The return of KTL! Maybe our favorite of the many satellites circling the Sunn 0))). One half of that dynamic doomdrone duo, Stephen O'Malley, hooked up with Austrian noisemaker Peter Rehberg (aka Pita) a year or two back, and the result was the godlike s/t debut, the soundtrack to a performance art piece (of which this also contains elements), which we can only assume was dark and creepy, considering the music on that disc was a black hole slab of expansive subterranean drones and damaged digital buzz. KTL managed to create an intense chunk of dark art, in the midst of a million bedroom drones, so while we played that disc to death, we secretly hoped it wouldn't be the last we'd hear from these two.�
Not a year later, and KTL are back, with another sprawling journey, trawling through the bottomless depths of some hellish underworld and drifting weightless through a starless black sky. A bleak, but occasionally jarring landscape of sonic mystery rife with plenty of drone and buzz.�
The opener is a bleak expanse of claustrophobic sound, the sound of waking up in pitch blackness, wet, cold and alone, wandering blindly, feeling your way, hands rubbed raw from sliding along rough stone, the tiniest sounds magnified into some lurking beast ready to pounce, gusts of warm wind rush past, as do strange slithery shapes underfoot, you can hear the wide open space towering overhead, but you can feel the walls closing in, suffocating. Gorgeously dark and bleak, ominous and so creepy. The perfect music for being buried alive, miles below the surface of the Earth. As the first track dissipates, a strange percussive thump gradually surfaces, a heartbeat maybe... a dense layered backdrop of shimmering low end and muted pulses undulates beneath the murky throb, very slowly building in intensity, as streaks of high end grit and buzzing glitch, and strange high pitched melodic fragments begin to materialize all around, like suddenly finding yourself inside a lightning storm, it's almost pretty, but still sharp and jagged. As the upper register peals intensify, they suddenly coalesce into some sort of deafening angelic chorus, a gorgeous layered textural wall of dreamlike skree, some demonic string section, surprisingly melodic beneath all the sonic barbs and white hot buzz. Hard to describe other than to say it's a bit like Nadja or Jesu, run through a bank of alien FX pedals and broadcast through a million tweeters. So intense and gloriously blown out.�
The next step in the journey involves visiting the "Abattoir" (much of this disc was in fact recorded in an actual French Abattoir) , and it sounds just like you'd imagine. A bit like O'Malley's Sunn 0))), with layer upon layer of constantly shifting coruscating guitars, a drone metal Niblock maybe, stretched out and hypnotic, the texture of the guitar constantly ever changing, going from smooth and washed out to rough and sharp, a bit like Spacemen 3 or Loop at it's most propulsive, a sort of churning distorted chordal whir, and a lot like Sunn 0))) at its most static. But all throughout, the rough raw shimmer is disrupted by all manner of textural disturbances, bits of grit and muted glitch and subtle shards of fragmented melody.�
Finally, the record winds down with an extended coda, thick shards of glistening guitar suspended in gauzy clouds of electronic flutter and swirls of soft sonic snow. Eventually the sharp edges are worn away leaving a strangely haunting slightly degraded Basinski-esque drift that is smoothed even further out, into shimmery spacey synths and sweet chordal swells that drift away leaving nothing but static.
Perfect for the dead of winter, it's another quietly creepy, digital dronedoom opus from this two-man stupor group, featuring Stephen O'Malley (SUNNO))), Khanate, etc.) and Peter Rehberg (Pita), this time with production assistance from Jim O'Rourke. If you've heard KTL's I, II, or III (which was vinyl-only) you have an idea of what to expect - and are probably already plotting to purchase this. This is their first studio album constructed entirely for their own dark purposes, as opposed to having been commissioned as a soundtrack for live theatrical performance or film, though it certainly still has mysterious, soundtrack-y qualities. The sort that usually causes us, in reviews of KTL (and other dronesters too) to paint word-pictures of what the music evokes in our mind's eye. Subterranean caverns, bottomless pits, fallen angelic choirs, airplanes buzzing over dark forests... but we won't bother this time, you should just listen to this and your own imagination should have no difficulty providing all sorts of esoteric imagery. It may be soothing, it may be scary. Probably scary, it's up to you though. We find a lot of this to be as sinister and grim as Dick Cheney was in his Dr. Strangelove wheelchair at Obama's inauguration!
These six tracks are full of seismic rumble, high end hiss, eerie abstract glitch, sweeping drones, ringing electronics... some more epic and/or active than others. Distorted industrial rhythms shudder through several cuts, notably the disc's longest piece, the 21+ minute "Paratrooper", which features doomic beats by the drummer from Japan's Boris (who also brings his gong for an appearance on the disc's final track). While that's KTL IV at its heaviest, most of this is more like the sound of SUNNO))) sighing and whispering... or, conversely, Pita busting out a guitar to play along to a half-melted Swans record he found in the ashes of a burned-down church.
Ahhhh, the black ambient onslaught continues. A vinyl based campaign to rain corrosive black drones on an adoring audience moves forward unabated, and we're right there in the front, face raised to the sky, letting the buzz and whir and rumble and roar rain down on us...
KTL is the duo of Stephen O'Malley, one half of the not-so dynamic duo SUNNO))), and Peter Rehberg, aka Pita. Their sound is a bit SUNNO))) like, with O'Malley unfurling sheets of abstract riffage, and Rehberg contributing various blasts of processed sounds and power electronics, the result is in fact quite beautiful, the three full lengths have helped solidify KTL as one of our favorite SUNN side projects, taking the churning brutality of that group, and stretching it out into something more abstract and expansive, still a dark sonic trawl, but the guitar is less downtuned and sludgy and more glimmering and effulgent, not to say it's not still doomy and dark, just more colored and less BLACK. And of course, there's so much more texture, with Rehberg delivering intense subsonics, smeared buzz, and all manner of blurred wonder, it's a pretty stellar combination.
So here we have a live recording of the duo, performing a few KTL classics, and one brand new track. Which is interesting as we just assumed that KTL was improvised, and while maybe there is an element of that in their music, you can definitely here bits and pieces that you'll recognize from the other recordings, and probably the more eagle eared among you will be able to pick out whole songs.
The first side opens up with a doomy swirl of washed out guitar, corrosive and keening, the riffs unfolding and overlapping. We don't really hear Rehberg until a few minutes in, when he offers up a thick, crumbling, superdistorted low end throb, that grinds ominously just below the sprawling guitarnoise, surfacing every once in a while to nearly blow your speakers. The sound builds to a glorious crescendo, sounding a bit like Sunroof! Or GHQ or one of those sort of ur-psych combos, but with a subtly abrasive digital component, that gives the sound a bit of an alien feel, the sound constantly thickening, with Rehberg's electronic machinations gradually overtaking the moaning guitars.
