Taking the catchy rock n' roll energy of bands like the Hives or Rocket From the Crypt and propelling it into political territory, this Swedish fivesome provides the dance soundtrack to a revolution. Sexy, soulful horn-tinged garage-punk with lyrics dedicated to fightin' capitalism, giving a voice to immigrants, and other radical topics-- free your ass, and perhaps your mind will follow the young Swedes' lead to the weighty philosphies of Guy Debord, Luis Althusser and others, as listed in the liner notes following each song. Does the lack of a revolutionary quality to the relatively straight-ahead music undermine their message, or is this an aural example of the tactics, such as the use of comics and cinema, that the Situationists used in order to better spread their message to the masses? I'm not sure, but I still think the album's pretty hot.
I know it seems like we must be joking, but it's true. ANOTHER Acid Mothers Temple record. And not just a new record, PART ONE IN A THREE PART SERIES!!!! But then it wouldn't really be a list without some new sonic missive from these guys on the far away fringes of outer spacerock. But let's start with the packaging. We were all practically stunned into silence by the packaging. Seriously. It is so beautiful. The cover is like one of those vintage 3D sort of multi-layered lenticular postcard, showing a tiny spaceman standing at the edge of a canyon, while a flying saucer swoops down and shines lasers or beams of light and a gorgeous red sunset shimmers in the background. You really have to just see it. And the disc is a 3" cd embedded in a clear 5" cd with some very Yes-like spacescapes. Really nice. Volume two is going to have a lot to live up to. As we seem to be telling you everytime we review ANOTHER Acid Mothers Temple record, although you think that the quality would slip, or this would all get boring and BAD, 'Magical Powers' beats the odds again, and is actually really, really nice. A 20 minute slab of space-y shimmer, buzzing synths and plucked sitars are bombarded by bleeps and blips, reverb and delay, and ghostly female vocals. A futuristic raga, undulating and slowly shifting, a faraway Eastern melody winding subtly through the druggy haze. Blissed out and hypnotic.
This is the debut cd by AQ pal Jeff Sampson and his partner Jeph Jerman (Hands To), who live 2000 miles apart and have been playing on and off together for 20 years! This is noise-y intense music concrete but filtered through a more modern noise/found sound/freejazz aesthetic. Two 30 minute pieces. The first starts out with struck bells, shimmering into nothingness, chiming and ringing, lots of overtones and lots and lots of space. Soon the whole thing implodes into an orgy of clatter and thumps and creaks and splattery percussion, wild freeform rhythms and non-rhythms, and all sorts of strange sounds. Whining strings that sound like the cries of a wild animal, moaning lower register drones, all manner of bowed, and strummed an plucked instruments, making sounds they weren't designed to make. Track one is half hippy psych clatter, half 20th century freak out. A weird combination but it works somehow. Track two uses the same elements but spreads the clatter out a bit, making for a more sort of haunted soundscape, done musique concrete style. Really cool.
This is Antony Milton's first completely computer based recording, using the sounds of Tibetan instruments that just happened to be laying about. Things start off with what sounds like someone taking a powersaw to a bell, UGLY, but with gorgeous shimmering overtones. As the record progresses we hear lots of wild tribal percussion over a thudding pulse and some low end rumble, banjos chopped up into a digital soup that sounds a bit like a more uneven, more jagged Oval, and syrupy bass melodies and fluttery static over a dreamy, hypnotic dirge with rich swells and seasick melodies. This is a really nice mix of organic and non-organic sounds, computer manipulated into a collection of rich soundscapes, gorgeous ambience and some downright melodic, almost-pop-songs.
We'll just have to assume that AM stands for Antony Milton, head of Pseudo Arcana. This disc starts off with a three part piece, the sounds of passing traffic, buzzing insects, whirring fans, and sort of lowercase drones with the occasional percussive intrusion of a bumped microphone, or distant clatter. Eventually, strange otherworldly notes are introduced, sounding a bit like horns without reeds, more sound than actual notes, but they manage to add miniscule amounts of soothing melody. Part two sounds like a version of part one, only far away, and with the sound of crickets, that slowly evolves into a buzzing swarm. Part three sounds like a version of part two, but with the addition of doleful lonely melodies played on a bamboo flute. Sounds like some overheard, ancient ceremony being performed fireside. Track 2 is all casio bleeps and blips, that demarcate a warbly uneven synth drone, all dreamy and effevescent. Sounds a bit like a more lo-fi Boards Of Canada. The final track is a noisy assemblage of dissonant clatter and barely discernable melody, tape hiss, and a wild spray of notes and tones, like a Total or Gate record falling apart, slowly deconstructing before your ears. Nice.
