeps regularly putting out his own unique style of abstract immersive sonics through labels like Moving Furniture Records, Beacon Sound, Touch and SIGE. Desiccation is a self-released 4 track album released as a high-resolution 24-bit/44.1kHz download and features some great artwork by Menche himself in the form of the black and white photograph of the desiccating landscape which fittingly matches the sound of the drones contained within as you’re about to find out.

Desiccation is split up into four parts, all of which are separate pieces, starting with Part One the album begins with what I feel is the core drone imagining the eerie, hypnotic but also quite entrancing textures and tones of the desiccation of the earth, the earth getting totally dry (as can be seen on the album cover). In this first part we also get introduced to Menche’s approach to layering his drones, textures and noises in most parts of this album, he builds this piece out of a continuous steady one-note drone, folding out into multiple layers of texture and fuzzy metallic noises that at times return in different modulated variations but often fade in and out of each other in an unpredictable yet also cyclic manner. Looking at the elements contained within the first part we can find tonal material, hissing mechanical textures, low shifting bass tones as well as hidden filtered tonal clouds being somewhat hidden in the mixture. The tonal material is what I found to be some of the most clear in pointing towards the subject as there is quite a prominent focus on the ever falling and rising sharp synth drones that feel like a sonification of the slowly drying, stretching mass of earth, gripping around it, crumbling and at this same slow pace ever changing the texture around it in the burning sunshine. Alongside these rising and falling tones we also have a more steady main drone synth, grounding the key of the other drones in place, quite resonant and sharp too, it forms the tonal background on which all elements hover. There is some movement in overtones within it however, so this drone isn’t really laying idle at all. Another great aspect about the rising and falling drones is that they also have this amusing speeding up and slowing down engine kind of quality to them which does make the Industrial influence in the piece clearer but they’re not quite that harsh or distorted to overtake from the organic nature from this part. Moving to the hissing mechanical textures, these elaborate further on the Industrial elements within this part by adding whirring movement to the earth crumbling process of desiccation, heating up the earth even and also add new dissonant lower pitched fuzz like hazes of wind flowing over the earth. High pitched metallic resonance peaks into the mixture quite early on as well, adding a layer of glimmering colours that is a bit piercing but again not overwhelming, iron like high pitched clangs feature later on in the piece as well. The low shifting bass tones then form the general magnitude of the earth, at times moving the key of the drones into mysterious different places or forming a rumbling layer of underground movement. Especially on speakers with good bass or when using a subwoofer this low end layer is quite an impressive mass of shifting frequencies that is quite filtered and separate but plays a great role in creating this earth landscape through sound, a unique approach to bass. Finally the tonal clouds which fade into the picture at various moments throughout the piece form these bending organic tones, almost like a question mark in sound that have this spooky but also intriguing subconscious effect of making you think of something unknown lurking in this soundscape, an animal perhaps or some other unknown visitor. All in all, a great start of the album and with its Industrial elements Menche immediately lets us know he’s not here to give us relaxing New Age drones but proper dark immersive metallic and resonant textures that keep intriguing on every listen. On Part One Menche moves into more abstract harsher territory whilst still retaining some of the signature elements from Part One like the high pitched metallic bits, mysterious swirling tonal cloud and resonances. In this part however, the sonic material is focussed on a more mechanical type of sonic imagery, feeling much like mining activities within a mountain landscape, these activities might actually occur in parts where the earth isn’t that dried out yet. The discernible layers in this part are more in a competition with each other than in part one and without a base drone that grounds the key of the other drones and tones hovering around the piece has a more dissonant and mysteriously unpredictable sound to it, laying somewhere in between stripped back Dark Ambient atmospheres and purely Industrial piercing tones and active machinery. The piece’s drones never quite move in a single direction together, instead at times mashing with each other but often trying to move ever and ever more forward in the sonic image (often in intensity or moving very far into the left or right channel). The low frequencies are a bit steadier in this part, moving along with the machinery and after the beginning of the piece the phased tonal synth layers are subtly moving back to make space for harsher mining activity. Key elements of the quality of Menche’s work in this piece are especially the aforementioned piercing metallic resonances as well as distorted hazy and hot-like whirring, engine sounds and rubble clatter that give this part a magnified physical aspect. As a listening experience the piece forms a great combination of both the Industrial aspect letting you as the listener focus on the abrasive yet intriguing sonics of Industrial equipment as well as letting you dive into the strangely entrancing qualities of the constant activity, diffusion of sound and intensifying textures that are intense but always changing in such great ways. Part Three sonically appears to describe the daily in a city built within a dry mountain landscape until eventually giving way to more Industrial elements, continuing the mining activities like sounds from Part Two. In this third part Menche lets the layers flow more into each other independently over the 20 minutes with the especially the start of the piece carrying a more melodic filtered ambience backing the foreground elements consisting of sharp drones, buzzing metallic drill and further saturated metallic elements. The melodic filtered ambience at the beginning forms a diffuse undefined but intriguing “upbeat” element within the piece which puts the Industrial mechanics into a brighter warmer light. We can also hear the rising and falling, engine like whirring tones return in this piece within its first half, though not quite as prominent and hissy and within the context still feeling different than in Part One. In this third part especially the movement, increasing saturation of the metallic elements is an aspect that I find particularly great, combined with the fact that Menche places these elements in more of a low-end vacuum background, making them eerily sharply focussed. There’s a lot of movement in these mechanical elements but in this third part not just drilling but moving in wide stereo, rotation shifting from left to right independently, machinery moving in the wide space of the piece like a living organism. The growing saturation of the metallic machinery enriches their resonant qualities, adds noise, body and loudness to them but also gives them an earth-like extra physical quality. Like the other parts of Desiccation, the layers and elements never quite move in a predictable manner, even though climaxes at times almost seem to occur. The low frequencies in this third part give the background ambience body and add some nice bass rumble to the Industrial mechanics, they're often very low but grounded low frequencies that give different sensations and movement to every part on this album. Final piece Part Four of Desiccation concludes the album with what sounds like the earth crust eventually opening up. Consisting of many now familiar layers including the warm mixed mysteriously diffuse tonal drones, metallic elements, hissing mechanical activities and saturated high pitched washes of sounds, Menche rounds off the album in quite a circular manner, somewhat moving back to the beginning in terms of elements used but the effect is quite different from the other pieces even though these elements don’t differ as much in terms of their sonic signature. While the piece is still somewhat subtle and gradual in its progression, Menche sounds quite fiery in the way he moves in and manipulates the various layers in this fourth part in an even more but also seemingly more aggressive manner (aggressive in the sense that resonant piercing Industrial elements are being pushed quite a bit forward and he leaves less quieter moments within the piece, instead opting for more of a climax or crescendo style of composition. Out of the wildly left and right scattering tonal and mechanic elements from the beginning the cracking of the earth erupts full of strange intriguing activities, organic, lava filled matter, the bendy tonal cloud swooping once again through the landscape, this time cleaner and more urgent in nature and the ever changing nature of the landscape through the more improvised sounding on-the-fly flow of fluid sonic manipulations. It’s a great cathartic finale to Desiccation and I feel Menche’s unique style mixes at times eerie dark (Industrial) ambience with a mysterious yet somehow hopeful kind of sonic bliss that is quite a bit more like a whole free sonic experience rather than mere music constricted by compositional or stylistic requirements. Timothy Stollenwerk’s analog mastering at Stereophonic Mastering brought out some wonderful thick rumbling low frequencies, made the saturated elements feel extra crunchy and fierce and brought out the many layers of Menche’s music here in the clearest and most dynamic manner so it’s good to credit him too here obviously. I award this album a Polar Visions Amplitude of 100 dB, this is highly recommended listening. More reviews of other works by Menche are coming up through Polar Visions Amplitude soon, so stay tuned.

You can buy the download of Desiccation from Daniel Menche’s Bandcamp page (as well as get many of his other releases) here: https://danielmenche.bandcamp.com/album/desiccation

[fluidsf]

Fluid Sonic Fluctuation 114

ranter’s bay & Pablo Orza: ειμαρμενη (Heimarmene)

as kindly provided to me as a review copy by ranter’s bay of Kaczynski Editions

released March 27, 2020

Welcome to review number 114 on this blog in which today I’m featuring an album which I received as a review copy from Kaczynski Editions label head and experimental musician ranter’s bay (Niet F-n). This album is called ειμαρμενη (Heimarmene) and is a collaborative album between ranter’s bay and Spanish multi-instrumental improviser Pablo Orza and features 7 tracks, carrying the title ἄρχων and counting upwards from 1 to 7 as 7 separate parts. After reviewing Síria’s excellent album Boa-Língua this album does follow quite nicely from that one as again we’re inside the territory of expressive sound manipulation, performance and improvisation, albeit this time in a much more abstract, live recording like fashion of pure sonic exploration and with ranter’s bay and Pablo Orza also working more with elements like objects and exploring their electric and acoustic instruments the aim of the music is more free-wheeling than Síria’s album. Indeed looking at the background info from these two artists we can find more of an Electroacoustic Improvisation type of approach they take to making music. ranter’s bay is Niet F-n, an Italian sound artist, audio engineer and experimental musician who besides this project has also released music as Zero23, ranter’s groove and 23RedAnts. Niet F-n has also created music for theatre pieces by Licenciada Sotelo and Marco Regueiro in Spain and by Mending Dance Theatre in Taipei and has contributed sound design and performed at a variety of international arts festivals and centres. Under the name ranter’s bay Niet F-n has released music on Spettro Records and Crónica and has been featured on a self-released 2-CD compilation by Monolyth & Cobalt. Under his various other names he has released music on Creative Sources, Etched Traumas, a self-released EP by Martin Hoogeboom and Setola di Maiale. Niet F-n releases all his music under the open source Creative Commons license so a lot of his music is also available as a free download from various sources. Pablo Orza is as mentioned, a Spanish multi-instrumental improviser who’s played with various groups including Annamoviek, Karst Collective, maDam and OMEGa as well as done collaborations with improvising musicians such as Wade Matthews, LAR Legido, Patxi Valera and Javier Carmona and eventually became part of the Galician Spontaneous Music Orchestra (O.M.E.Ga) which consists of 20 Galician musicians focussing on a stylistic mixture of approaches to real time sound creation. Pablo Orza has released solo music on Creative Sources and collaborative works on alg-a netlabel, zeromoon and pan y rosas discos. Besides his music Pablo also creates visual artworks in the form of collages, illustrations, paintings, sculptures, installations and more and his collage work can be seen as the lovely blue tinted cover of this album. Kaczynski Editions is the label by ranter’s bay himself, which released ειμαρμενη (Heimarmene) and forms a home of both his own works as well as music by several other artists active in (Electro-Acoustic) improvised and Psychedelic tinged experimental music. The fairly new label releases music mostly on limited edition tape format in often quite special packaging featuring rich artwork and as the label’s “manifesto” mentions that “Music is the only weapon” the spirit of Kaczynski Editions is especially that of creating a revolution through Avant-Garde music and art which I definitely find inspiring as especially now it’s a good time to continue sharing imaginative art and music. Before we dive into the music of the album I’ll mention that the presentation of my review copy features the album’s 7 tracks as 16-bit/44.1kHz CD quality files as well as the album cover in good resolution and a short press release text in both Italian and English, besides the texts this is very similar to what you’ll receive in the Bandcamp download version.