The flipside is even more blown out and psychedelic, O'Malley's guitars soaring ever skyward, roaring and keening, Rehberg wrapping those guitars in billowing sheets of grumbling digital glitter, smearing the churning riffage into haunting, nearly orchestral swells. So good.
Gorgeously packaged, deluxe gatefold, striking live images from the performance, also includes a massive poster of the show. Vinyl only for now. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Each one numbered. Not sure if there is a cd planned or not, still no cd of KTL 3, so you might want to grab one before they're gone.
As the title no doubt led you to believe, this is in fact the fifth release in the ongoing collaboration between Stephen O'Malley (SUNNO))), Khanate, etc.) and Peter Rehberg (Pita), and like IV before it, V was realized as a stand alone record, unlike the first three releases, which were all conceived and composed to accompany art installations. And again, like IV, the sound does not seem to be dramatically effected by this shift, although there does in fact seem to be a bit of a shift from IV to V, with V seeming, to our ears at least, to be a bit more academic, with an ear toward twentieth century classic and modern minimalism, further evidence which may be found in the two tracks here "Phill 1" and "Phill 2", which we presume are an homage to the master dronelord Phill Niblock, but of course done in their own inimitable style, with "Phill 1" opening up a thick gaseous dronescape, that is pocked with glitch and skitter, woven into the fabric of the tracks woozy undulations, and softly moaning choral shimmer. Where on past records much of the sound was barely there, and required close listening, "Phill 1" is much more immediately rewarding, lush and lustrous, thick and warm, and layered, the sort of minimalism that would probably still appeal to fans of O'Malley's SUNNO))) project. The track is definitely active, with plenty going on beneath the surface, and in the spaces surrounding the drone, be they thick slabs of blurred buzz, shards of computer glitch, and all manner of sonic detritus.
"Phill 2" finds O'Malley and Rehberg teaming up with the Prague Philharmonic, where they are joined by Johann Johannsson, who helps with the orchestration, the track transformed into something haunting and symphonic, yet still dark and droney, the sound even more rich, and somewhat cacophonous, a glorious noisy ur-drone, that definitely casts the orchestra as something much more chaotic and abstract that they are perhaps used to, the results are stunning.
In between these tracks, O'Malley and Rehberg do explore more minimal soundscapes, "Study A" features long tones, deep buzzes and sine wave like high end shimmers, stretched out into near static layered mesmer, allowing the two tones two subtly interact, and create all manner of overtones, gradually building in intensity, and at times sounding down right cinematic and psychedelic. "Tony" is another thick minimal dronescape, this one focused around a distorted stretch of slow shifting buzz, surrounded by warm melodic tones, and strange echo drenched percussion, the main drone ever shifting, creating a gorgeous slow motion melody, the background sounds lush and lustrous, maybe the prettiest thing we've heard from KTL yet. And finally, the record finishes off with the 20+ minute "Last Spring: A Prequel", which introduces text, a haunting spoken word, draped over a hissy shimmer, the breath urgent in the microphone, the vibe dark and claustrophobic, the music itself more like old KTL, ultra minimal, high end hiss, minimal static hum, bits of glitch laced throughout, the track all about the dramatically delivered vocals, which grow more and more agitated, more heavily effected, the music subtly following suit, like some strange abstract play, with some of the creepiest sound design ever, courtesy of KTL.
Housed in a super striking 6 panel digipak, with original artwork by Mark Fell. Meanwhile the vinyl comes in an equally colorful gatefold sleeve.
SUNNO)))-worshippers alert! 1/2 of that drone metal behemoth, our pal Stephen O'Malley (who has also piloted or participated in such units as Khanate, Burning Witch, Ginnungagap, Teeth Of The Lions Rule The Divine, Thorr's Hammer, Fungal Hex, Lotus Eaters, etc.) has travelled to Europe to collaborate with Austrian experimental digital noise artist Peter "Pita" Rehberg! They're calling themselves KTL because the music they made is to be the soundtrack to some sort of stage piece called Kindertotenlieder by performance artist Gisele Vienne and novelist Dennis Cooper ("Closer") due to debut at a festival in France next year. Judging from the music, not to mention the people involved, we imagine it's gonna be beautiful, but also somehow disturbing and dark... This cd certainly is.
It starts off with the 24 minute drone "Estranged", blissful and spooky piece that builds towards its end to noisier heights, threatening the storms to come on this album. And yes, the four parts of "Forest Floor" that take up the main, middle part of the disc are a harrowing journey indeed, into a buzzing, claustrophobic realm of dangerous digital sonics and heavy drone, like SUNNO)))'s lugubrious riffage mixed with the glitchy crunch of Pita -- which is what it is, of course! Not for the faint of heart. Part four, in particular, sounds like a doomed prop engine airplane rumbling over a dark forest landscape from some black metal album cover, at night...
Finally O'Malley and Rehberg wind things up with the quieter (but still creepy) 13 minutes of "Snow", a softly pulsing, detailed improv exploration of lowercase sounds... Very nice!
Let's hope KTL isn't just a one-off collaboration, we'd like to hear more from these two! Their mastery of minimalist ambient music, electronic glitchology and Earthy guitar sludge make a fine sipping brew.
A note for all you object fetishizing consumerist completist types, be forewarned that there will eventually also be a vinyl version of this on the Aurora Borealis label, a double LP limited to 500 copies... we can take preorders now...
Omni may be primarily a country reissue label, but every once in a while they'll come up with something distinctly NOT country and more often from way out of left field. Most recently it was the amazing Russkie Wig-Out compilation of demented surf, electro and exotica from Russia, and now comes this, a career retrospective of German outsider sci-fi electro pop visionary Felix Kubin, whose career has been an ongoing series of twisted sonic experiments, from lo-fi mad scientist sonic tinkering, to freaked out chaotic noise, to hypnotic krautrock grooves to super catchy sci-fi pop to twangy almost soundtracky Morricone-esque soundscapes and beyond.
Even after nearly three decades of recording, Kubin remains unknown to all but a select few of far-out music obsessives, which is perhaps the way it will remain, cuz this stuff is indeed pretty dang far out. But for all its weirdness and willful obscurity, it's also catchy, and crazy, and fun, and in places funny, the sort of thing, that if it were some 20 year old kid and it was a limited lp on Not Not Fun, or some self released cd-r folks would be losing their shit. So go ahead, freak out, this stuff is well deserving of that sort of worship, and it's long long overdue!
