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Vital Weekly 518

  Tobias

DANIEL MENCHE - SCATTERED REMAINS: EARLY RARITIES (2CD by Soleilmoon Recordings)
Little over a decade ago, Daniel Menche appeared on the scene and took it over by surprise. Although he played his home town Portland a lot, and even released a couple cassettes, it wasn't until Soleilmoon released his first CD 'Incineration' and immediately Menche gained recognition. Playing around with the notion of 'noise', it was soon known that Menche played a literally more physical version of that. And one of things that may happen when you are 'hot' is that everybody wants to release your music, and that certainly happened to Menche. He did a lot of contributions to compilations, limited vinyl releases and some such. All pretty hard to find stuff these days, certainly if the recent flood of material made you hungry for the old material. This double CD (at the price of one) collects those old pieces, but there is an objection to be made. The cover is a bit unclear as they are the original pieces that are re-mastered or cut down, I assume the first. It's a pity of course that it's not a complete collection, still leaving 'holes' for the true fans, but on the other hand it's great to see them back in print and in some cases not on scratchy vinyl (I'm no big fan of those, as you can imagine). Menche's work took many shapes already in those early days, from the loud, obnoxious sound material to processing field recordings. Using the studio in a much more intelligent way than many of his contemporaries, his music always a strong sense of dynamics. There is always something happening on which ever level, deep end, mid end or high end. Playing all of these pieces in row means we have a much better and complete picture of his many talents, so that this can serve not only the hungry die-hards, but also as introduction to the newcomers. One small complaint: the inside text is a bit hard to read. (FdW)
Address: http://www.soleilmoon.com

CRAWLING WITH TARTS - OCHRE LAND, BLUE BLUE SKIES/GRAND SURFACE NOISE OPERA NR. 7 (CD by Pogus Productions)
The last time we reviewed a release by Crawling With Tarts, is close to nine years ago ('I Am Telephoning A Star', Vital Weekly 81). A year after the band ceased to exist - not because of the review of course, but Micheal Gendreau, one of the two members went to do music under his own name. Crawling With Tarts, being Gendreau and Suzanne Dycus, existed from 1983 to 1998, and were one of the first to work with the sound of vinyl. Quite unlike the current range of turntablists, who use the vinyl and turntables as an instrument itself, Crawling With Tarts made sound collages out of the material found on the records, amplifying speech and music along with the surface noise, the crackles and hiss. Sometimes they use them as loops, and sometimes the straight forward lifted spoken word on the vinyl. Those were the ingredients of a surface opera from Crawling With Tarts, and thus so on 'Grand Surface Noise Opera Nr. 7', which is funny to hear again after so many years. It's like a nostalgic trip listening to nostalgic music, since many of the used records are pretty old. In the other piece (both last over thirty minutes). The other piece can be regarded as the first Micheal Gendreau solo piece, even when there is sound input from Suzanne Dycus, or rather 'conceptual information'. Whereas the surface opera is just a nice nostalgic thing to hear, the 'Ochre Land, Blue Blue Skies' is a great piece of intense sound, motors producing them on various surfaces, vinyl hiss and the sound of small amplified electro-acoustic objects, all put together in a very fine, minimal yet intense sound collage. Maybe in retrospect the Crawling With Tarts concept was perhaps a bit too limited but it opened possibilities for the solo work of Gendreau to expand beyond it. And as such this is a fine testament. (FdW)
Address: http://www.pogus.com

NICK PARKIN - REFRACT (CD by Soleilmoon Recordings)
If I'm not mistaken this might be already the fourth CD (five if you count his album with Tom Gillieron) by Nick Parkin on Soleilmoon. Somewhere in my book, I associated the name Nick Parkin with ambient with the big A, but that chapter needs to be re-written, I guess. Parkin won a first prize in 2001 at the Bourges International Electroacoustic Competition and on 'Refract' he uses a 'variety of gongs and other metallic percussion with environmental field recordings. That may sound the best ingredients for a good ambient album, but Parkin takes the material a bit further, and makes it much more edgy and angular than y'r average ambient album. Parkin takes the techniques of modern classical electronic composing, but it's to effect on his own sound material, and starts playing around with the result. Now unlike a lot of the modern composers it's not the usual pitching up/down of the material, making sounds roll over each-other or that kind of thing that is popular amongst his contemporaries, but he makes minimal pieces of slowly evolving sound material, in which 'water' is a recurring theme. The music washes by like an endless stream of sound. At times it sounds like a friendly creek and at others like an ocean. It's throughout the entire a fine balance of ambient music and modern music, thus breaking with both traditions and making a very, delicate and intense album (FdW)
Address: http://www.soleilmoon.com