ειμαρμενη (Heimarmene) starts with first track ἄρχων 1, featuring some nicely clean electric guitar improvisation, metallic object performance, glitches and various electric noises backed by a mysterious but calming resonant sounding field recording of what sounds like a park filled with people lazing in the warm spring sun as well as drinking coffee or tea in the various surrounding cafés we’re off to a pretty good start in terms. Indeed ranter’s bay and Pablo Orza offer us plenty of lovely abstract sounds to explore, whether it’s the rippling reversed quality of Pablo’s guitar or the electronic and processed sounds the duo produces that include quite squelchy liquid like metallic scraping, auto panned and delay effected drum samples as well as mechanical repetition. In terms of exploration the piece does find the duo in quite an inspired position in terms of their performance but both this piece and the next track I’ll get to do take some time to get going as the sparse, scattered nature of the sonic elements make the pieces feel a bit more like extended sketches in which there’s still a lot of trial of approaches going on. The dissonant low end guitar rumbles Pablo creates in the second half as well as the way the pointed sonic elements integrate very natural with the field recording as if being in the same sonic space in a literal sense does show promise and a good ear for immersion in sound however. ἄρχων 2 follows a quite similar sound palette to ἄρχων 1 though without a background field recording and with a generally much more metallic ambience to it. A lot of focus is put on the percussive qualities of the guitar, objects and electronics all creating various movements and actions, often scattering, clashing, sometimes distorting but like in ἄρχων 1 at times the clean sustained tones from the guitar do peek through the irregular bursts of improvised sonics. Other highlights about the sonics of the piece include the distorted auto panned crunches, CD player like glitches as well as bell like percussion hits that appear at several moments within the piece, the piece also does feel more like building towards a kind of structural development near its end, almost, but does still feel a bit like a collection of sonic puzzle pieces which aren’t yet integrated with each other but do offer some enjoyable sound investigation. ἄρχων 3 is when the sonic elements really do start to get integrated, as the piece follows more of a Drone based approach, with low pitched tones buzzing around in warm waves of at times quite Rhodes piano like sound, sometimes glitched up a notch but often quite continuous in their trajectory. ranter’s bay and Pablo Orza’s electro-acoustic performances do blend together smoother as well with Pablo’s guitar adding lovely tonal metallic bits combined with pleasant reversed tonal clusters. The high pitched clicking elements in this piece are also used in a great manner, with sounds like CRT like buzz, insect like clicking and music box like tinkling adding lovely organic elements to the piece which is also more successful in terms of immersion as the mixture of sonic elements here seems to suggest imagery like a calm night of quiet introspection in which your ears are all opened to all little electronic and natural sounds around you. The TV recording of a man talking as well what sounds like the audience reacting in a mixture of laughter and applause that appears in a filtered form adds a lovely element of surrealism to the piece as the broadcast gets reduced to a mixture of fuzzy hums and noise, reminding us that before modern digital TVs our grandparents and maybe even ourselves still experienced the lo-fi manner of looking at the world through a thick tube with at times crumbling mediocre sound, which does have a certain charm to it and has certainly become a good inspiration of various EAI and Noise artists. The structure of this piece flows smoother as well, a great highlight on this album. ἄρχων 4 follows, a piece which has a considerably more abstract sound to it, being more like a playful kinetic sound sculpture. The piece, which continues the metallic textural focus of the tracks before feels quite like a montage of various mechanical procedures, with a lot of crunchy, glitched elements adding a great organic touch to the piece. Loops of some of the object sounds and reversed sound adding some great bits of rhythm to the piece, at times even sounding like straight hi-hat rhythms but the additional cello improvisation also does give the piece an oddly satisfying “melodic” kind of sound to. While the cello is as abstract and choppy sounding as the objects, the relatively focussed subdued focus of the notes played makes for a fun, absurd kind of microscopic melodic fragments which seems to guide the piece in an alien manner. A very fun and playful short piece. ἄρχων 5 afterwards is a more “atmospheric” piece in a choppy manner with the droning guitar tones recalling ἄρχων 3’s warm tones. A pretty laid-back piece which varies the know familiar ingredients especially in terms of the objects and electronics with distorted sonic elements returning as well as the appearance of some enjoyable repeated percussive metallic clanging, stuttering and glassy liquid like as well as hollow and resonant filtered bits of sound. Another fun piece. ἄρχων 6 takes us on a bit of detour again with a rich immersive soundscape in which ranter’s bay and Pablo Orza seem to depict a river landscape blended with gentle beeps and signal sounds from mysterious electronic equipment. The piece is also quite spacious in its stereo image, though I have to also point out that the pieces on ειμαρμενη (Heimarmene) in general do mostly have quite a lot of space in their sound and both room and artificial acoustics are also often audible, giving the pieces a slightly metallic but also deep sound. The duo’s sound sources blend in particularly well into a unity on ἄρχων 6 as the object sounds suggest soft rocks, human activity in the water and other small organic sounds, whilst Pablo’s guitar creates additional scratchy sounds as well as mysterious tones and what sounds like manipulated tape recordings. A wide stereo ambience that pops up at the beginning of the piece, strange whispering as well as the sound of sparrows at the end of the piece add some great details to the immersive, story telling like flow of this particular piece. Another great piece showcasing the duo’s strengths on this album as they move beyond familiar EAI territory into a more distinct personal approach. ἄρχων 7 closes the album and could be considered the duo’s “freak out” piece as they move into some wild Noise territory with some amusingly hilarious sounding dadaist distorted plunderphonics manipulations of music and Pablo’s guitar backed by more minimalist but effective synth squelches and glitches in the sides of the stereo image. Whilst it’s admittedly a bit harsh, this closing piece does showcase the duo at their most humorous and playful and makes for a fun finale of the album which is intense but also a pretty easy listen due to the duos audible enthusiasm within their performance. So there you have it, ειμαρμενη (Heimarmene) is an album on ranter’s bay & Pablo Orza bring us 7 solid pieces of Electroacoustic Improvised music and on which we can follow their route of exploration finding their own combined musical unity. Whilst its first pieces are more of a journey to find which combinations work through experimentation, the duo’s abstract, percussive and melodic elements quickly lock into place afterwards finding ranter’s bay electronics and objects and Pablo’s guitar creating both kinetic sculptures and richly mysterious soundscapes. The album is very playful and the concise timing of the pieces as well as good feeling for structure through improvisation make the album quite a bit more accessible to listeners new or unfamiliar with EAI than albums by other artists can be. The microscopic melodies and drones as well as fun dadaist like absurdism in some of the piece give the pieces a sweet personal touch too. This is a great listen for fans of EAI, as well as new listeners, fans of more electroacoustic centred Glitch, Sound Art as well as listeners who like abstract music a lot. Check this album out.

You can order ειμαρμενη (Heimarmene) by ranter’s bay & Pablo Orza as Limited Edition, regular CD and purchase as digital download from the Kaczynski Editions Bandcamp page here: https://kaczynskieditions.bandcamp.com/album/--2

[fluidsf]

Fluid Sonic Fluctuation 113

Síria: Boa-Língua

as kindly provided to me as a review copy by Crónica

released March 17, 2020

Catalogue number: 155

Welcome to review number 113 on Fluid Sonic Fluctuations in which today I’m featuring the fairly recently released album by Síria titled Boa-Língua. I received this album as a review copy linking to a Bandcamp download code from the Crónica label. Crónica is the label which actually inspired me to start this blog and over the last two years I’ve often featured and reviewed various Crónica releases both new and old on this blog. Just like I did with Quantum Natives I’ll give a bit of a description of Crónica both for people who haven’t checked out the previous reviews as well as keeping in line with my now even more expanded review style. Crónica is a Portuguese mixed media label founded by a group of sound artists, experimental musicians and audiovisual artists that include Miguel Carvalhais (who’s most in charge of the label nowadays and has mastered and designed many of its releases), Pedro Tudela, who both form the duo @c, an immersive sound art and abstract experimental music project that often utilises field recordings and collaged abstract musical and non-musical sounds to create immersive cinematic experiences based on a philosophical attitude to sound as well as deep listening into various sonic environments. I’ve reviewed various @c works on this blog before. Other founding members of Crónica include experimental musician Pedro Almeida (Pal) and visual artist Lia who uses custom programming to create her moving and captured abstract visuals. Quite matching in spirit to @c’s sound works Crónica’s releases form an ever-continuing chronology of sound, music and noise on various formats including cassette tape, free download, CD and limited edition vinyl releases. Crónica’s discography is a mixture of Sound Art pieces, often conceptual and free-spirited experimental music and Electro-Acoustic Improvisation as well as inventive and often enjoyable forays into composed field recordings and the more arty side of Noise. Now let’s have a look at the contents of the review copy of Boa-Língua by Síria that I received. The download I received includes the album cover artwork in good resolution, the 9 album tracks in 24-bit/44.1kHz high resolution audio as well as a PDF file that contains the album’s tracklist, credits, release description and liner notes. The liner notes by Síria herself give a good impression of the concept and sonic approach Síria used when she recorded the 9 pieces that feature on the album with improvisation that goes beyond simply performing and an element of deep introspection being key elements to this album’s development. A nice short text that you can read alongside checking out the music. What is of interest for now is the background of Síria and the other artists who contributed to the music or whose music Síria sampled / manipulated to create her music. First of all, Síria herself, is a solo project by Portuguese sound artist and experimental musician Diana Combo. As also introduced by the PDF files, Síria is an extension of Diana’s other music project EOSIN, a project that mixes Turntable Music style experimentation, field recordings and other sound sources to create at times eerie and mysterious abstract sonic images, Síria mixes this approach with Diana’s vocals which in the case of Boa-Língua she doesn’t manipulate that much but mostly works as a main thread carrying the pieces of music, often using (traditional) Folk songs or as in some pieces on this album rather expressive (wordless) vocals sometimes using an invented language. Under the name Síria Diana has released two albums on Crónica, has appeared on compilations on Tropical Twista Records and Discrepant and has created a remix for Sontag Shogun released on Youngbloods. Tiago Martins has done “post-production” of the album at his own Fisgastudio, which as I could hear it on the album consists of the connecting the songs together as well as nicely balancing out Síria’s vocals with the instrumentation of her pieces. Miguel Carvalhais did the mastering for this album, which like other masters he did for releases I previously reviewed is rather crisp and clear sounding, a notch compressed in this case perhaps though, but it does keep the vocals quite on the foreground and it’s not reducing the balance of the instrumentation of the music too much and indeed Miguel also created the artwork for this release which features photos by Síria herself of this subtly painted statue of a nude woman which is not quite matching my own interpretation of the music as you will soon notice but does form nice striking imagery that does encompass the general surreal ambience of the album quite well. Amongst the sources of songwriting, samples and recordings Síria used in her pieces we find that first song Canção do Gato is a version of a song that Tiago Pereira recorded for his continuing project A Música Portuguesa a Gostar Dela Própria which documents Portuguese folk songs as sung by local citizens through his audio and video recordings. Nos Montes was remixed by @c who have released albums on labels like Variz, Crónica, Fuga Discos and Grain Of Sound, have been featured on albums and compilation released by labels like Loop, AntmanuvMicro and Variz and are also credited on releases on Dead Motion Records, Ilse and a free Edition Der Standard release. Senhora dos Remédios is a version of a song sang by Portuguese singer Catarina Chitas and features a sample from Portuguese mixed media artist Maile Colbert. Belgian Shepherd is a remix of a track of the same title by Portuguese experimental music artist Rui P. Andrade of his 2017 album All Lovers Go To Heaven, originally released on ACR. Rui has released albums using his own name on labels such as BRØQN, Etched Traumas, Haze and Colectivo Casa Amarela, has appeared on releases on Darker Days Ahead, a compilation by Indie Rock Mag, a split EP on Enough Records. Rui’s credits includes musical work on releases on Zigur Artists, Pale Blue and Warm Winters Ltd. Rui nowadays makes music under his alias Canadian Rifles which he mostly releases on his own Eastern Nurseries tape label. Through Síria’s remix (originally released on the Island Fever compilation by Portuguese experimental music label Colectivo Casa Amarela) I’ve already caught some glimpses of Rui’s sound work and based on the strong bassy resonant noisy drone elements I heard I can tell his solo works and label output will definitely be worth checking out too. Ay Işığında is a version of a song as originally sung by Azerbaijani singer Nərminə Məmmədova. Finally, For Ghédalia and Boa-Lingua feature recordings made by Los Niños Muertos which is a duo made up of Portuguese electric guitar improviser and experimentalist André Tasso (who's also part of the big Ensemble MIA, an international collective of experimental musicians and improvisers who participated in the Encontro de Música Improvisada de Atouguia da Baleia organised in May 2016) and Bruno Humberto (a conceptual artist in a wide array of fields in contemporary arts whose works often use the location of the installation or performance as part of the artwork and who also utilised absurdism in interesting manners as part of the Gazpacho Unlimited theatre group). Now let’s dive into Boa-Língua’s music and sonic imagery.