From the opening jam "Phonebashing", all skittery, electro new wave, warped and lo-fi, like some mash up of Kraftwerk and the Radiophonic Workshop and Herbie Hancock's "Rockit", to a killer WAY twisted version of "Lightning Strikes", originally written and performed by Lou Christie, but later covered by Klaus Nomi, which makes sense, since Kubin is a lot like Nomi in many ways, and musically sounds like Sparks crossed with The Residents, but more glitched out and electronic. Then there's "Schnitzler", which does in fact feature krautrock legend Conrad Schnitzler, a loopy, woozy bit of electro skitter, the refrain being simply "Schnitzler" and then "Conrad Schnitzler". The title track is a creepy bit of haunted house electronica, all creepy ambience, and super lo-fi programmed drum skitter, processed vox, and some cheesy, eighties drama soundtrack music woven in, again, twisted, but weirdly genius, and again, if this were some new hip underground band, blogs would be singing its praises.
The collection covers pretty much all of Kubin's far out sounds, from manic, stuttery, carnivalesque Devo style video game synth buzz freakouts, to swoonsome soundtracky slow jams, to lush cabaret pop, all deep dramatic vox and pizzicato strings, to manic Love Boat style soundtracks all chopped up and electrified and freaked out, to super lo-fi 8 bit electro crunch, to faux big band almost Lawrence Welk sounding easy listening, to shuffling warped jazzy weirdness, to full on Legend Of Zelda style Nintendo core, to moody groovy electro slow jams, and pretty much every warped and gloriously twisted sonic stop in between.
So good! Anyone into the current crop of lo-fi, electronic fractured pop experimentalists, this is will blow you away, and puts lots of that stuff to shame!
Features an extensive full color booklet, with liner notes, but the liner notes are quite cryptic, but very interesting, and fantastically written, appropriately mysterious for the music they accompany.
Lots of folks got their introduction to German outsider sci-fi electro pop visionary Felix Kubin via the Bruder Luzifer compilation we reviewed last year, a career spanning retrospective that offered up a handful of tracks that touched on nearly every aspect of Kubin's schizophrenic and ever-morphing soundworld, leaning heavily toward his twisted electro-pop / new wave popsmithery, but also giving us glimpses of warped lo-fi minimal electro-buzz, lush twang flecked soundscapes, freaked out chaotic noise and pretty much every stop in between. TXRF is something else entirely, a seriously high concept record, apparently based on a method of X-raying microchips to detect microscopic defects, these tracks, ostensibly some sort of sonic test for the X-ray system, and this record in effect, the sonic printout as it were, a document of the processes and their musical byproducts. Which is definitely believable, since on the one hand much of TXRF sounds weirdly clinical and academic, machinelike and robotic, the sort of thing you might hear on Raster Noton or some other label that traffics in such things, but Kubin, as we've discovered is a kind of a nut, and that definitely shows here, the sounds surprisingly playful, occasionally groovy, dizzyingly tripped out and most definitely psychedelic, shifting from a sort of stuttering 8-bit IDM to a woozy glitched out rhythmic abstract house music, to full on sci-fi mad scientist weirdness, all of those various sounds and elements somehow woven into a surprisingly cohesive whole, the record constantly transforming and morphing, the tracks impossibly varied, whether it's pulsing, pounding squelch and stutter, or skittery laser-beam, alien staticscape, playful Perrey And Kingsley style analog experimentation or haunting soundtracky psychedelic synthscapery (the closing track is a KILLER), it's all great, and yet another bafflingly brilliant piece of Kubin's unsolvable sonic puzzle, which of course, if you couldn't tell by now, means absolutely WAY recommended.
Continuing to dig into the vaults of 'new music' composers, Ampersand offers another reissue from the collaborative team of Christina Kubisch and Fabrizio Plessi. Just as their previous outing "Two and Two" centered conceptually around the primal
In the late 18th Century, Benjamin Franklin invented the Glass Harmonica as a musical instrument with the idea of improving upon the parlour trick of rubbing the rim of a wine glass with a wet finger to produce a constant drone. Franklin heard a pristine beauty resulting from from this action but immediately recognized the limitations if one wanted to play more than one or two wine glasses at once. For his Glass Harmonica, Franklin cut off the stems of several dozen wine glasses and drilled holes directly in the center of the glasses. He then mounted these augmented glasses along a horizontal rotating spindle, so that the player of the Glass Harmonica could effectively be rubbing the rims of several glasses at once and create harmonies and chords out of those pure tones. The Glass Harmonica was quite a novelty instrument for plenty of composers of the day; but it fell out of favor with the discerning public (possibly because some of the players had actually fainted from the frequencies they were creating with the Glass Harmonica).
In recent years, there's been a resurgance of interest in the glass harmonica amongst avant-garde composers, including Simon Wickham-Smith, Manu Holterbach, and Christina. As one of Germany's most reknowned sound artists, Kubisch typically operates in the realm of installation with almost all of her previous recordings being documents of those installations; thus, Armonica is a rare documentation of Kubisch's compositional sensibility. In using the glass harmonica as the source material for this album, she constructs a beautiful polyphony of never-ending timbres, resulting in an exquisite piece of haunted minimalism on par with the likes of Phill Niblock, Andrew Chalk, and Eliane Radigue. Highly recommended!
For nearly 4 decades, the German sound artist Christina Kubisch has explored the dynamics of a restricted pallette from unconventional sound sources, including water jets, metronomes, marbles, and bells (her most widely used sound source). She situates these sounds within a number of poetic installations, which depend upon architechtural, environmental, and object-relational contexts to literally activate the sound. Some of her work including the recordings from the "Klangraumlichtzeit" monograph never translated very well outside of their original installations, but there have been examples of her sound work which transcend the borders of the installations. "Dreaming Of A Major Third" (1998) was one such piece, as a wonderful drone recording of churchbell tones whose sharp attacks had been curtailed into muffled swells. The album is so strong that the technological gimmickery of her solar panel interface to control those churchbells is almost a footnote. Similarly, "Diapason" is another successful composition outside of its original installation context, having been exclusively composed with medical tuning forks. Utilizing the intrinsically long acoustic decay of those forks to her advantage, Kubisch spartanly strikes these instruments in variety of delicate patterns that emerge, dissolve, and re-appear with the vast expanses of time and space. In the end, this album has many of the ephemeral and transient characteristics of late period Morton Feldman.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This super limited (and hand numbered) cassette from legendary Finnish composer, inventor, instrument designer and musician Erkki Kurenniemi, celebrates the 50 year anniversary of his first, and perhaps most famous record work, 1963's "On-Off". This track has been included in various Kurreniemi compilations, and was inspired by the roar of turbines Kurreniemi heard as a child once while visiting a power plant. It's a sprawling abstract expanse of howling buzzing electro acoustic musique concrete, lots of thrums and rumbles, disembodied voices buried in the background, slow shifting textures, and gristled drones, all spread out into shimmering, undulating sheets of sound. Super dynamic too, flitting from hushed murmur to explosive and caustic howl, and often settling somewhere right in between. It sounds occasionally like jet engine noise, and at others, rushing water, or whirling wind, multiple variations of dense hypnotic sound. Noisy enough to predict much of the industrial/noise music that would follow, but also prescient of so much electronic and experimental music as well. Grey and austere, but somehow also lush and lovely.