PURE - HOME IS WHERE MY HARDDISC IS VOL. 2 (CD by Feld Records)
It's been a while since Vol. 1 of this CD (see Vital Weekly 325) but like the first volume it features two live shows of Pure, this time recorded within nine days of each-other. One in Brussels and one in Winnipeg. It means that Pure uses improvisation to gather his sounds, puts in some live sampling on the spot. Sometimes he uses whatever the air has to offer and sometimes he samples some romantic classical piece. That last thing I must admit is not so my thing. I prefer things more purely (pun intended). When he takes some sounds and starts playing them around in a minimal yet consecutive way, building layer upon layer. The Brussel piece has some of the sampled choral work, which just didn't work for me, but luckily the majority of the piece is not like that and consist of clear blocks of sounds, short ones to form a rhythm and longer ones to provide a drone related background. The Winnipeg recording is more along the lines of the CD on Mego that was released shortly after that, 'Noonbug' (see Vital Weekly 346) and is much more purer piece of evolving sine waves or feedback like sounds, which slowly built up and start to interact with each-other. This is my favorite piece of the CD, but both are a good showcase of the talents this man has. (FdW)
Address: http://www.feld-records.com

VERFASSUNG (LP compilation by Hörbar)
Ah the classic format of compilation LP, with booklet. It looks retro, very 80s like, but it's 2006. The Hörbar in Hamburg is an organisation that puts on concerts, mainly in the B-Movie cinema. Hörbar is mainly run by musicians, who work as volunteers, doing the sound, the bar and the door. Every week they meet up and do something. Now Hörbar also acts as a label, and this compilation is the first release. Of course it features music from the people that make up the Hörbar organization. The good thing is that it holds many musicians I never heard of, such as Pizza Ni Ni, Renoise, Margitt Holzt, Guy Saldanha and Ebinger, sitting next to somewhat more known locals such as Evapori, Gregory Buettner, Sonata Rec, [Hyph-], TBC, Incite and Y-Ton-G. Of course the biggest star from Hamburg, Asmus Tietchens, is also present, with the most silent and reduced piece of the lot. What can be noticed that there is a fair amount of noise material on this record, such as TBC, Guy Saldanha and Audible
Pain. Margitt Holzt and Incite represent the rhythm side of this bunch, whereas Tietchens has his own followers such as Gregory Buettner and some seem to follow their own track, such as the curious piece by Ebinger (who he?). Evapori and Sonata Rec play pieces that are a cross over between the world of Tietchens and the underworld of noise. The most curious piece is by Pizza Ni Ni, entitled 'E', it seems just the one time strumming of an E chord on the guitar. A booklet describes the pieces and has a bunch of nice quotes. Limited to 300 copies - that is the final trick from the 80s, make a few and create a rarity! (FdW)
Address: http://www.hoerbar-ev.de

ALLA ZAGAYKEVYCH - TO ESCAPE, TO BREATHE, TO KEEP SILENCE (MP3 by Nexsound)
The Ukrain is a fine country when it comes to women doing experimental music. Following Zavoloka, here is Alla Zagaykevych. She composed 'real' classical music for orchestras, small ensembles and some such, but in 1997 she also founded the Electronic Studio of National Musical Academy of Ukraine. The three works that are now available as a MP3 by Nexsound deal with her work in electronic music. In each of the pieces Zagaykevych plays 'recording and live computer', treating respectively somebody playing violin, voice and piano. '... is a multimedia work that aims to reveal with art means a process of human self-identification in an imaginary 'city environment'. She then raises all sort of questions about life, cities, movements etc, but it's a bit difficult to see them being connected to the three music pieces. The hectic, virtuoso violin playing in 'To Escape' is a bit too hectic for me, but the much more delicate processing. The voice in 'To Breathe' is almost gone, just waving high above the ground and the piano of 'To Keep Silence' is surely present, but gets nicely transformed in an almost Tietchens' like manner. Even if the ideas behind it are a bit beyond, those two tracks are a true delight to hear. (FdW)
Address: http://www.nexsound.org

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