Boa-Língua starts with the piece Canção do Gato which quite perfectly introduces the sonic imagery that this album conjured up in my mind which is that of a wandering soul on a mysterious journey who encounters all kinds of strange rituals and at times dystopian Industrial environments. The piece feels like we’re inside a circle watching an eerie entrancing ritual happen, with Síria’s vocals working as if they’re the chant forming the ritual itself, combined with the gong like percussion which emits a bassy and resonant but also quite wavy continuous droning and helps to create that nocturnal mysterious atmosphere. The song itself sounds more uplifting than the eerie gong drones suggests which makes for a great intriguing juxtaposition of musical elements and the filtered walkie-talkie noise like rhythm in the first half of the piece adds a bit of surrealism to the piece as it feels quite like a small undefined cloud drifting by, momentarily obscuring the ritual. Síria’s vocal performance itself also got some great details in it too, as she holds the notes of each repeated melodic phrase as if they’re looped and also giving the song a bit of sharp resonant edge, very nice to hear. Afterwards we travel into darker, more dystopian territory with Nos Montes which features Síria’s wordless vocals and various layers of (field recording) manipulations, loose percussion, warbled pitch adjusted vinyl records as well as eerie glassy crystallised textured and choppy fluttering bits of Noise swirling around in the centre of the stereo image as well as as between the left and right channels in a subtle manner. Our aforementioned wandering soul has now arrived in an Industrial landscape in which alien machinery seems to be ever whirring, squeaking and clicking, with the workers in this factory or perhaps even simply a workshop appear to be processing glimmering minerals which radiate vivid blue-tinted rainbows. Warbled voices and strangely dropping tones feel like the wandering soul is slowly getting both frightened and confused by her surroundings, her wordless singing feeling like a soft lullaby like song she sings to comfort herself. Her voice distorts and repeats as the environment changes and while the music follows more of a slow evolution of texture rather than reaching a real climax, the various details and new sounds fading in through the layers of Industrial sound make the immersive sonic experiments that much richer. Like many of the pieces on this album, Nos Montes is connected quite directly to its following piece with the jester like tambourine pattern at the end smoothly moving into the beginning of the following track Senhora dos Remédios. @c’s (remix) contribution to Nos Montes sounds a bit more metallic than I heard before from the Portuguese duo and is a bit more subtle in this case with many of the sonic layers sounding like directly from Síria herself. The depth, panning and immersive acoustic effects definitely make me think of @c’s work in a more direct manner, but I can say that this mixture of contributions to one piece of music definitely works quite seamless instead of being a piece where you can clearly hear “another artist joined as a collaborator” so excellent work in here indeed. Following track Senhora dos Remédios uses a sample by Maile Colbert (possibly a field recording) sounding like hissy wind and we can hear the return of the gong percussion from Canção do Gato at the start of the piece, blending with jester tambourine rhythm. This piece feels quite like our wandering soul has reached a more quiet part of the factory / workshop where we can only hear the hiss of pipes leading to the machinery in the main hall. Síria’s way of singing the song makes it sound quite ghostly and a bit like a lament, the stereo panned delay effect also adds this feeling of being inside the mind of the wandering soul. The second voice in the song feels like the wandering soul is imagining this second voice as a memory from a time long ago. A sweet introspective piece of music which does retain that nice Industrial edge the album has in a great manner. Belgian Shepherd then follows, a quite minimalist piece in which Síria’s vocals feature in a more subtle manner than other the other tracks on Boa-Língua. Now it feels like the wandering soul has moved to another spot in the factory, one in which distant sounds of machinery can be heard. Featuring distorted rhythmic glitch bass, a scraping mechanical resonant metallic drone, as well as burst of dust-laden steam and distant clanging metal poles and racks the Industrial landscape where our wandering soul finds herself has become a bit less archaic and morphed into a more efficient, cold and high-tech sci fi type of gears. Additional excellent details to the piece are the entrance in which high pitched glitched tones as well as a metallic violin like glassy screeches seem to introduce the wandering soul’s desperation as she’s trying to find a way out of this dark landscape, her warm wordless vocals being both cries for help and again a means to try to calm herself down and focus. A great mixture of contemporary minimalist Glitch elements and classic Industrial textures from what I can hear in the piece, Rui P. Andrade’s original version of this piece of which we’re now hearing Síria’s remix must be a fine entrancing piece of Drone / Noise work as all the textures as well as rich manipulations of the elements suggest the source material (which Síria also added on in this remix, which should be noted) definitely has some great creativity and an inspired personal touch to it too. Great work. Afterwards in Yarın the wandering soul has finally got out of the factory and returned to the mysterious ritual we saw before which has now progressed. Featuring long long resonating and decaying cymbal droning which is rich in many eerie and filtered sounding overtones as well as an additional layer of low (synth) frequencies which create a brooding rumbling foundation of the piece the ritual like nature of this piece is much darker. Yet Síria’s vocals are quite uplifting and positive sounding, with her voice overtaking the darkness more in this case than becoming encompassed within it. The double tracking of her vocals does create these curious sonic phenomena however, like her voice detaches itself from her as a separate second “out of body” entity and swirls around within the diffuse flowing liquid tonal mass of the ritual music. A few rays of sunlight are shining through the clouds of the morning to come for the wandering soul but the water drops at the end of the piece predict that the ominous events she encounters aren’t over yet, with the room acoustic of the field recording suggesting a narrow hollow space she soon finds herself in, perhaps a dungeon. Danse Macabre, the piece that follows is quite self-explanatory based on the titled. Indeed the piece feels quite like the sonic depiction of ghosts dancing around in a circle in the dark night. In this case however, it’s obviously the wandering soul who’s growing more and more confused and frightened by feelings that she can’t escape this strange world of mysterious ancient rituals and dystopian cold Industry all that easily. The piece feels quite “classic” in that it has a mostly pure Ritual Ambient sound with a lot of eerie resonant slow percussion rhythms, droning vocals and strange mouth sounds with which she creates strange laughing and screeching noises and spooky wails. However there are also little bits of crackling Noise hidden in the background as well with which Síria does underline her signature sound in this piece, they’re equally eerie in that they’re so “light” in the sonic imagery that you might even mistake them for rustling leaves or tree branches outside your house (this is especially the case on headphones). Further details that are particularly great about this piece are the highly resonant droning overtones mixed with the hollow water drops in the beginning of the piece creating some extra eerie gloom as well as the way Síria’s vocals form their own texture and intensely droning tone at the end of the piece, a very immersive listening experience once again. Ay Işığında follows with a similar kind of Ritual Ambient kind of ambience fading through the water drop sounds into nicely rising and falling waves of gong resonances backed by tinkling cymbals. Our wandering soul appears to have escaped her gloom and is now walking towards a beach with the aforementioned gong resonances feeling like the eerie gloom still surrounding her until the point that some lovely hollow, wooden like turntable needle and mechanism manipulations enter sounding a bit like rowing pans for that nice notch of surrealism in the mix. Síria performs the song Ay Işığında (as originally sung by Nərminə Məmmədova) with much positive emotion and there’s some lovely spacey delay effect on her vocals again but what I like even more about this piece is the way the piece’s subtly moving drone moves into sonic imagery involving soft “caressing” vinyl crackles and the sound of the sea, the swirling waves of water carrying our wandering soul to what appears to be an exit of the fever dream like landscapes she find herself in. The vinyl crackles also appear to hint at the subconscious meaning of “this is all just memories, you’re not actually experiencing this in real life”. Very intriguing. For Ghédalia then is a piece which is a bit more abrasive for its first half featuring screechy high pitched feedback tones but does flow into a more subtle kind of ambience afterwards. Dedicated to the cult Avant-Garde Folk experimentalist Ghédalia Tazartes the piece does indeed recall the curious kind of mixture of Noise, Folk and Tribal like elements I remember from listening to one of his albums a long time ago. This is also a piece which does move a bit out of the flow of the pieces that came before it as it features some more abstract experimentation within it. Síria is performing ornamental wordless vocals in this piece mixed with additional filtered vocal drones making for curious swirling drone around her. She also creates clicky bass drum like percussion using her mouth (though this seems to be more like a layering of two elements in fact). Curious are also the organ like tones in the first half of the piece. Whilst moving into a different kind of textural style, I can still apply my imagined imagery of the wandering soul to this piece as being a ritual she created and is performing on her own. This piece uses recordings by André Tasso and Bruno Humberto and I can definitely say that based on what I found about André, the guitar Noise elements are created by him and add some great rawness in terms of texture to the piece, very nice. Final piece Boa-Língua puts more focus on the recordings of guitar feedback manipulation as well as some sweet woodblock / stick percussion courtesy of André Tasso and Bruno Humberto in terms of instrumentation with Síria’s vocals being more like chanted mantras. The instrumental backing has a great physical touch to it in terms of texture, with the guitar also sounding a bit like an alarm; Síria’s calm vocals give the impression of our wandering soul slowly waking up in her bed in the morning with her thoughts still going through a bit of a confusing haze (the feedback instrumentation) and her wake up alarm having an oddly harsh sound to her ears. Still, she’s safe and sound and thereby we also come to our listening journey of Síria’s excellent Boa-Língua. I awards Boa-Língua a Polar Vision at the frequency of a wandering soul travelling through possibly imagined landscapes full of mysterious rituals, dystopian Industrial landscapes and a surreal experience of past memories. The album’s consistent flow of often vocal lead pieces of rich experimental music make for a great listening experience in Síria’s personal, inspired sonic world that blends “physical” Noise experimentation, Ritual Ambient influences, an inventive approach to using her voice in her music and a great feel for the cinematic side of Sound Art and texture based ambiences. This is a great recommended listen for fans of the more musical side of Sound Art, experimental approaches to Ritual Ambient, Turntable Music as well as a more varied approach to using Noise and Free Improvisation in more subtle manners. Síria’s song based approach also makes the music more accessible for listeners who aren’t very familiar with experimental music in general. Definitely get this album.

You can order Boa-Língua by Síria as a limited edition cassette tape and download from the Crónica Bandcamp page here: https://cronica.bandcamp.com/album/boa-l-ngua

[fluidsf]

Fluid Sonic Fluctuation 112

Crown Shyness: Isonautics Remixed

as kindly provided to me as a review copy by Quantum Natives

released 24/February/2020

Catalogue number: QNRX024

This is Fluid Sonic Fluctuation review 112 in which today I have for you the next release on Quantum Natives after sigh by soapkin, which I previously reviewed (https://fluidsf.tumblr.com/post/617920131522347008/fluid-sonic-fluctuation-111-soapkin-sigh-as). This is a recent remix album by Crown Shyness titled Isonautics Remixed which features various tracks from Crown Shyness excellent 2019 album Isonautics in remixed versions by a curious cast of experimental, installation and visual artists. Rather than feeling like a remix “compilation” in terms of flow in the tracklist, Isonautics Remixed is rather a remix album, feeling as much as an immersive journey as the original Isonautics album. Before we go on a journey through this remix album, let’s have a look at the cast of artists that feature on Isonautics Remixed. First of all, Crown Shyness himself is a project by American artist Kevin Carey. Using the name Crown Shyness, Kevin has released his debut album Isonautics on Quantum Natives last year and several tracks of his have also appeared on mixes and compilations. Looking back on Isonautics and the review I wrote about it in 2019, I can say it’s an excellent and very immersive nocturnal sonic journey in this icy seascape of which various elements are still recognisable on Isonautics Remixed too, though with different approaches of sound manipulation applied to them. The first of the remixers featured on Isonautics Remixed is bod [包家巷] (Nicolas Zhu), an American audiovisual artist creating richly layered sound collage infused music, who released music on labels like Pastel Voids, Danse Noire, Knives and the surreal religion themed label AMEN. Recently he released an especially expansive collection of music titled Music for Self Esteem on Swedish collective and label YEAR0001. Afterwards on track 2 of Isonautics Remixed we have this artist called djpuppy whom I didn’t find much info on but did also feature on last year’s Quantum Native four way split release Dreamcasthe by Dragoon and has also featured on a split release called Nocturnal Idiot / 夜行馬鹿 on Japanese label Ukiuki Atama with woopheadclrms (whose Genot Centre tape vs o.t.O.g.I I reviewed last year). Quite radical, plunderphonics and Hardcore influenced music from what I found out. On tracks 3 and 7 we have reworks by Taiwanese installation artist Tzu Ni (Hung Tzu Ni) who creates works in which she uses light and sound to envelop the audience inside immersive imaginative environments and imagery. Most of her music is available self-released on Bandcamp as well as on Bandcamp pages by her collaborators and has also been released on compilations by Future Proof 面向異日 and Engram Recordings. The fourth featured remixer on this remix album is yma who previously released an EP length release titled sunset on Quantum Natives, has featured on a compilation on Dark Jinja and while her music can be found tagged with “Ambient” or “Ambient Pop” online has made quite a different style of remix than you’d think, on this remix album. Remixer number 5 is umbilical friend, who curiously according to Bandcamp are also a Californian band but regardless of the sometimes confusing paths artist names can take when looking them up online, umbilical friend delivers a great remix on here. WH is a remixer of whom I couldn’t find information online but perhaps we will see music by WH released on Quantum Natives, a bit of a mystery artist I’d say. On track 8 we have a remix by swivelized (sounds), a Taiwanese sound artist who mixes Noise, plunderphonics, Pop influences and more in works as swivelized sounds as well as various other names with self-releases on his own series of Bandcamp profiles including swiʌelaηd, cassette to cassette and normaled. swivelized sounds also released music on Quantum Natives, Future Proof : 面向異日 and has been featured in compilations and mixes released by Beastonleash, Astral Plane Recordings and Genot Centre. On track 9 we have a remix by American experimental Weightless and Deconstructed Club artist faithful (Michael Stumpf). faithful has released music on Prehistoric Silence and Anòmia, as well as various self-released singles and DJ mixes. His music has been featured on compilations on AMEN, Eternal and benska. The final remix is by Adum Brate, who’s been credited for another remix of music by Kevin Carey of Crown Shyness on Knightwerk Records as well as creating artwork for yma’s EP length single sunset. Isonautics Remixed comes in the form of a download including the 10 remixes in MP3 format as well as the cover artwork in good resolution and icon files. Now that we know who most of the remixers on Isonautics Remixed are and know the format of the release, let’s dive into this remix album.