This tape includes the original version of "On-Off", along with a second, shorter German edit. The flipside features a 2013 reimagining of / homage to "On-Off", which attempts to capture the same spirit with a whole different set of sounds, lots of electronics, and strange FX, the sound less grey and more multihued, not as raw or primitive, and a bit more psychedelic, but quite a cool piece, regardless of its provenance.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!! Each one hand numbered and housed in a thick black and white J-card, the whole tape sealed in a plastic bag.
This is an awesome document of early computer music from Finnish inventor/composer Erkki Kurenniemi, who is featured on the Arktinen Hysteria: Suomi-Avantgarden Esipuutarhureita compilation, one of this week's Records of the Week, which is a brief sonic overview of Finnish experimental/electronic/avant garde in the sixties. Kurenniemi's track on the comp is a sort of precursor to Pan Sonic, stiff robotic dance music made from blips and bleeps. This collection of his work from 1963-1973 shows multiple sides of Kurenniemi, the silly, playful side, like the comp track (which also appears here) and then a much darker, noiser side. Having spent time as an artist, a photographer, and a musician, Kurennemi was always an enthusiastic amateur, with most of his works remaining in a raw and unfinished state. Which in no way detracts from the power of these amazing pieces. In fact like lots of home-recorded/primitively recorded music, the quality of the recording is a huge part of the overall sound. A combination of computers, synthesizers and home made automated sound making devices, resulted in a broad range of sound, from grainy rough walls of sound to boinky primitive rhythm tracks to thick rumbling tones and ear piercing sine waves to dorky spastic freak outs to twinkly spacescapes. Really cool stuff.
MPEG Download: "Sahkosoittimen Aania #1" [/audio/kurenniemisahko1.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Sahkosoittimen Aania #1" [/audio/kurenniemisahko1.m3u]
A while back we reviewed a killer compilation from this legendary Finnish composer / inventor / early electronic music pioneer. This new release on Jussi from Circle's Ektro Records offshoot Full Contact, features many of those same tracks on vinyl for the first time, along with a bunch of others that weren't on the cd version. Here's what we had to say about that collection:
This is an awesome document of early computer music from Finnish inventor/composer Erkki Kurenniemi, who is featured on the Arktinen Hysteria: Suomi-Avantgarden Esipuutarhureita compilation, a past aQ Record of the Week, that collection a brief sonic overview of Finnish experimental/electronic/avant garde in the sixties. Kurenniemi's track on the comp is a sort of precursor to Pan Sonic, stiff robotic dance music made from blips and bleeps. This collection of his work from 1963-1973 shows multiple sides of Kurenniemi, the silly, playful side, like the comp track (which also appears here) and then a much darker, noisier side. Having spent time as an artist, a photographer, and a musician, Kurennemi was always an enthusiastic amateur, with most of his works remaining in a raw and unfinished state. Which in no way detracts from the power of these amazing pieces. In fact like lots of home-recorded/primitively recorded music, the quality of the recording is a huge part of the overall sound. A combination of computers, synthesizers and home made automated sound making devices, resulted in a broad range of sound, from grainy rough walls of sound to boinky primitive rhythm tracks to thick rumbling tones and ear piercing sine waves to dorky spastic freak outs to twinkly spacescapes. Really cool stuff.
Really cool indeed. This comp definitely expands on the earlier cd version, in part by introducing the music in the context of Kurenniemi's 'rules', the first of which was "A work has to be completed in a single day." The second was: "Consecutive sounds must be chosen so that they are totally inconsistent or surprising and have no rational relationship with each other." And most interesting, the third rule stated simply: "...?" Not sure exactly what that means, but perhaps we're not meant to know, or perhaps it means nothing. What we do know is the music of Kurenniemi is fascinating and beautiful, difficult and perplexing, sometimes it's like mad video game music gone haywire, at other times it's darkly delicate and downright haunting, much of this created on machines he built and invented, electro-acoustic experiments give way to tape collages which in turn give way to primitive early synthesizer compositions which in turn give way to pure electronic sounds. Gorgeous mysterious stuff, and absolutely recommended for fans of early electronic and computer music pioneers like Suzanne Ciani, Laurie Spiegel, F.C. Judd, Daphne Oram, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, as well as imaginary pioneers like Ursula Bogner!!
Incredible deluxe packaging, super thick full color heavy duty gatefold jacket with extensive liner notes, pictures and detailed notes on each song.
Another leafy, spacey, dew laden, sun dappled folk flecked free rock missive from this Finnish female who has done time in both Avarus and Anaksimadndros, which should give you an idea of the sort of spaced out freeform spacefolk loveliness to expect here. Gently looped guitar distortion, swooping spacey FX, clattery percussion, bird calls, warbly machinelike whirs, drifting shimmery organs and sing songy vocals, haunting detuned guitars, creepy atonal melodies, all buried under dreamy swaths of fuzzy gauzy swirl. So nice. Fans of all things Finnish will want to act fast as we only have 20 or so.
Third and last edition, limited to 100, packaged in hand made, watercolored sleeves.
Yet another blurry, bleary eyed, sleepy and soft, dreamlike missive from the mysterious KuuPuu, another of the Finnish forest denizens who have captured our hearts.
Unilintu is the second of two vinyl only releases compiling the best tracks from long out of print cd-r's. The record begins with a burst of blown out electronic buzz and stuttering machinelike rhythms seemingly crafted from a skipping record, but don't be scared off, once you've waded through this brief blast, you'll find yourself in a dark and wondrous abstract forest folk wonderland. Soft and warm, whirring organs drone and drift over lilting sing song vocals, various lines all lazily intertwined,ultra lo-fi acoustic guitars wrapped in all sorts of natural ambience, the sounds of rain and thunder, and again those dreamy ghost like vocals. The whole record has that rainy day back porch vibe, or sometimes that late night dark forest campfire feel, both so intimate and personal.
Old pianos plinked and plonked in big echoey empty rooms, wheezing violins, atonal detuned guitars, warm washes of fuzzy ambience, occasionally interrupted by little chunks of noise drenched 4-track fuckery, but for the most part, Unilintu is one long sweet sonic dream. Definitely for fans of Islaja, Grouper, Fursaxa, Valet and the like.
Another gorgeous dreamy slab of free floating Finnish forest folk. From Kuupuu who delivers the very dreamiest of the bunch. Sonic similarities abound to countrymen Avarus, Anaksimandros, Kemialliset Ystavat and the rest, but Kuupuu are dreamier and driftier, less tribal, less linked to this mortal plain, the music of Kuupuu is like some mysterious lullaby that drifts like the smell of burning leaves through the forest. Shimmery atmospheres of delicately plucked strings and music box melodies, detuned guitars and thick droney warble, lo-fi but strangely lush, a whirl of haze and murk, warm and soft and inviting, disembodied vocals, wordless, more like another instrument than a voice, another layer of sound. These are late night lullabies for forest folk and we just can't stop listening. So easy to drift off and float away.......