Isonautics Remixed as a full listening experience feels a lot like going on a journey on an at times wildly rocking ship, hearing the details of chains, machinery, metallic resonances in- and outside the ship and fragments of music and voices. Similar to Isonautics (the original album) this journey feels quite nocturnal as in the rich sonic imagery the remixers have conjured up by reworking the originals still matches the night sound but this time with a more surreal and eerie series of flashing pictures we come across while listening. The often seamless transition from one track to the other also makes the remixes feel like one whole long and varied composition. We enter through Stormborn (bod [包家巷]'s morning lullaby), which indeed could sound like a morning lullaby bod [包家巷] has created here on the ship but rather than being one of peaceful and happy visions rocking someone to sleep there’s actually quite a melancholic and sombre tone to the piece. The low pitched slow warm reverberated filtered strings back the heavily pitch manipulated slow sung vocals which appear to express the inner struggles and journey a crew member of the ship could’ve been on before he ended up on this cold ship. The subtly degraded strings combined with mellow synth tones add both elegance (the former) and a bit of sunlight (the latter) to the otherwise rather bleak environment the crew member is in. A storm is enveloping the ship, rain is falling, water is pouring in, leaking all over the floor as the crew member moves onto his work in Engineering. You can hear the machinery of the Engineering section of the ship in the second half of the remix which features a great mechanical Deconstructed Club with some lovely pitch stuttering, sample chopping and ringing high pitched percussion until the music returns back to the lullaby itself. A great start of our journey in Isonautics Remixed. Afterwards we move directly into Spiral (djpuppy remix) which is one of the shorter remixes and follows more of a single continuous path in terms of composition. Sounding like an ethereal dream image created out of the maintenance of the ship’s machinery the remix continues the scraping mechanics of the previous remix but with more timestretching processing (which could be seen as a high-tech aspect of the machinery on the ship) and metallic bass swirls. The ethereal element about the ambience can be heard in the uplifting combination of sampled and autopan / leslie speaker manipulated vocal samples mixed with angelic choir samples. Chops of male voice samples (which also return later on in Isonautics Remixed) are blended in the mixture. The humming bass drone of the piece appears to the hum of the ship’s engine, a great short remix which works as a sonic point of focus as well as a good transition piece to the next track. This next track is Leak, Granite (Tzu Ni 目) in which we move into a surreal sonic image which appears to show us the inside of the quiet ship laying still in a harbour as an Industrial environment of strange metallic noises, high pitched clicky stutters sounding like small parts of the ships machinery, sharp hisses of Noise and steam as well as the eerie bursts of both meditation like low pitch male voice samples and what sounds like recordings of Taiwanese AM radio coming in like leaked sound falling out of the ships internal communication system. The sub bass layer of the piece also appears to detail the ship engine’s idle state subtly rumbling the steel floors of the ships deck. An eerie soundscape which makes great use of timing the sonic elements as well as multiple different layers of continuity in the sound progression of the separate elements. Afterwards on Stormborn (yma remix) yma further elaborates on the theme of the ship’s engine as both an Industrial and meditatively droning element in the sonic imagery through a dream-like stream of a piece in which we can hear some elements also used in the first remix by Stormborn (especially in the mechanical details). Sounding like what could be the imagination of the engine itself if it were an actual, albeit possible alien “being” the piece blends mechanical ticking and stuttering sounds, Deconstructed style drum samples, ethereal manipulated vocal sample ambiences with quite abrasive Noise elements in the form of distortion manipulations and very exciting chops of morphed organic mechanics crawling around the stereo image like the engine is growing its own leaves in the water. Switching from heavily technical “speeches” of stuttered, chopped and in other ways processed machinery noises to more introspective “thoughtful” ambience meditations, the remix feels like technology processing the emotional qualities of sound through its own mechanism, eventual discovering its surrounding, the sea and eventually merging with it. A living ship’s engine, very intriguing. Leak (umbilical friend remix) which follows is a more minimalist interpretation of imagery to see on the ship. Moving out of the engine and back to the decks of the ship we can now hear the nocturnal life on the ship as expressed in more club themed (Minimal) Techno beats and cleaner versions of the elements from the original track which are chopped up and manipulated through delay. A resonant metallic percussive sound seems to guide the hypnotic rattling of metals backed by the jumpy and at times low pass filtered bouncy kick drum which appear to entrance us with their repetitive but ever progressing streaming patterns of mechanical movement. The piece is as much dancey as it is immersive with its excellent combination of polyrhythmic grooves and rich sonic details. Afterwards we move into deeper territory with the eerie Dark Ambient piece that is Home of Depths (WH Version). Feeling quite reminiscent of Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II the remix features mysterious filtered and delay effected Dub Techno style resonant synth stabs that tumble around in a hypnotic pulse, every few beats being changed for a rising hollow filtered synth sweep. The texture of the tones is glowing but also saturated, ever increasing in harshness. Whilst the first third of the piece is a bit different featuring more peaceful and brightly atmospheric sweeping synth pads, backed by calm rustling field recordings that sound more like rowing pans from a little boat, I can definitely feel the darkness in the latter sections of the piece with squelchy manipulated (digital) details at times still adding some quirkiness to the gloomy ambience but the general vibe being that of danger, darkness outside on and in the ocean around the ship. A great touch is the owl field recording which appears only once in the piece. The shifting sounds of water can’t help but feel threatening however, reminding us that water is all around us and we can’t escape truly now that a thick fog is covering the nocturnal environment outside the ship and the cut off ending tail of the piece appears to tell us these strange spirits we can’t see will definitely return later. Granite, Leak (Tzu Ni 日) follows in which Tzu Ni follows up from Leak, Granite (Tzu Ni 目) with a more glitched out and minimalist piece. Starting with a first half that features a lot of the aforementioned glitching, stutters, resonant filters on the separate synth elements and chopped filed recordings the piece starts of as a rather quirky sonification of the ship’s engine full of little high pitched tones, seagull like squeaking gears, weird vocal sample manipulations like ghosts, crackling and machinery flapping like steam-power bird wings. This bird wing rhythm continues onwards in the second half of the piece where it builds into a multi layered rhythmic stream of squelchy scratched and distorted mechanics in which the metallic Noise and metallic bass rumbles from Leak, Granite (Tzu Ni 目) return making for a great sonic continuity between both versions on Isonautics Remixed. Endearing in the simplicity of some of the sound manipulations and featuring some fun creative sculpting of the tonal elements from the original piece it’s one of the most playful but still equally immersive pieces on the remix album. Granite (swivelized chance remix) afterward follows up from Tzu Ni’s piece with most of the same recognisable elements but this time turned into a lovely short lo-fi Glitch piece. Most of the piece feels like listening to a separate part of machinery on the ship doing its work but with more a wooden like quality to it in terms of texture. swivelized has made the high pitched synth bits especially prominent in his version making for a bit more of a steampunk style to the piece as it ticks along in a sped-up pendulum like fashion. A nice detail of the piece is that while it’s quite lo-fi (using a bitrate of only 96 kbps) you can still hear some of the hiss from the samples in the piece especially as the machinery gets turned off at the end, as it were. A sweet little piece of sonic engineering. Afterwards in Silent Quarries (faithful remix) things get glitched up even more as our ship’s engine has suddenly received a big increased in speed. Through rapid twirling, stuttering and scratching cuts of the original stems from Silent Quarries we find ourselves in a richly detailed rush of speed in which technical mechanics fly around us, mixed with an icy seasoning of bits of water as well as bumpy fuzzy plunderphonics manipulations of music samples like the music playing on the radio owned by own of the crew members gets all tripped up by the sudden speed of the ship. Through all the twirling circular shaped speed chaos, faithful does manage to build a simple but curiously retro sounding melody made of crunchy pitched samples which builds towards a beat-lacking last section that moves from dishwasher like manipulations of ethereal choir vocals to crystallised chopped vocals mapping out a pretty Grime like melody backed by squelchy sound manipulations of breath. The inspired and skilful sample chopping in the piece makes for a very immersive and richly detailed sonic image in this piece with great care for space in the stereo image helping to make it sound like music to dive into. Final piece Home of Depths (Adum Brate remix) closes out things with a both calming and eerie mixture of music sample manipulations and spooky foreboding background ambience. The music samples themselves are from what sounds like a slow piece of Country music which is looped, chopped and pitched in a quite lo-fi and bit crushed manner making the piece sound a bit like a tape manipulation experiment featured on an 80’s cassette tape part of the underground tape scene. The piece feels like we’ve entered the hut of the captain of the ship and are now lazing on his couch whilst a radio is playing music that makes him feel like home, the modulation and overblown quality of the music sample manipulation seems to suggest he’s falling into a soft slumber as the music distorts in his mind and eventually fades away. The eerie distorted dark ambience in the background reveals unsettling and dark things happening in other parts of the ship however, referencing previous imagery we saw and thereby rounding off Isonautics Remixed quite well. I award this remix album a Polar Vision at the frequency of going on a wild journey on a ship that at times is shaken wildly by storm and diving into the minds of the crew members as we explore the mechanical workings of the ship, melancholic memories and dream like impressions of memories and the mysterious and ominously changing nature of the ocean around them. Combined with the dark coloured (and original album referencing) cover artwork which depicts the multi-layered surreal listening experience quite well through its mixture of organic and schematic mechanical imagery Isonautics Remixed is a strongly recommended remix album. This is a great listen for fans of surreal experimental music, Deconstructed Club, the more Sound Art based approach of Noise, contemporary digital Plunderphonics manipulations as well as cinematic underground music with a great and deep sense of mystery through aural suggestion and creative usage of concrete sounds. Definitely check Isonautics Remixed out.

You can download Isonautics Remixed in MP3 form through the direct link from Quantum Natives here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/t0xle3bh3ogmkhx/Crown_Shyness_-Isonautics_Remixed%2528QNRX024%2529.zip/file

[fluidsf]

Fluid Sonic Fluctuation 111

soapkin: sigh

as kindly provided to me as a review copy by Quantum Natives

released 20200206

Catalogue number: QNR032

Welcome to the 111th Fluid Sonic Fluctuation review in which today I’m featuring a short ~ 6 minutes long single release by the artist soapkin titled sigh. The single was released earlier this year as an MP3 download by Quantum Natives. Quantum Natives is a label that I’ve featured quite often on this blog but for people who are new to it or who would like to know a bit more about it, I’ll give a short description of the label. Quantum Natives is an international collective and mixed media net label which releases almost all of its music online as free MP3 downloads through their site, which is fully graphics based and depicts all releases as places of interest on a map of a fictional virtual world. Quantum Natives releases underground music that often crosses through Glitch, Deconstructed Club, Post-Internet aesthetics, Noise as well as sometimes anime inspired sound bites with often inventive releases of music that is quite immersive (often through narrative, concepts and world building) and makes for immersive, psychedelic and at times disorienting subconscious listening experiences, accompanied by vibrant, at times DIY digital artwork as well as texts, videos and more. Artists on Quantum Natives include Wa?ste, Crown Shyness, Benelux Energy, Monofee, J Ka Ching and many others. Alongside its releases Quantum Natives also organises various events with performances, DJ sets and more audiovisual art and was also featured in the Silent Night series of sleeping concerts that took place until 2020 in Prague, Czech Republic. sigh by soapkin is Quantum Natives’ 32nd regular release (beside their remix releases and releases directly labelled as singles) and is quite a special one. Released after the passing of soapkin, the release feels like a kind of tribute to a young experimental artist who passed away much too young. Featuring all tracks soapkin had submitted to Quantum Natives, sigh is a rather brief but intriguing look into the wildly vibrant and imaginative creative mind of soapkin. Comprised of only three tracks of under 2 minutes long, the single is like a mixed collage of various musical ideas and songs by soapkin, a glimpse of his music only but a good glimpse at that. Just like the other review copies I received by Quantum Natives, sigh is identical in contents to the download through Quantum Natives, including the 3 tracks as MP3 files, cover artwork file and icon files for both the single cover and symbol used to identify the release on the Quantum Natives site. Now let’s get into the music on sigh and for the first time on this blog also get into a bit of Further Fluctuation through impressions of soapkin’s other music as he uploaded on Soundcloud.

sigh begins with its title track sigh, a piece featuring minimalist synth melodies layered over each other blending mellow electric piano like tones, distorted buzzing resonant tones and sweeping phased liquid sound elements as well as strange heavily auto-tune modulated and pitch shifted vocals with both sung and pitched dialogue samples being blended in the curious mixture of sonic elements. The music creates an intriguing combination of both calming but also sci-fi artificial ambience that feels quite surreal, much like a sonic imagination of soapkin’s bedroom that also does show a bit of a struggle as the mixture of voice samples and noise erupting in the second half of the piece do suggest a kind of anxiety creeping into the tranquil environment of the room, quite an intriguing track. cotton follows featuring a similar surreal ambience made up of one half of soapkin’s half sung, half spoken vocals backed by quite abstract crunch synths, a bit muffled acoustic drums as well as eerie metallic shifting waves of rhythmic synth ambience moving into the second half which is even more abstract, being made up of a diffuse drone mixture of history fuzzy waves of sound as well modulated eerie Vocaloid like vocals. cotton’s following on pretty seamlessly from sigh but with a somewhat clearer songlike structure laid over the surreal auditory bedroom surrealism. Final track reaching is only 32 seconds long and dives into some Industrial instrumentation with a lot of distortion layered over its wavy droning melody, sparse delayed distorted drums as well as more of the Vocaloid like vocal manipulations we heard in cotton. A nice sketch to end with, but indeed more like a fragment than a full track. sigh by soapkin is a glimpse into the musical world of an imaginative artist who was able to fuse many influences of experimental music, anime samples, surrealism into unique free flowing short compositions. While the music is not without its occasional flaws as in the rather heavy compression and the undefined direction of the vocals, I do feel it does also adds some personality to the music as we do get some kind of creative view of soapkin’s emotional states in this condensed release of music soapkin left us all. A curious release to check out indeed.

You can download sigh by soapkin in MP3 format through this direct download link from Quantum Natives here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/j2syona29vbx8lc/soapkin_-sigh%2528QNR032%2529.zip/file

Further Fluctuation

Listening through a section of soapkin’s 8 tracks on Soundcloud shows an artist who was fascinated and inspired by especially harsh, abrasive and energetic styles of electronic music. The very short fragment-like pieces follow on smoothly from reaching from the sigh single in their Noise and Industrial infused mixtures of heavily manipulated drum-breaks and metallic distorted percussion mixed with surreal, ethereal like vocal samples and droning waves of ambience creating unique miniatures. Strong bits include watching over me (https://soundcloud.com/soapkin/watching-over-me), an atmospheric Breakcore study that blends angelic pitched vocal samples with heavily stuttered Amen break samples. heart in wood (https://soundcloud.com/soapkin/heart-in-wood) is a mashup of Deconstructed Club styled chopped up, bass-heavy drums, a simple but nicely hazy sounding hollow melody layer as well as some great digital psychedelic Noise squeals adding some rough edge to the mix. Overbearings (https://soundcloud.com/soapkin/overbearings) blends a tranquil and quite sugary reverberated synth background with strangely abrasive anime(?) samples and a lot of resonant distorted and heavy low percussion hits. The whole is still quite compressed like the sigh single tracks but the lo-fi aesthetic matches the piece more and its eerie second half featuring ghostly dissonant mellow synth chords feels quite Lynchian with its juxtaposition of synth trembles and mysterious field recording of someone strolling through the quaint forest which ends up feeling a bit unsettling. - (https://soundcloud.com/soapkin/tnt) finally offers another more abrasive entry in soapkin’s short but intriguing short collection of tracks with a very loud distorted Break/Speedcore workout mixed with harsh Noise, Industrial and undiscernable chopped vocal samples which a great short burst of energy. Listening to these pieces does give me a feel that soapkin had a very unique feel for experimental electronic music and felt most comfortable creating these in short, at times burst-like pieces which even with some occasional flaws to showcase a great creativity and sonic imagination.

[fluidsf]

Fluid Sonic Fluctuation 110

Visionary Hours: Coalescence of Form

as kindly submitted as a review copy through Bandcamp download code by Hidden Vibes

Released on February 20, 2020

Catalogue number: HV054

Welcome to the newest review on Fluid Sonic Fluctuations which not only features an excellent recent album by Visionary Hours but also introduces a new type of recommendation / award I give to releases which through inspired, inventive and creative, composition, performance and / or sound sculpting conjure up striking sonic imagery in the mind and which I find to be unique subconscious listening experiences in particular. This prize is however focussed on the effect of the music itself and is identical to my highest recommended releases in terms of “rating” through review. To find out what I gave this album, read on. Visionary Hours is the experimental, Modern Classical infused Ambient project of British musician Hayden Berry who’s released most of his music on his own Preserved Sound label. Like you will find out later on in this review Visionary Hours music is pleasantly fluid in both its shapes as well as in its compositions, moving beyond pleasant ambience into more introspective and also quite saturated sonic territory. The aforementioned Preserved Sound label features a lovely collection of Ambient, Modern Classical and related fields of atmospheric music released on CD in hand-assembled packaging which also quite matches the honest introspective mindset I could sense through Visionary Hours’ music on Coalescence of Form. A similar kind of introspection I found when I looked up Home Normal, the label of this album’s mastering engineer Ian Hawgood who’s also a prolific solo artist himself which also features a wide collection of atmospheric music often featuring melancholic photographic artwork as well as having several curious sublabels. The version of Coalescence of Form I’m reviewing here is a 24-bit/48kHz high resolution download containing the 7 album tracks and also includes the great cover artwork by Taylor Lovelock in good quality, as kindly sent to me by the Hidden Vibes label (run by Endless Melancholy), which exists in a nice connection with the two aforementioned labels of maximum introspection through creative ambiences and Modern Classical music released in rather elegantly packaged limited CD editions. Now it’s time to dive into Coalescence of Form

Coalescence of Form begins with in motion slow, which is not only one of my favourite tracks on the album right from the beginning but also perfectly introduces the imagery that was conjured up in my mind while I was listening to this album, which is this misty, grey and mysterious but also peaceful river landscape. The combination of a triplet, dancing stereo electric guitar pattern, a warm melodic pattern on organ that shifts in quite uplifting ways as the track progresses as well as additional rhythmic tremolo guitar patterns creates the feeling of wandering near, or perhaps even in the river as you look through the mist at the strangely rippling water. The organ seems to voice the slow passing of time but also a sense of tranquility within the infinitely streaming water, the continuity of nature in this river landscape. Visionary Hours has excellently worked at refining the composition in such a way that it’s both minimalist and progressive at the same time, with the bass pattern of the organ emitting intense depth (of the river) but also sounding elegant and “dancing” with the guitars as well. Through fluidly flowing filtered delays Visionary Hours also brings out a lot of additional melodic and resonance based details within both the composition and sonic textures of the piece themselves. These delays do give the music quite a Dub Techno influenced kind of atmosphere too, though in this more within a Modern Classical direction of style which is more based on these image painting and story telling melodies and melodic patterns which both shows us the river landscape as well as tell a freely interpretable story in the mind of you as the listener. The ending of in motion slow lets us focus on the quite abstractly rippling tremolo guitar patterns as the music fades out slowly, like we close our eyes very slowly and let this image of the river landscape fade out and move towards the next piece. It has to be said that Visionary Hours does make great use of experimentation using effects and manipulations in his music on this album which does match the ambience very well whilst still being quite abstract in approach, helping to bring shape the sonic imagery very precisely. Following in motion slow, we have have no one to be seen, a piece which might indeed have a more simple and harmonically limited melody but the vivid imagery of the misty river landscape is here once again. The piece starts with calm and bright accordion tones being played, panned in the left channel. The texture of the tones is full of wavy resonances, but also (especially on headphones) has some lovely small bits of tape saturation and wavering consistency to its sound. The accordion tones in the right channel which enter quite early on in the piece blend together with the left channel to both accompany the slow main melody from the left channel as well as create richer chords. On in motion slow you can imagine the time of sunrise in the misty river landscape, a cycle of sun rays subtly and slowly moving over each other, keeping on appearing and disappearing (the accordion melodies) get filtered in the rippling river water (the filtered gate and delay effects). Feeling both like a study of a natural situation as well as a meditation on the peaceful qualities of the sun introducing its light and warmth to the river water in a new day the piece beautifully mixes elements of acoustic Drone music with Visionary Hours’ inspired effect work which again creates wonderful details to dive into the rich sonic image. Afterwards on feel it out walk in, we’re literally diving into the river as it were. Featuring warm piano arpeggios backed with a lovely swirling synth drone the piece seems to imagine the river landscape now being illuminated more brightly by the sun. The minimalist melody created by the piano arpeggios suggests the still continuing cycle of nature, the flow of the river as well as a hopeful kind of emotional ambience we could feel in our subconscious if we’d see the sun shine through a misty river landscape outside. The piano tones getting more and more modulated by what sounds like a Leslie speaker chorus type effect gives me the feeling of slowly moving into the water of the river, deeper and deeper, with our perception of vision and hearing becoming more and more distorted and rippled by the enveloping river water. The “residue” gate and tremolo effect that follows the piano tones in a delayed manner feels like the signification of a shadow following a duck or other animals swimming in the water, precisely but also modulated repeating its movements and getting more and more diffuse by the movement of the water. The rising and falling resonant filter of the droning synth makes for an excellent grounding base of the piece, feeling like the “body” of the river itself in its dense weight and size in which waves are moving over a much larger area with the river’s “force” audible in the dissonant chorus effected resonances flowing through the synth drone itself. Besides these rich details there’s one other thing I noticed in this piece which is quite subtle but definitely quite an essential part of the track, which is a slightly saturated wooden like resonant tone which appears at the start of every cycle of arpeggios and even through the progressing increase of the ripples in the music, works as a type of rhythmic guide for the layers themselves, a pulse which is there but more like a diffuse overtone than a tone fully in focus. On next piece zithering we approach what might be the eeriest moment of Coalescence of Form and its composition might feel a bit harder to imagine being linked to my aforementioned river landscape interpretation but in fact I can definitely still find it in this piece. Like you can see in the title, the piece does indeed feature a zither, which is struck in mysteriously ringing dissonant chords creating mysterious waves of metallic resonant and saturated tones. The zither is accompanied by what sounds like a mixture of organ drone and a heavily manipulated tape recording of sung (male) vocals. Relating it to the river landscape, zithering feels a sonic image of what could be a mysterious creature lurking in the river water or a strange brown colouration appearing in the river like subtly waving wheat being visible in the water through the mist of the river landscape. Similar to feel it out walk in, the ringing zither chords could also be interpreted as the waves in the river itself, with the water being disturbed by either of the unknown mysterious images appearing in the subconscious. zithering’s finale of unsettling zither dissonances backed by cello drone appears to suggest an imminent threat appearing in the water, the creature is rising up out of the water, the quiet gets disturbed, an unknown being has finally woken up with the church bells on the field recording of a busy street ringing notifying us of danger. Surreal imagery which keeps enriching the ever progressive compositional sonic palette of Visionary Hours on this album. Afterwards time keeps me in her shadow gives us some relief through its warm stream of melodic sound which in this case is at its source, a great moving loop of a string quartet melody. The melody loop is manipulated using the now familiar filter and delay effects, bringing us back to the Dub Techno influenced liquid resonances from earlier on the album but now bringing out additional melodic elements that are quite entrancing too. Like a tranquil journey in a rowing boat through the river landscape the warmly flowing melodies envelope is in ultimate peace and introspection but in a subtly changing manner as the piece falls back into a very slow fade-out nearing its finale. Indeed the way the music is built like this seems to suggest certain pleasant memories which are expressed by the melody loop, whilst the filter resonance melodies form the blurry surroundings of the “real” world our mind has drifted out of, still rippling around us. As the music fades, the ever increasing rippling effect and subtle tape artifacts make me think of the fragility of the mind, how we sometimes struggle to keep all details and the feelings of certain moments in life in our minds. still at the point then follows, continuing in the strings based Modern Classical style that the last three tracks of Coalescence of Form follow. It’s a relatively drone-like piece of music in which layers of synth, guitar and strings glisten like the glimmering diffuse yellow-orange spots of reflected sunlight on the river as the sun is slowly setting. The glowing and quite overwhelming richly vibrant drone of still at the point seems to describe the mighty power, warmth and wholesome energy the sun brings to the nature in the river landscape, subtly hissy string noises add an organic element of the movement of the water to the glowing soundscape and the Trip Hop like reverberated drums that enter in the second half add a curious drive to the music that creates a lovely semi-climax to the piece, very nice. After a short transitionary silence we move to the final piece musically discreet which does make the album come full circle in a great way. Continuing on from the previous piece in a drone-like manner, musically discreet flows through various phases, which feels like a sonic painting of the river landscape by compiling all impressions we had before into a kind of meditational state of mind through the softly “rocking” movement of the warm melodies performed on strings, guitar, synth and organ. It starts of in a quite glowing manner, depicting rays of sunlight shining throughout the river landscape but as the rippling chorus effected organ fades more into the foreground, hissy saturated resonances enter the image, presumably also originating from an organ depicting the mysterious plants growing within the river as well as the strangely rippling river water itself. As the sharp resonances become louder, a centre panned cello drone adds a great bass and textural details to the soundscape. Indeed the panning in this piece is greatly executed with the aforementioned cello slowly emerging out of the centre of the stereo image while the saturated resonances that also feature the recognisable filtered Dub styled delays move fluid between the sides of the stereo image. All in all a great closing piece. Before I conclude this review I obviously have to point out that Ian Hawgood’s work on mastering this album definitely helped bring out a lot of the saturated and melodic resonances within the 7 pieces as well as enhancing the full sound and dynamics of the album and giving it a nice bit of edge too around the high frequencies at some points. Taylor Lovelock’s cover artwork is also very fitting now that I’ve explained the river landscape interpretation as you can get a similar mysterious river vibe from the nicely edited grayscale rippling river photograph you can see there. I award this album a Polar Vision in the wavelength of a mysterious misty and at times grey river landscape that carries a lot of introspection, curious imagery but also a tranquil ambience. Coalescence of Form is a recommended listen for fans of the more experimental side of Ambient and Modern Classical music as well as Drone lovers and fans of immersive and cinematic ambience in their music, definitely check this out.