A slight departure from the silence and drones that often-inaudible composer Bernhard Gunter's Trente Oiseaux label is known for, this disc by Japanese cello and violin duo Kuwayama Kiyoharu and Kijima Rina is a live acoustic improv set. Not exactly jazz improv, though! More of an avant-garde modern classical chamber improv thing, but minus the actual "chamber", 'cause the real twist is that "01.06.16" isn't just live, it's what you might term a "field recording" -- they recorded it outdoors, beside a highway at midnight! So you get the sound of passing cars and trucks, adding a whooshing, rumbling texture to the proceedings. We're not sure if they're really listening to the traffic and interactively improvising with those sounds -- although it seems that way at least some of the time -- but the ambient (and very present) pulsation of the highway noise makes a nice setting for the creaking, scrabbling, droning interplay of their strings. This type of thing is this duo's modus operandi, as we've also heard Mr. Kuwayama's and Ms. Kijima's previous, self-titled disc on GG Records which featured them improvising similarily in a warehouse and on the construction site of an expressway. Although we're still a bit surprised to find this on Trente Oiseaux -- being the label that released Reynols' "Blank Tapes", we'd have expected them to want even more highway and less violin and cello on this release...
Here's the Japanese cello and violin duo of Kuwayama Kiyoharu & Kijima Rina's second release for Bernard Gunter's Trente Oiseaux label. Their creaking, mysterious improvisations are always set within a larger sound-environment. Their previous disc had them playing next to a highway at midnight, this one finds them in a warehouse on a pier, so rather than the buzz of traffic the ambient sounds are gently lapping, sloshing water in a large acoustic space, interwoven with their fog horn cello droning and deep string stroke scritch-scratch. Really nice and evocative, for fans of both modern free improv and field recordings -- it's maybe like violinist Malcolm Goldstein jamming with field recordist Toshiya Tsunoda. We're also somewhat reminded of works by Pauline Oliveros, Koji Asano, Philipp Wachsmann, and Akio Suzuki.
MPEG Download: "02.08.31 e" [/audio/kuwayama020823.mp3]
Attention fans of that '60s experimental psychedelic freakout The Fifty Foot Hose: members of the '90s reunion group have resurfaced with this new entity simply named Kwisp. Walter Funk and Reid Johnston craft sonic DaDa-esque squirreliness composed of squelch-effected vocalizations, a jumble of found sounds and dialogue samples, wheezy horn spasms, analog burblings and masses of custom made instruments. With guests Daevid Allen, Fifty Foot Hose founder Cork Marcheschi, and Mandible Chatter's Grant Miller.
Wow. We can't get over this incredibly cosmic, tripped-out debut cassette from KWJAZ. SF mastermind Peter Berends decides that space is the place and sets his sights for uncharted musical territory. Falling somewhere between outsider instrumental pop and dubbed-out psychedelic ethno-jazz, Berends leads a colorful excursion into the astral unknown. The two, side-long tracks unfold like some otherworldly mix-tape, deep basslines giving way to sizzling warbling drones, cut-up bits of rhythmic clatter ooze and materialize into slow grooving monuments to the stars. Chopped up samples and distorted swells melt into a lo-fi woozy web. Hazy, primitive beats (picture a slowed down Ethiopiques loop) rock and sway as horns, electric piano and weirdo samples add to the celestial crunk. And keep in mind, though KWJAZ is weird, far-out and strange, this humble cassette is overflowing with musicianship and close attention to layering and detail.
What makes all the tripped-out, genre defying weirdness so satisfying is Berends's ability to form these diverse elements into a propulsive, evocative musical journey through time and genre. Moments of cool jazz tranquility unexpectedly morph into trip-hop fantasy ballads, long-tone new age bliss suddenly shifts into West African romps, and somehow all these tangents seem impossibly and seamlessly linked. We can't recommend this one enough!
Limited to an edition of 121, fans of Hype Williams, Rangers or Ducktails will not want to miss out on this lysergic masterpiece!
Not sure what you call a group like Kyrgyz, um... other than Kyrgyz, but if this were some stadium rock record, or eighties hair metal record, one might call it a supergroup. But since it's more of a rumbling trancey free drone record we'll just stick with Kyrgyz. The fruits of an afternoon hang out / dinner party / recording session / jam, this disc is a gorgeous, dreamy, noisy slab of slow shifting abstract drones. Not the sort of minimal, single tone stretched out into infinity sort of drone, no these tracks are dense with varied instrumentation and lots of cooks in the kitchen, all swirled into a hypnotic whole. Kyrgyz just so happens to feature Robert Horton, Tom Carter of Charalambides, Loren Chasse (Thuja, Blithe Sons, etc.) and one of our new mailorder ladies Christine Boepple (Whysp, ex-Skygreen Leopards Skyband).
Equal parts, traditional minimalism (La Monte Young, Tony Conrad, Angus Maclise) and modern free folk drone new weird America whatever (Sunroof!, Birchville Cat Motel, Omit, Avarus, etc.), Kyrgyz take an impossible array of instrumentaion and somehow boil it all down into a deep, dark msyterious sound all their own. Lap steel, dobro, e bow, voice recorder, guitar, wah wah, computer, boot, sex machine, el flosser, dulcimer, vitaminder, cd-r's, tapes, minidisc, sleigh bells, percussion, Tibetan bells, cassette recorder, sheng, pitch pipe, hurdy gurdy, phlanger, music box, khaen and even saxophone, all beautifully tangled up into blissed out smears of dense ambience and dreamy drone.
This swank double cd reissues the 1972 third album from Canada's craziest new music/psychedelic rock collective, the anarchic L'Infonie which flourished from '67-'74. (Giving you some clue about their methodical madness, their other LPs were titled "Vol. 3", "Vol. 33", and "Vol. 3333", of which only the first has also been reissued on cd as yet -- we recommended it here back in '01.) Hailing from Montreal, Quebec these academic avant-garde freaks mixed classical chamber music, acid fuzz rock, weird warbling vocal babble, jazzy groove, free improv, musique concrete, prog overload, etc. etc. into a confusing, chaotic, comedic happening that should appeal equally to Terry Riley and Zappa fans. I know sometimes mentioning Zappa is the kiss of death, so don't take it the wrong way. Let's mention some other stuff this reminds us of, in part: Soft Machine Goblin New Trolls Univers Zero Faust Mahogany Brain Art Zoyd Nurse With Wound. This is pretty darn cool and weird and original, bizarrely funny sometimes and simply strange and beautiful on other occasions. Disc one is more "rock", disc two more "classical." What it all means, I don't know -- there's lotsa liner notes, but useful only to the francophones among us.