You can get Coalescence of Form in Regular, Deluxe Edition CD and download format from the Hidden Vibes Bandcamp page here: https://hiddenvibes.bandcamp.com/album/coalescence-of-form

[fluidsf]

Project A2 01

Kadaitcha: Tar

Release year: 2019

Reviewed format: FLAC download of Kadaitcha self-released album as kindly provided by Kadaitcha

Welcome to the first review in the Project A2 series of reviews written based on releases I receive from artists and labels in the field of Noise and other related extreme experimental and underground music which also includes lighter styles of underground sounds too. In this review I’m excited to share with you the recently new released new album by Ukrainian group Kadaitcha titled Tar. The version I’m reviewing is the digital version of this album which is available from Kadaitcha’s own Bandcamp page, the files provided in the download were 24-bit/48kHz high resolution FLAC files, which is most likely also one of the options you can choose on Bandcamp if you purchase Tar there. Now, for people who have read my review of Flaming Pines’ excellent Kaleidoscope compilation, the name Kadaitcha is definitely not new but whilst there was some crunchy heaviness on that compilation too, this full album definitely gives the full picture of Kadaitcha’s dark, murky but also surprisingly varied sound. The group consisting of Andrei Kojoohar and Yuri Samson blends a lot of at times quirky but also often quite harsh synth experimentation, noisy guitars which at times form riffs but oftentimes fall into a stream of hazy noise and vocals that appear on multiple tracks on Tar, at times ritual, other times manic and wild. Acoustic drums feature too, albeit it often almost masked by the masses of sound Kadaitcha created but drum machine is used too with a Krautrock like sound to it. Archaic music is one of the influences of Kadaitcha’s sound and whilst the group has a feel for spaced out craziness the dark, low and mid frequency focussed sound palette definitely emits a lot of this kind of ancient, primitive intriguing type of trance atmospheres which appear to be directly connected to imagery of dusty caves, black earth and indeed the Tar from the album title. Running for a full hour, the album is also one of the longest releases the group has recorded so far so full immersion is encouraged. Indeed, let’s immerse ourselves in these 7 tracks.

First track Idle Hands starts of with a sparse melody played on guitar in mellow strummed chords and separate tones backed my mechanical whirring, squealing and hissy steam like high pitched noises, in the background resonant sampled and widely auto panned ambience pads add a mysterious ghostly ambience to the whole. The guitar’s tone’s also gradually become modulated through reverse. This section crossfades into a stronger more fierce stream of sound which still features some squelchy mechanical elements but now the guitar plays strong at times dissonant power chords, strange manipulated samples of vocal music and AM radio blending through the tense ambience like manic ghosts. This section then moves through a short period of metallic liquid like synth noises into the heaviest part of the track, the finale, which starts of with a thunderous rumbling bassy electronic drum rhythm with a crunchy, bitcrushed Industrial Techno like sound. A clean rhythmic guitar melody enters which quickly morphs into a distorted droney kind of Noise which is backed by further feedback laden sweeps of Noise, emphasised resonant howls from the bit crushed percussion and the strange manipulated vocal music samples return, the piece eventually ends with a single rhythmic guitar drone taking much of the foreground within the piece. It’s great how Kadaitcha builds most of the tracks on Tar as composition with multiple parts which progress throughout and blend melodic Rock elements with a lot of imaginative Noise, synth effects and sound manipulations which give the music this unique Post / Drone Rock kind of feel in how Noise is blended with traditional composition techniques whilst still retaining the energy, variation and sonic qualities that the Noise, Power Electronics and Death Industrial styles have within at times more chaotic structural frameworks. It’s good that Kadaitcha also doesn’t spoil the heavier extremes still to follow on the album, on this track. 2219 F then brings us a piece which takes the noisy side of guitar Drone as its main focus with most of the track being taken up by a swirling see of fuzzy distorted dramatic guitar drone, backed by galloping rimshot heavy acoustic drums which don’t quite drown in the drones but rather float quite easily. Before this fiery action erupts however, the piece starts with the mysterious sounds of strange filtered glimmering synth tones, bug like clicking sounds and various high pitched synth effects culminating in 8-bit styled digging through the crushed bits that eventually transitions to the sea of guitar drone. The waves of guitar drone are interrupted in one moment in which the eerie atmosphere of the start of the piece returns until the guitar hits again, once again enveloping us into the melodic, harmonically rich Noise. In this second wave of Noise fragile brittle high pitched fuzzy synth enter, adding some melodic variations to the drone. I like how Kadaitcha have found a curious way to create an ambience like a strange tribal fire ritual within this piece through the juxtaposition of the guitar Noise that also feels like instrumental Drone Metal in a way and the Earth like organic sonic elements and high pitched piercing tones give it that rough muddy, dirt filled edge of primal activities out in the open merciless nature. Afterwards on Ran, Kadaitcha turn up the Noise factor itself quite a bit more with a piece that features heavy a Rhythmic Noise groove made up of a heavily distorted kick and various distorted hits and heavily spring reverb manipulated metallic percussive elements. The melodic part of the piece is driven by a surprisingly clean sounding guitar riff, but as I mentioned, the blasting metallic screechy mayhem is where I feel most of the fun in this track is. The Noise rhythms and additional screeches shift in tempo in relation to the guitar riff which causes interesting polyrhythms within the piece and the manipulations of rhythmic and straight screeches make for richly varying energetic shapes of crunch and metallic rumble. Variations on the main guitar melody enter in the second half too however, in which the rhythmic Noise also follows the strumming with marching steel footsteps pounding in wide stereo reverb making for a slow but sure climax towards a solid stream of stuttering hollow malfunctioning alien machinery sounds, to put it into more “poetic” words. Then on Saima Kadaitcha move between interesting juxtapositions of elements, starting with a combination of squelchy synth effects, metallic reverberated vocals as well as cleaner Ritual like chanting featuring the word Saima from the title amongst other words. An again metallic sounding distorted drum machine rhythm which has some extremely panned stereo reverb creating that metallic sound gives the music a steady easy-going pace, as well as a pulse with the accent being the bassy kick drum, with tom and snare percussion adding some extra texture to the sound of the piece which especially in the final part of the track move into a much more distorted direction. A heavily rhythmic droning wall of resonant dissonant guitar strumming is the main focus of the piece tonally, taking up a considerable amount of its total length, with strangely turning additional guitar chords creating this Jazz like kind of odd juxtaposition between the two guitar parts. The guitar ambience is hypnotic and intensely gripping but also still keeps you within the realm of a kind of cult or mysterious religious ritual. The aforementioned last part of the track is where things get quite crazy, transitioning through a quirky little section of metallic guitar improvisation into an ever increasing wall of resonant distorted rhythmic mush formed by the drum machine, with the ritual vocals from earlier returning into more abstracted wordings (these don’t featuring during most of the droning guitar part of Saima in fact. The hovering wall of distorted mush which also wildly vibrates between the two stereo channels eventually erupts into screeching mono feedback which subtly fades out ending the piece in quite an explosive piercing finale. It’s great how Saima features both these hypnotic ritual elements and metallic Industrial experimentation in such a smooth composition with the tonal and textural aspects of the piece making for an equally entrancing as well as exploratory listen into the resonances and “breaking” aspects of the increasing distortion of the rhythmic pulse. Afterwards on Eclipse Kadaitcha envelop us in a monolithic wall of squelchy heavily distorted Noise. Featuring mouth harp like heavily distorted synth squelches, twisting stereo synth effects, dark auto-panned vocals and distant mysterious samples of vocal music, the music again moves into Ritual territory but with that now familiar raw Kadaitcha edge of intense mayhem. The vocals themselves are mostly death-themed and have this growled quality to them, but it’s the combination of the vocals with the excellently layered mixture of distorted synth effects and cleaner synth and sound manipulations that circle around your head as the piece progresses. The second half of Eclipse brings in more melodic elements in the form of a bass and electric guitar melody as well as a fiery mixture of acoustic and electronic drums. I’d say the qualities in Eclipse are definitely in the mysterious ambience that is created in the first half of the piece by the mixture of the music samples and Noise elements as well as the way the piece moves towards a great rocking climactic outburst in the second half. The guitar riff in the second half is nicely dramatic and the synth sounds and sound manipulations go particularly mental in this part of Eclipse. It’s definitely a piece that is more of a straight up Noise (Rock) jam but very enjoyable and relentless in that sense, just loosen up and go with the rawness of this one. Afterwards follows what is definitely one of my favourite tracks on Tar, which is Serpent Hill. Perfectly fitting its title the piece does indeed featuring these very tasty squelchy warped distorted synth sounds, making up what does indeed sound like this strange mountain of organic muck, with the filtered liquid like synth effects adding a lot of great organic details to the sound image in general. It definitely does sound very physical and alien in nature. Glitchy synth effects add some great stereo details to the sound too, very rough and nicely hissy. Furthermore we can hear some lovely growling deep and resonant serpent-themed vocals which quite kick into the mix like a hefty layer, the delay applied to them also helps to create extra space in the piece. A piercing distorted feedback loop overtime moves us towards the climax of the piece which features some intensely bassy, banging Industrial Techno drums alongside some great stereo crackled rhythmic additional layer of distortion and some very intense and even more resonant (seemingly modulated) wordless growled vocals. I’d say the many strengths of this piece especially got to do with how focussed the sound design of the distorted sounds is combined with the exciting progression of the piece which gives me both a feeling of very crisp murky sonic imagery but also plenty of raw Noise intensity which works great without losing definition of the separate layers within the piece. Being one of the most texture focussed pieces on Tar it still has a lot of brooding curious life within it that is very immersive, dirty but enjoyable. Final piece Yatagarasu then combines pretty much all elements Kadaitcha used on Tar up until this piece into an extended wild Noise jam. Based around a grungy and nicely clicky distorted drum machine groove the piece is quite like an in the moment improvisation of various layers of sound constantly moving, changing and intensifying. We have quite a lot of synth effects which are often very squelchy, rubbery in texture and mostly quite high pitched though with some great low-end thumps in them too at times. There are some wild screechy vocals in here too, sounding quite inhuman but also quite humorous in a very weird way. There is some nice jazzy guitar freak out in the piece too, which is amusingly clean sounding too. Towards the beginning of the piece there are also the sounds of what I’m guessing are circular saws, which are definitely quite fitting in the general chaos of the piece. But besides these elements the main drum groove itself also goes through great tasty distorted feedback laden manipulations which also accentuate the noise used within the drums themselves for some Rhythmic Noise flavouring and some funky cowbell does get added to the mix at some point even. A deep bassy drone flows along in the background of the piece too. Yatagarasu eventually reaches is disintegrating finale with much fire and sonic mayhem, I won’t spoil that however as it’s best to check it out yourself. With Yatagarasu we’ve reached the end of Tar by Kadaitcha. Tar is a quite varied album of dark, raw and energetic experimental Electro-Acoustic music which has a great general flow to it and an excellent balance of more conceptually focussed Ritual like pieces and more chaotic Noise jams. Kadaitcha’s consistency in their sound, which mixes harsh synth sound design, punchy saturated drums, hazy guitars and energetic vocals performed in various styles makes Tar a very enjoyable and great album throughout it’s full 1 hour playing time. This is a great listen for fans of dark, murky experimental Electro-Acoustic music, Ritual music, Noise, Power Electronics and Death Industrial as the mixture of influences Kadaitcha embeds in their music always makes for surprising new turns and imaginative experimentation though always fed through their own musical imagery of darkness and mystery. Definitely a recommended album, so go check this album out. You can purchase Tar as a digital download from Kadaitcha's Bandcamp page here: https://kadaitcha.bandcamp.com/album/tar?fbclid=IwAR06Ysi9EGAi9yKxXU5pLwzbg1za-KKIo1VNUh8dK_iTlU94YY3Wjg9yU9w

[fluidsf]

Project Axis 02

Various Artists: Cudighi Records - Sampler Platter Vol. 1

Release year: 2019

Catalogue number: CUD 14

Reviewed format: Cassette tape sampler compilation

Welcome to the second Project Axis of 2020 in which today I’m featuring this great sampler compilation on tape titled Cudighi Records - Sampler Platter Vol. 1, released on the American label Cudighi Records which releases a variety of fun, experimental, quirky and psychedelic music, often with an honest DIY sound to it as I noticed from listening to this tape but also from Laura Luna Castillo’s excellent album Folksonomies which I reviewed last year. While this tape is titled as being a sampler compilation, the release in fact features tracks that all seem to be completely exclusive to this release rather than being taken from various previous Cudighi releases and therefore you can see this tape as a mix between both a sampler to the label’s sound as well as a compilation of fresh unreleased tracks from Cudighi artists as well as several pretty unknown artists. Indeed when looking up info on some of the featured artists I found that several of them had their debut label release through this tape or had only had self-releases of their music so far. Plenty of fresh and unheard music on this tape indeed and it comes with in an equally fun presentation too. The tape comes inside a Norelco case featuring a double-sided J-card as well as a card with a download code. The tape itself features a vibrant yellow coloured shell on which the title, catalogue number and side letters are printed in warm red on both sides. The card with the download code also features a nice custom design with the Cudighi Records logo (featuring a hamburger with plenty of sauce) and release and download code info in funky vibrant type. When we look at the J-card we can first of all see the cover artwork on the right panel of the outside of the J-card. It features this sweet cartoon styled illustration by American artist Pete Hillstrom on which you can see a whole collection of sauce filled snacks as well as what looks like mayonnaise which directly references to “sampler platter” but then in the culinary sense. It is definitely matching the sound of the compilation however which in its rather nicely quick flowing pace of all the various tracks serves us a tasty collection of aural “snacks”. Beside the illustration we can again see the same red type as on the cassette tape minus the catalogue number. The spine features the same type as on the tape itself. On the short side of the front of the J-card you can find the two titles given to side A and B of the tape, these are indeed quite appropriate to the music, as side A has a more extrovert and vibrant kind of general sound whilst side B is moving into a more abstracted and introvert kind of musical direction. Besides these labelling you can see a red-tinted version of the Cudighi Records logo as well as copyright info and the Bandcamp link of the label. On the inside of the J-card we find the full track listing of both sides of the tape, the same spine texts, as well as general credits from the tape, all type is again in the same fun red typeface. The vibrant artwork and design of this tape are by American artist Pete Hillstrom. Before we move onto the music on this tape itself, it’s good to mention that this release features some lovely mastering by American Minimal / Techno artist Newman Wolf who ensured the crisp, punchy and pleasantly bassy sound of the tape, which feels especially well EQ’d for the tape format.

The first track on Side A: Outside is Temperament by wacky Belgian Electro band Borokov Borokov. The track’s got this great kind of Space Age styled Library Music vibe to it, featuring an upbeat catchy steady groove played on what sounds like acoustic drums modulated through bit crusher and idle flanger effects accompanied by these lovely delayed Electro bass thumps. The track is quite minimalist in nature with the melodies performed on various synths also being quite staccato in nature, the music’s definitely got a bit of this “chase music” for an animation film to it in how the high pitched melodies emit this playful feeling but the steady groove and bass thumps also hint at a certain small but apparent threat. The piece is composed in a way that there are two sections beside the subtly building intro and quickly disintegrating outdo which form the main core of Temparement. Section A is where the music is the most staccato, featuring the aforementioned “chase music” vibe and in these sections you can especially hear the details in the music, the scratchy shaker, the “telephone ringing” like tumbling high pitched synth tones and “walking” snare drum rhythm. In section B the melodies settle in a more laid-back fashion, the bass synth becomes more of a flow, like the ripples in a river and the sections generally form a contrast to the more repetitive section A as section B changes up the melody every time it appears in the track and the tinkling high pitched synth tones gladly follow the warm melody which also has great organ like overtones within its texture, adding to the glow of the synths in these piece. This is a really great starting track of this tape, an excellent combination of playful creativity and some great analogue kind of sound design of both the synths and drums, very nice. Next on Autobond, American artist DVD Fair offers us a song with a pretty interesting composition in that it starts of quite straightforward as a very catchy psychedelic Synthpop track which is filled with warm 80’s synths, thumpy drum machine grooves and some lovely flanger shine on DVD Fair’s vocals but morphs into a really great Synthwave styled instrumental piece around half-way into the song. Carried by DVD Fair’s harmonised vocals Autobond’s first half is a great mixture of 2010’s hi-fi production sound with some great bit crush crunch on the bass and snappy percussion details in the mix which gets elaborated through the instrumental second half of the song. Transitioning through this “mysterious storm” kind of wind sounds the music moves in an equally mysterious Psychedelic direction in which the at first high pitched swirling synth tones are now transposed downwards moving alongside the smooth and harmonically rich bass pattern in an elegant half-time groove until eventually resolving to the regular upbeat tempo of the song and ending the song by returning back to the melodic elements of the first half though with some upwards transposing. Once again, a great catchy song with plenty of details and honest creativity we have here, very good music. Afterwards we have the track Universal Rundle by Such Feasts. I couldn’t find much info on this artist / band online other than the feature of this track on the tape but what I got from it is a great jam type of loosely typed noisy Rock sound. Being one of the shortest tracks on the tape the piece is quite simple in nature, following a droning structure which made me think of The Velvet Underground but with a more hi-fi sound to the recording as well as being a bit more “organized” in terms of textures. The main focus of Universal Rundle is a kind of half improvised half composed guitar melody with Blues influences which carries the track forward in a free-wheeling and hypnotic direction. Very crunchy and modulated in nature the lead guitar’s squeaking tones perfectly match the equally crunchy guitar drones, soft bass and surprisingly dynamic punchy drums and strummed acoustic guitar rhythm. A fun jam track which does indeed have some audible influences of other bands embedded in it but which also has a great sense of originality in melody and instrumentation to it which does make it stand out to me for sure. Afterwards on Ghosts Over Town by Windmill Music we move into musical territory that on second listen makes me think of Beach House in a way, with its combination of Windmill Music’s dreamy vocals and the combination of old-school drum machine (with additional acoustic cymbals), electric bass, buzzing organs and warm clean guitars. Indeed the composition of Ghosts Over Town has a Dream Pop vibe to it too, the production is leaning into a more lo-fi Psychedelic direction however, the quirky phased texture of the drums, hollow distortion on the vocals in the verses are some lovely original touches to the music. Indeed this song is also a really touching song in general, the lyrics appear to hint at this hopeful feeling of an escape into an imaginary peaceful world, out of the chaos of daily life. The heartfelt vocal performance by Windmill Music, excellent composition and wonderful organic production make this into one of my favourite tracks from the tape, excellent music. Afterwards however, we have a track that I didn’t like as much. Jonathan’s Guitar (Ver. 2) by Seth Thomas is indeed pleasant and calm in ambience as an Indie Folk track and Seth’s vocals are heartfelt and honest, unfortunately the song feels a bit too familiar to me in that I don’t find it quite that original compared to the other tracks before this one and it got my mind wandering off a bit. Not a bad track, but it doesn’t feel really stand-out to me either. The next track, Uses Kaatuu by Finnish Avant-Folk experimentalist Elatu Nessa feels much more captivating to me. Whilst it’s even more simple in instrumentation, utilising only an acoustic guitar, Elatu does use two layers of guitar recordings as well as rhythmically vibrating delay and tremolo to create a lovely warm atmospheric ambience. The piece is built out of what sounds like variations and improvisations on a base melody in which not only the lush strummed rhythmic chords and warm bending tones can be heard but all extra snare and guitar body noises have an extra amplified sound to them. Whilst the piece follows this droning kind of freewheeling style over its full length the excellent performance by Elatu and many details in tone and guitar noises created a sonic image in my mind like a calmly rippling river in a peaceful park in springtime, with the guitar layers painting this picture through their melodies and textures. A great piece which is entrancing, hypnotic in nature but also conjures up calming imagery through only a simple setup, it’s very well done. Afterwards we have the final track on Side A: Outside, Garden Loop by Misiu. This piece is in a droning kind of tape-loop style, the type of sound I’d definitely consider as one of the best kinds of music to release on tape for sure. The fuzzy, mellow and warmly saturated mixture of reversed melody. strange percussive clicks, whirs hisses and field recordings makes for a great piece of music which whilst indeed recalling Boards of Canada follows a more quickly moving progression within the flow of the loop. Garden Loop does sound a bit like an extension of the spring park sound we heard in the previous track but this time it feels more like “browsing” through pleasant memories, an aural diary filled with fun leisure times with friends and family, out in the warm brightly shining spring sun. The abstraction of the tonal elements and field recordings has an inviting accessibility to it in how it does sound mysterious but through clear melodic anchor points and through the clarity of the field recordings it feels more human than alien making for a piece that feels both obscure but also familiar in an original manner. Side B: Inside then starts with the track Milovat’ by Japanese Avant-Folk group Sonotanotanpenz. It’s the shortest track on the full tape but a great one indeed, featuring Hitomi Morawaki and Hitomi Itamura’s duo vocals depicting what might be expressions of love in various languages (I did catch love in Dutch, which is liefde), accompanied by a quirky oddly funky bass synth as well as understated shaker and bell percussion. I’d say on first listen it’s one of the strangest tracks on the tape but it’s also quite easy to get into the vibe of the short piece, the rhythmic repeating pulse of the vocals and wacky squelches of the bass synth do definitely create some pulse to get into and the slightly ritualistic feeling I get from the piece is also intriguing. With Milovat’ I definitely feel like it’s a piece that especially works when combined with other tracks afterwards or as part of one of the groups various releases as it intrigued me in how it sounds quite otherworldly and especially made me want to continue listening to more works by Sonontanotanpenz. Afterwards we have the piece #092623-Rev3 by Japanese Techno experimentalist Takahiro Mukai. It’s a funky, space and trippy synth based track which revolves around a clicky and “wooden” like sounding bass pattern around which all sorts of squelchy, ring-modulated and delayed synth effects are floating. Like some kind of ritual from an alien tribe the music hovers around the thumping continuously fluctuating baseline, morphing into new shapes and ways of movement, sometimes screechy, sometimes hollow and wooden, it’s a great peace of joyful and playful electronic minimalism which through its energetic sound work and tasteful feeling for texture makes for a really fun trip of track. The following track Fighters by Lootus isn’t quite as captivating however. Featuring a mixture of abstract synth melodies and repetitive drum patterns the piece unfortunately keeps getting stuck into quirky electronic experimentation but the often clashing dissonant melodies never really get going in my opinion and the full piece just passed me by without offering a clear artistic vision. I appreciate Lootus daring and playful approach to musical anarchism but I don’t find the result to be particularly engaging. The track which follows, Gossamer by Finnish artist Ecto Mist (whose excellent album Equal I reviewed on this blog before) is much more to my liking. Whilst the piece is more minimalist and straight-forward than the previous track, I really do like the hypnotic modulated and phased droning pad sound that leads the piece as it gives it much more of a clear focus. The track is a bit less kinetic and “wooden” sounding than Ecto Mist’ music on Equal, as he’s going for a more Deconstructed Club influenced style of Sound Collage mixed with a jumpy Club groove and warbling bass. Withe the phased droning pad leading the track throughout its full length, there are plenty of nice little sonic details you can hear, as there are many layers of especially short high pitched crackling sound within the mix. Squelchy Industrial banging percussive sounds, cicada like chirping, glitches and bird like tones can also be heard. It’s great track to zone out to, diving into this catchy but also very nicely layered psychedelic landscape of organic sound. Just go with its flow and you’ll feel good very soon, a great track. Afterwards we have the piece Nanoneurosis by prolific Estonian Experimental artist Ratkiller. It’s an excellent and also pretty funny kind of Sound Collage piece which feels like a Psychedelic walk through a market, indeed perhaps a bit of a strange comparison when you read this but listen well to the piece and you’ll see what I mean. Ratkiller’s main guiding melodic line is made up of a rhythmic pulse smooth bass synth, whilst various strangely squealing and at various points bitcrushed synths swirl around creating hilariously quirky and jumpy 8-bit, circuit-bent sonic shapes. The concrete sounds in the piece include what sounds like a little ball rolling over various wooden panels, constantly jumping at a rapid pace, a funky percussion rhythm made up out of bells or glass sounds (could be a mixture of both), but also slurping sounds from drinking a packet of juice and a referee whistle. Nanoneurosis does also have a bit of tribal ritual like vibe to it in way the bass and percussive elements pulse which definitely does reach its climax in the recorded acoustic percussion outburst at the end of the piece which also definitely has plenty of trippy squelchy sounds in there as well, but besides that tribal element I also found the “railway crossing” like bells that you can hear before the music moves into this percussive outburst particularly imaginative. It’s definitely a great quirky piece of Sound Collage which does sound quite dadaist too, albeit in a bit more of an organised manner. Afterwards we have the final track on the tape, which is Orogenesis by Laura Luna Castillo. If you’ve been following this blog you’ve probably seen my previous reviews featuring her work, including my review of her excellent album Folksonomies, which was released on Cudighi Records too. Orogenesis definitely feels quite familiar in how it recalls that album through the melodic pattern that enters about half-way into the piece and indeed also follows Laura’s great progressive style of building her pieces like continuous journeys of sound in which the music smoothly flows from one sonic image to a next one or varies between variations of a sonic image. Orogenesis has a more rough texture to it however, more of a saturated edge and the sound of the piece feels quite hefty, quite dense. Based around a heavily saturated and stuttering drone made up of various layers of synth, accordion and violin the music hovers like a heavy ever evolving structure out of the speakers. There’s a great focus on shifts in sonic texture and shape in this piece with the varying pulsations, intensities and changing properties of the sound conjuring up both enjoyment in deep listening to the various details of the sounds themselves but also the mysterious and intriguing ambience of a mixture of both comfort and tension that is conjured up by the piece and which resolves in a pretty unsettling kind of dissonance at the end of the piece. Various synth effects and crackly lo-fi sound manipulations add eerie details to the piece which at times even feel like coming from outside the space where you’re listening, as there’s some great sense of depth in the stereo image of the piece even though most elements hover around the centre. Orogenesis is a great mysterious piece of music which nicely contrasts with the more quirky upbeat track Temperament by Borokov Borokov which started the tape and rounds off a great satisfying cathartic listening experience. Cudighi Records - Sampler Platter Vol. 1 is a great varied but also consistent sampler tape which serves as both a great release to enter the musical universe of Cudighi Records but also as a great way to discover some great music by various imaginative artists and groups in the international underground and experimental music scene. Beside a couple of less captivating tracks the tape is a great listen for fans of especially trippy, Psychedelic and experimental electronic music and Rock as well as listeners who’d like to discover these kinds of music through the music of a selection of very imaginative and curious artists and bands all with their own unique ways of composing and sculpting their music. Definitely a great tape to check out for sure.