On the same label that reissued that weird Les Maledictus Sound album, comes this even weirder French-Canadian late '60s artifact. But this isn't really like the pop-psych commerical craziness of the Maledictus disc. L'Infonie was a much more avant-garde group,
Excellent sampler of the limited and prohibitively priced Los Angeles Free Music Society box set. From noise to spoken word rants to sappy jazz to avant garde audio fuckery.
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L.O.S.D.'s contribution to the recently prolific Mort Aux Vaches series (which includes John Duncan, Stillupsteypa, Zoviet France, Maeror Tri, etc...) is more of an aural documentary of neo-historicism which fuses primitive hiss, noise, and static from shortwave radio broadcasts with a running narrative of flowing vocal samples offering a fascinating history of the birth of the radio.
We're so excited to finally be holding this long in the works release in our grubby little paws. A long term collaboration between Loren Chasse and Ray Guillette, When I Lift I Can Feel My Sunburn Singing was originally intended to be released as a picture disc on tUMULt, but through a series of strange circumstances, the picture disc series was put on hold indefinitely, and the L/R record just sort of languished on a dusty shelf somewhere, which was an absolute shame as this is a beautiful piece of work. Thankfully, the folks at Paha Porvari tracked this record down and decided to give it a proper release. While we sort of wish they had pressed this as a real cd, the cd-r format's transitive nature is perfectly suited to the record's sound and theme.
Culled from a series of field recordings collected at the site of a ruined factory in South San Francisco way back in 1996, When I Lift I Can Feel My Sunburn Singing is the document of several live performances in 1997 and 1998 assembled from those sounds.
L/R explore a world of thick washed out drones, swirling seas of whir, gorgeously shimmery expanses of sun dappled sound, all peppered with crackle and glitch, cavernous windblown soundscapes, haunting metallic chimes and muted percussive events, jagged shards of sound, recontextualized into haunting rhythmic grooves, a constantly shifting soundworld of mystery and magic, alternately jagged and caustic, soothing and dreamlike. Incredible stuff!
Gorgeously packaged in an oversized black on black cardstock sleeve, inside lots of beautiful full color inserts, drawings and etchings and paintings reproduced on super nice paper, as well as two delicate vellum inserts with liner notes and credits.
Lovely has done a good thing and reissued some classic Joan La Barbara recordings from the seventies along with some rarities from the eighties to boot. When it comes to extended vocal technique, La Barbara is the queen. Not only can she boast a lengthy career as one of the top vocal performers in the avant garde and a strong resume of academic compositions, but she's even got a film credit as the voice of one of the evil baby aliens in Alien Resurrection. How many performers of her stature in academia can claim to have voiced a slimy little puppet? Not many we'd guess. The set is divided up into an "Explorations" disc and "The Music" disc, and includes her entire 1976 self-released album "Voice Is The Original Instrument". The "Explorations" half is all live, and/or real time, solo voice performances. None of them use any form of processing (digital or otherwise) of the voice and as such are not just intimate, but down right claustrophobic to listen to. Reactions here in the store (from customers and staff alike) range from extreme discomfort to uncontrolled mirth. Andee said that this was the kind of stuff he liked to do as a kid. La Barbara's vocalizations range from slow hooting glissandos like a breathing exercise gone awry to feral animal-esque growls. The second disc, while including much of the same vocal techniques as the first, contains La Barbara's studio works using multi-tracks to over lay multiple overdubbings of growls and such on tape. A definite must for fans of sound poetry.
MPEG Download: "Circular Song" [/audio/joanlabarbcircular.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Circular Song" [/audio/joanlabarbcircular.m3u]
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Eric La Casa - who has also recorded as Syllyk - presents these elemental recordings from mineral ore, electrical buzz, and aquatic field recordings (from the coasts at both the North and Adriatic Seas) ebb and flow against ascending metal drones from a number of Tibetan bowls and bells. Quite lovely in fact.
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Eric La Casa is a French sound artist primarily interested in curating unprocessed field recordings, which are usually of the most common natural element of minerals, wind, and water. With only the contextualizing resources of the recording level and the narrative position, La Casa masterfully reveals the volatile sonic properities of seemingly inert substances. If you're a fan of Chris Watson's incredible field recordings, you should certainly check this one out.
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Eric La Casa (who has previously recorded as Syllyk) presents two collages of layered (and not really processed) field recordings that bookend a lengthy composition for wood, breath, and Tibetan bowls. La Casa may not have the Midas touch to field recordings that Chris Watson has been blessed with, but he has a remarkable ear that enables him to collage his textural recordings within an evocative context.
There was a highly dubious rumor going around that some sound ecologists boasted that they could identify the exact locations of water recordings based on the specific aural characteristics of mineral content, salinity, acidity, and whatnot. An obvious pile of bullshit, if we ever heard one; but we'd like to witness the ensuing debate of two blowhards making fools of themselves trying to argue that this sound of water came from Bangalore and not Brazil. Proof that two refined artists can hear totally different things from the same locations is found on Zones Portuaries. Here are two French modern-day concrete artists who use field recordings as the building blocks in composition; and both have done so for well over two decades having blossomed in the wake of the cassette culture of the '80s. Peyronnet may be better known as Toy Bizarre, whose prolific output clock in at over 200 compositions, all of which given the unwieldy and unknowable acronym "kdi dctb" followed by the corresponding number. La Casa did use the moniker Syllyk way back when, but probably nobody remembers that one. These two artists based their compositions on original recordings that were made in the same two cities (La Harve in France and Liege in Belgium) during the same year (2010, if you must know). La Casa's clamorous sounds from Le Havre give the impression of that city being a labyrinth of massive steel doors whose battleship resonance and squeaking hinges are constantly monitored by sensors and alarms. It's a very claustrophobic experience, and the Belgian recordings are equally as monolithic if more based on pneumatic motors and pressurized hissings, with a bit more of the environmental ambience (e.g. birds, foghorns, people yelling into walkie-talkies, etc.). Peyronnet's opening piece is a remix of La Casa's source material from Le Havre, reprising those same metal door bangings and oscillating alarm calls, although Peyronnet is far more likely to extract a particular frequency to build an alien drone suspended throughout the piece. His other two pieces adopt this strategy with compacted layers of hiss, grit, echo, and fizz that twist and bend with phase patterning undulations. Yeah, these are two totally different interpretations of the same locale; and both are riveting in their organic / synthetic amalgams of the urban environment.
A dark, spartan work of sonic disintegrations and accumulations. At times, very much akin to Village of Savoonga or Godspeed. Metallic abrasions, clouds of hiss and static, field recordings (of birds and airplanes), and short purring loops surface, mingle and dissipate. The two lengthy tracks are punctuated by the occasional appearance of frail A haunting and lovely 24 minutes from the duo of Dorothy Geller and Douglas Wolf, recorded in 1999.
So interesting to see what new directions people take when faced with similar turning points. Out of the ashes of Pocahaunted, Bethany Cosentino embraced her love of pop and girl group garage glory, forming Best Coast. On the other hand, her former bandmate Amanda Brown went the other way, riffing off the layers of fractured/damaged sounds that Pocahaunted were creating into something more dubbed out and beat orientated. What's so cool is they both created such great music while taking utterly different paths.
LA Vampires seem to thrive on collaboration. Her record with Zola Jesus last year was a narcotic dubbed out slow burner and she also collaborated with Matrix Metals and shared a slice of vinyl with Psychic Reality. Ital is the new left-field dance project by former San Francisco resident Daniel McCormick (Mi Ami, Sex Worker). We were super excited when we heard McCormick was working on a new project focusing on weirdo electronic dance tracks. We knew he had such a great ear for the underworld of damaged dance sounds and damn does this collaboration between him and LA Vampires kill! Dubbed out, tripped out, swirling with infectious yet hazy melody and sensual rhythm. It's a 12" that merges the steaminess and sexiness of Throbbing Gristle's "Hot On The Heels Of Love" with the Chromatics "I Want Your Love." We've been playing this nonstop!
"Automatic Radio" is collection of three performances from LA sound artist Brandon LaBelle, which (as always) includes complete notes on the work at hand. The first piece is a series of closely mic-ed human utterances mimicking animal speech, with the intention of locating the tension inherent in "speaking as a body (sensuality)" and "speaking as an individual (social behavior)."
"Music On A Short Thin Wire" is another conceptual excercise from LA experimentalist Brandon LaBelle, who seems to have recently run into the problem of favoring intent over content. On this album, LaBelle has amplified the first eight releases on the
In the extended essay that accompanies his second album for Selektion, Brandon LaBelle offers a semantic argument about his work being located at the border between private and public, the real and the cultural modes of production, field recordings and
"Writing Aloud" is the second massive publication from experimental musician Brandon LaBelle's Errant Bodies Press, and is a collection of writings about the semiotic slippages between sound and language. His introduction states: "in speaking about
The latest from LA sound artists Labelle (of id battery) and Steve Roden (aka in.betweeen.noise), sees them collaborating with the care and intellect that they are both known for in their work. "'The Opening Of The Field' presents a series of live studio improvisations that move quietly through the intimate surfaces of objects to the fragmented landscapes of field recordings. In this movement, from textured scrapings to electronic manipulations, the distinctness of objects and the processes of recordings clouds over to create a highly detailed sonic flow. The spaces of sounds and their origin are transposed onto an imaginary space where listening leads to many openings." -- from the liner notes. Need we say more? No? Good.
The one frustrating thing about the list, and the AQ website in general, that sometimes drives us crazy, is that it only really began in earnest in the mid nineties, thus there are SO many records that we love, and that we reference all the time, that we just always assume MUST be on the list, but aren't, so we try to review those records anyway once in a while, if they're still available, but even better is when one of those discs gets reissued, giving us the opportunity to shower it with the praise we would have back in the day. Which brings us to the gorgeous debut from Labradford (which was also the very first release on Kranky!).
Originally released in 1993, the sound of Prazision LP was so prescient, the current crop of cd-r noisemakers have nothing on these guys, in fact, almost anything you hear now on some super limited cd-r, you could hear on Prazision LP more than a decade earlier. A gorgeous blend of shimmering ambience, fractured folk, minimal pop, sculpted noise and experimental soundscapes that seems to be constantly in flux, a fluid, organic collection of sounds and songs, a murky melancholy mood music rendered in soft strummed shimmer and haunting abstract ambience.
The opening track is the perfect send off, as we depart on our journey, dark billowy drones, keening distant high end streaks, a strange almost mechanical non-rhythm hovering in the foreground, beneath it all deep dark sonic swells, a muted mysterious melody, everything seemingly drifting weightless in a hazy expanse of underwater sunlight. But before we can settle in and float weightlessly into the ether, the second track introduces an actual song, simple strummed steel string guitar, melancholy Jandekian sadboy vocals, over a haunting multilayered drone. The next track is more pop, but even more druggy and unhinged, vocals buried in a murky muddy swirl of effected guitars and sprawling minor key melodies, reminding us of an even less propulsive Spacemen 3 or a way druggier Galaxie 500, no beats, just the voice and the various smeared sounds floating heavenward. In fact the whole record has that vibe, sort of wasted, bleary eyed, druggy, dreamy, drifting, on the verge of simply fading away, or floating into the sun to be consumed and turned to ash.
The rest of the record is balanced pretty evenly between Velvets style lo-fi downer pop, lazy and languorous and laid waaaay back, guitars glistening and glimmering, and thick mesmerizing slabs of slow shifting glacial whir, often a breathtaking combination of the two. Absolutely gorgeous and so forward thinking. One of our favorite records ever, a dark and doleful experimental abstract ambient pop masterpiece.
For the reissue, both tracks from Labradford's first 7" are included, and both tracks are just more of that haunting mysterious beauty. Totally recommended.
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This record is one of the most amazing we have ever heard, and of course, it's been practically impossible to get back in stock. But now we have it, and you should buy it. It's pummelling and heavy and beautiful. Not sure how long we'll have this in stock.
An ex-Dazzling Killmen (Blake Fleming) takes his penchant for angular discordance a step further, forgoing the ferocious heaviosity of his former outfit, and instead, explores lengthy semi-improvisational psychedelic freakouts and repetetive hypno-krautrock instrumentals ala Circle. Post rock jamscapes littered with shrieking and droning Albert Ayler-ish sax, jabs of no wave guitar, an overwhelming over-saturated super-distorted production and absolutely crushing drumming. Totally essential.
More amazing sonic weirdness from Israel, from the always amazing Heart & Crossbone label, who in the past have given us releases from Barbara, Lietterschpich, Cadaver Eyes, Grave In The Sky and Mildew. Lagan Tapes is the work of a duo who between the two of them are members of most of the above mentioned bands as well as Panda Porn whose disc is reviewed elsewhere on this list. One half of the duo bangs on on stuff, the other half captures it on tape, and the result is really fantastic. Not as noisy and clattery as you might expect, instead, it's rhythmic and hypnotic, a sort of junkyard Gamelan, recorded in Belfast Ireland, while walking across the Lagan River... metallic clank and rapid fire skitter, thumping on fences and garbage cans and anything else within reach, bare hands on metal, a constantly shifting set of rhythms, all captured on a broken cassette recorder, wrapping the rhythms in all sorts of lo-fi hiss and distorted buzz. Some tracks are hissy and high end, a relentless blast of clank and clatter, others are much more subdued, mellow and meandering, some tracks sound like straight up field recordings, chiming bells, the crash of metal fences, others sound like full on blown out lo-fi krautrock jams. Behind the percussive patter, you can hear all sorts of ambient sounds, voices, birds, running water, it's almost like some strange blend of avant percussion and nature recording.