You can order Cudighi Records - Sampler Platter Vol. 1 on cassette tape or buy as digital download from the Cudighi Records Bandcamp page here: https://cudighirecords.bandcamp.com/album/sampler-platter-vol-i

[fluidsf]

Project Axis 01-A2

Troy Schafer: Voice-Overs

Release date: July 14, 2019

Reviewed format: ALAC download of Troy Schafer self-released single as kindly provided by Troy Schafer

Welcome to the second follow up review to my review of Burial Hex’s album The Hierophant in which again I’m focussing on a solo release by Troy Schafer. If you haven’t read the previous review, I recommend you to do so though this link as there’s some more background info in there as well: https://fluidsf.tumblr.com/post/190642637019/project-axis-01-a1-troy-schafer-piano-for-voice Just like Piano for Voice Repeating, today’s release Voice-Over is a two-track release which has a single-length playing time but this time of only 4 minutes (rounded off upwards) in total. Voice-Overs is also just like Piano for Voice Repeating split up into two parts, though this time instead of reversal we have two types of sound, the first track being Dialogue and the second being the actual Music. Together they form a great seamless whole, as I’ll describe in a bit and the cover artwork of this release is again very organic, personal and has a comfortable “homely” vibe about it. Featuring a photo of a man painted (perhaps Troy Schafer himself) on the back of a violin as well as the artist name and title painted in a rough authentic DIY manner the image perfectly mimics the ambience of nature, storytelling through words and tones and “home-recorded” lo-fi edge of the music itself. Further details like the green garden with the garden hose as a background as well as the collaged family images on the violin add some sweet personal touches to the cover with only the black square enclosing the title being a clear sign of post-production on the image itself. Now, let’s move onto the two tracks of Voice-Overs, which are in the digital ALAC download I received from Troy Schafer in 24-bit/44.1kHz high resolution audio.

Voice-Overs combination of two tracks, Dialogue and Music follow each other makes for a wonderful miniature combination of words and gorgeous atmospheric contemporary music. In Dialogue we got a poem read in a low pitched deep voice (like in Piano for Voice Repeating), the poem matches the cover artwork, we can hear what sounds like the recalling of memories, of wandering in the vibrant nature with your mind lost in the peaceful tranquility and relief it brings you. I especially like the details of exploration within Dialogue’s text as well as the rough hollow sound quality which makes it sound like recorded by microphone which records the text as it’s also recorded on a wax cylinder which seems to be buzzing in the background. The room ambience as well as wind like quality from the background buzz also makes it feel like we’re sitting and listening to the poem in a shed, it feels very close, intimate in a special mysterious way. The Music that follows after the words “Here’s the important part” in Dialogue is composed around a wonderful highly three note violin bass line with a lot of overtones sounding within a church like reverb. An emotional sounding violin melody (with additional violin harmonies flowing in as well), sung choir vocals, pizzicato strings as well as a subdued bass drum forming a slow paced rhythm then subtly form the full picture until the music is reaching the end of the track in which soft tinkles from the violin fade out. Voice-Over’s again got this great cinematic quality about it that I’m now recognising as Troy Schafer’s signature in his solo work. The poetry music combination makes for a great short look into a rich introspective stream of thoughts and memories which can have a healing quality though the calming effect of the words and hypnotic beauty of the music. It’s quite like the aural equivalent of reading a poem but also hearing the images conjured up in your mind directly through the music. These images will obviously still be different for everyone and also might differ between the two tracks but the effect always works and again Troy Schafer’s brought a wondrous combination of music and art to us. Voice-Overs is a great release, recommended to fans of Piano for Voice Repeating, the avant-garde side of Ambient, contemporary music as well as aural art that crosses into rich introspective fields of texture. Go check this out.

Voice-Overs is available on 6" lathe-cut and digital download from Troy Schafer's Bandcamp page here: https://troyallenschafer.bandcamp.com/album/voice-overs

[fluidsf]

Project Axis 01-A1

Troy Schafer: Piano for Voice Repeating

Release date: November 29, 2019

Reviewed format: ALAC download of Troy Schafer self-released single as kindly provided by Troy Schafer

Welcome to the first follow up review to the previous Project Axis review about Burial Hex’s excellent album The Hierophant in which today I’m featuring the first of two short single length releases that American avant-garde musician and composer Troy Schafer kindly sent me through Bandcamp download codes. In the review of The Hierophant (https://fluidsf.tumblr.com/post/190423403454/project-axis-01-burial-hex-the-hierophant) I mentioned about his great instrumental contributions to the album as well as his curious discography of solo releases and bands he is or was part of. To elaborate a bit more on that I will mention some of the artists and bands he’s worked with or performed in so far. These include Kinit Her, Second Family Band, Spiral Joy Band, Graham Lambkin, Sean McCann, Horseback, Compass Hour and Devotion. I will definitely review more releases that feature Troy Schafer on this blog at some point but for today we’ve got his solo single release Piano for Voice Repeating from last year. The version I’m reviewing here features the two tracks in nice 24-bit/44.1kHz high resolution audio as well as a photo from the very limited tape version of the release as a cover. The image itself is endearingly DIY, a small abstract minimalist painting in organic light brown colours of what looks grass near a river. The ambience of music close to nature and a comforting sense of tranquility in the image work well as artwork for the music which as you will found out now does carry a great authentic sense of honesty within the composition and performances. Indeed, let’s get to the music straight away now.

Piano for Voice Repeating is a curious release both in its concept as well as the way its executed. In the digital version it included two tracks labelled as side a and side b (mirror), showing simply which tracks went on which side of tape version. The first curious thing about the release is the (mirrored) part of side b, indeed when I first saw the titles I was wondering what this stands for and with the two tracks being identical length I even had the strange thought it might be the “mirror” of the tape sides simply, obviously it isn’t however. What it means is that we have Piano for Voice Repeating playing in forwards direction in side a and played backwards (mirrored) in side b. In this digital version without side flips this did make for a curious listening experience in that the piece actually seems to be continuous over the two tracks even with the reverse of side b. Furthermore there are certain elements within the music which are also intentionally reversed making for a surreal experience of several parts of the music with side b (mirrored) even sounding like there are multiple additional added layers in the beginning of the track, though this might be more like an auditory illusion of the mind. Piano for Voice Repeating starts with a romantic swirling violin melody fading into delay which then crosses into a great mixture of quite contrasting elements, warm melancholic and ambient piano chords, manipulated vocal music recordings as well as crackling wooden mechanical sounds that also cut into the music for a bit. Field recordings of excited screaming children also feature, subtly fading into the background. A short poem is read out in a nice low pitched heartfelt voice adding a cinematic element to the already quite surreal mixture of elements of Ambient, Sound Collage and even some mild Noise bits in the rattling mechanical sounds. As we can hear the final line of the poem (And I quietly turn towards the sea) fade into deep reverb the music fades into its longest and most abstract part. Indeed up till now Troy Schafer’s already brought us an intriguing musical world of equally tranquil and rough melodic and organic sonics with some lo-fi edge to it (some parts of the piece even have some mild crackling in it, though technically the music isn’t peaking beyond -0.00 dB), but it gets even more surreal in the mysterious flow of the second part of the piece. In this second part starts what to me feels like the soundtrack of a deep sleep or lucid dreaming in which pleasant memories from the past all get blended into this filtered strangely subdued wind of remembered events, impressions as well as mangled misremembered bits you feel like knowing but not quite recognise. There’s some strange hidden sounds in here too, mostly human mumbled, even moan like short sounds that pop up. Eerie and meditative at the same time it does give off a feeling I’d normally get when listening to Dark Ambient music and the music does indeed have some of those elements too. As we move into side b (mirrored) you might notice the aforementioned seemingly added elements to the music at its start (or reversed end of side a), the way some layers were reversed to begin with does help to focus on different details once on side b (mirrored) as you can hear various violin and piano parts being played forward this time but also sonic details like crackles and mechanical rumble of the second part in a less abstracted context. Additionally in turns the now reversed first part of side a into what again feels a bit like a soundtrack to memories floating in the subconscious, especially the vocal music samples sound particularly ghostly this way. As the mysterious yet comfortable wave of melodic sound and abstraction moves towards the end of the track the forwards playing violin tones do add these great harmonic elements of closure until the reversed romantic violin outburst closes out the track and Piano for Voice Repeating in full. Piano for Voice Repeating is a wonderful short form release of music which is as experimental as it is melodic and mixes sonic elements normally found more in crackly styles of underground music like Noise and Industrial with an imaginative introspective Ambient composition which also dives into Dark Ambient territory and through the reversal effects on the second track and also integrated in the first makes for a unique and memorable listening experience. This is a great first listen at Troy Schafer’s solo work and independently also a great listen for listeners who are into avant-garde influenced Ambient music, Sound Collage and experimental music that mixes various forms of sound, including poetry into a uniquely personal whole. Definitely check this release out.

Piano for Voice Repeating is available as a download from Troy Schafer's Bandcamp page here: https://troyallenschafer.bandcamp.com/album/piano-for-voice-repeating