The label compares the sound to MCMS, Crash Worship, Pain Teens, early 80's Sonic Youth, 23 Skidoo, Gamelan Son of Lion, but for us, the most obvious and accurate references are probably Gamelan Son Of Lion and Crash Worship, as this is all about the rhythms, the pound and pulse, the shuffle and skitter, the clang and the clatter. Hyper rhythmic and abstract, intense and mesmerizing, an incredible chunk of experimental percussion, that should of course appeal to the rhythm obsessed, but also manages to sound surprisingly musical.
Packaged in an oversized envelope with the imprint of a cassette tape pressed into the paper, inside, three oversized printed cards with photos and liner notes...
The art of Laibach can be found in their precise engineering of context, as they specialize in the cross-pollenization of musical archetypes and political rhetoric in an effort to undermine the totalitarian forces at work within consumer culture. The Laibach iconography emerges as a complex and purposefully contradictory concoction of Nazi-kunst, Wagnerian pomp, and Teutonic disco. When Laibach gets their hands on them, these forms become especially absurd, as they fuse such industrialized, miltaristic aesthetics to the songs of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Queen, Pink Floyd, Europe, and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Yes, some of these Frankensteinian marches are a little clumsy; if you've heard their infamous reinterpretation of the Beatles' Let It Be, and particularly the comically fumbled version of "Get Back", then you know that Laibach's iron fist has the potential to crack a pretty bad joke from time to time.
Anthems is the self-explanitory anthology of Laibach's most bombastic, and well, anthemic work. In many ways, Anthems is a "best of" compilation for Laibach, dating back to such classics as "Brat Moj" a turgid, solemn oath delivered with the sanguine baritone voice that has become a trademark for Laibach. But the bulk of Anthems feature the jackhammered, post-Wax Trax rhythms, incendiary guitar riffs, and claustrophobic electronics which Rammstein shamelessly stole on their way to MTV domination. Laibach probably didn't care, as they obviously did it much better and with a smug intelligence that Rammstein wholly lacks. Along with a great retrospective of this self-proclaimed retro-garde band, Anthems also features a second disc of remixes which apply a greater dancefloor sheen to Laibach's sound.
From their very earliest audio documents and live performances, the Slovenian avant-industrial ensemble Laibach had developed an incredibly focused mythology around themselves as a provocative force acting upon the extremes of art and politics. Working particularly with the aesthetics of totalitarianism (which as a political institution had long been hammered into the psyche of the Slovenian people from the left, right, East, and West), Laibach reconstituted any number of myths which invoked both fear and fascination in their audience. They wrote manifestos calling for a depersonalization through their music; they cross-pollinated Stalinist and Nazi imagery (alongside occultish symbolism and increasingly absurdist pop-cultural references); and they qualified their concerts as presentations of "systematic psycho-physical terror as a principle of social organization." In 1985 when Laibach ventured out upon their Occupied Europe Tour, they were a truly scary band with nobody really knowing how to analyze what they were doing. Was it an ugly resurgence of fascism? Was it psychological warfare conducted in the public arena? Was it a post-modern strategy reconnecting signifiers of hollowed ideologies? It was probably all of those things and more.
In the live recordings from that tour that made their way onto Neu Konservatiw, Laibach's sound was a punishing collision of martial rhythms and megaphone vocal broadcasts, exhibiting none of the black humour found later in their Beatles covers or their take on Jesus Christ Superstar. With the insistent plod of the multiple drums and monochord bass thumps, Laibach paralleled the abject stomp that the Swans were producing at that time, even though both projects had vastly different artistic intentions. As their studio albums in the mid-'80s were mostly sample based and had a clipped rigidity that make some of their songs a little clumsy, the live setting forced Laibach to strip their music to the most essential stabs of anthemic bombast; and on Neu Konservatiw, Laibach pull it off with an executioner's cold stoicism. Forcefully blunt and uncompromisingly brilliant.
If one were to take the logic of appropriative artists like Warhol or Rauschenberg, to the extremities of absurdity and dehumanization through the procress of mechanical reproduction, you would have Laibach. Perhaps the most misunderstood post-modern project to infiltrate pop culture, Laibach has often been associated with the proliferation of totalitarianism and Nazi culture, simply because they used those higly charged symbols and images and projected them back into the mass culture. However, Laibach's intent is to reinvest not just those symbols, but any symbol of authority and power, with the question of why is this symbol important to our culture. In many ways, Laibach was continuing in the same paths of inquiry found in their British compatriots Throbbing Gristle and The Hafler Trio; however, Laibach never cracked a smile, an attitude exemplified in their triumphant reinterpretations of the Beatles "Let It Be" as a series of miliaristic dirges and patriotic medleys.
"Rekapitulacija 1980 + 1984" was their first album, released as a double LP set with a beautiful series of reproduced woodcuts, offering portraits of the noble spirit from the agrarian worker married to the industrial landscapes, mirroring the same totalitarian artforms that had been thrust upon their native Slovenia during the Nazi occupation and later behind the Iron Curtain, when Yugoslavia was a Communist country. Despite this being their earliest set of recordings, Laibach's skill in the studio is tremendous, as heard in their epic piece 'Ti, Ki Izzivas' transforming Bernhard Hermann's soundtrack for "Psycho" into a punishing uber-motif coupled with a relentless drum machine pound and discordant organ blasts. Other tracks such as 'Brat Moj' or 'Smrt Za Smrt' are brooding no wave constructions, taking the best and most haunting elements of early Swans and early Cabaret Voltaire and fusing them into a skeletal anti-groove laced with growling vocals and commanding basslines.
But Laibach themselves have said it best in their early masterpiece 'Perspektive' : "By darkening the consumers' mind, it drives them into a state of humble contrition and total obedience and self-sacrifice, by destroying every track of individuality, it melts the individuals into a mass and a mass into a humble collective body... Our basic inspiration (ideals which are not ideals through their form but the material of Laibach manipulation itself) remains an industrial production, the art of the third Reich, totalitarianism, taylorism, bruitism, disco... The disco rhythm as a regular repetition, is the purest / the most radical form of the militantly organized rhythmicity of technicist production, and as such the most appropriate means of media manipulation." To hear this recited in the style of a Russian propagandist over a ominous thud of drum machines and triumphant Wagnerian horns, one can't help but laugh at the absurdity of such a statement; however, the logic quickly sinks in that Laibach are 100% correct. A brilliant album.
Perhaps the greatest and most challenging pieces of conceptual art disguised as a pop album. Truly awesome.