From our pal Duncan at Rage Of Achilles comes this thrashing, pummelling head banging death/splatter/grind/metal doubleheader. Two bands we'd never heard of, battling it out, both pretty awesome. The first 21 tracks, almost all clocking in at a minute or less, come courtesy of Anatomi-71. Crusty, sort of lo-fi, not-quite-hyperspeed grind. Two vocalists (or one doing double time) grunting growls and hellish screeching. All furious and fast and compliacted. Good stuff, but the final 12 tracks are where it's at! The band Nemo are responsible for these, and they are soooooo fast, and so insane sounding. They incorporate lightning speed drum machines, video game samples, and all sorts of bizarre bleeps and blips and buzzing into the mix, turning their metallic grind into some sort of grindmetal alien video game soundtrack. This stuff is so nuts it's kind of hard to even describe. If I was making a horror/alien invasion/splatter flick, the is the music I would want as the soundtrack. Think some fucked up mix of the Locust, Orthrelm, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Crom Tech, Man Is The Bastard, Space Invaders, Galaga, Missle Command, Joust and Rastan. Or the best death metal video game they never made for the Commodore 64! Fucking great!
This unfortunately monickered duo make up for the name, with a wild and woolly sound, raw and noisy but dreamy and soothing at the same time. Carrying on the tradition of 'classic' NZ noise ala the Dead C / Gate, TA take instruments, REAL instruments, and spread them over our ears in a thick and prickly, warm and sticky, pummellingly beautiful mess of sound. From thud rock dirge, to outer sound explorations, to almost-pop, to deconstructed rhythmic workouts, to shoe-gazey space rock, all filtered through that distinctly noisy NZ lo-fi aesthetic. Really really great. Two cd-r discs in a nice handpainted cover, with some truly strange comics inside.
It's a battle between order and chaos in this split release from Big Techno Werewolves, featuring Crack: We Are Rock's King Riff, and Caroliner offshoot Hans Grusel's Krankenkabin. Big Techno pits guitar pickin', pie-ana plinkin' and gutter blues against total tape loop annihilation, while in Hans Grusel's world, creepy organ requiems occasionally surface beneath electronic noise in a portrait of circuit-driven madness deep in the black forest. Cd-r packed in a big velvety black dvd case.
It's really amazing how I never get tired of this BCM stuff. I think a lot of that is due to the fact that all of these records are completely different, and while the differences are subtle, you are rewarded for active listening, digging deep into the layers of sound and focusing on different patterns and rhythms, different sounds and instruments. Campbell Kneale, like Matthew Bower before him, seems to have a direct line to the primordial drone, able to summon it at a moments notice, and then channel it through all sorts of strange instrumentation. 'Home' is definitely UR-DRONE of the highest order, a very Eastern tinged raga, with plucked and bowed strings, subtle feedback and barely-there percussion woven into a seamless tapestry of head expanding sound.
This is a collection of random recordings from 200-2002, but even as a collection of outtakes and leftovers, it functions quite nicely as a proper record, or even as an excellent introduction to the mighty (and mighty prolific) Birchville Cat Motel. This is that sublime NZ drone, with occasional bursts of dog whistle skree and cascading feedback. Lush and rich and dreamy. Fans of Sunrrof!, Total, Vibracathedral Orchestra and drone in general should really, if they haven't already, invest in a serious BCM collection!
Another entry from the neverending barrage of gritty drones from Campbell Kneal's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon cd-r imprint, "Serene Trajectories" finds Campbell in his Birchville Cat Motel persona collaborating with fellow New Zealand sound sculptor Richard Francis (aka Eso Steel). Ostensibly, both work with "the drone", although they approach the medium in two entirely different means. Campbell prefers electric miasmas from guitar amplifiers and broken electronics, often drawing comparisons to Dead C and Sunroof; where Francis works with much cleaner techniques, digitally sculpting field recordings into textually rich dronescapes. As can be expected, this album falls directly in between those two ends of the fidelity spectrum, as flurries of indeterminant buzzings amass into thick snowstorms of raw sound while dramatic clatterings and striations burst through the stereofield with remarkable clarity and precision. Yup, another winner from Celebrate Psi Phenomenon.
Nothing new here. More lo-fi, blues explosion style, good ol' boys singing into a vacuum cleaner, shouting and whooping it up, foot stomping, 80-year-old-delta-bluesman-trapped-in-a-30-year-old-white-man's-body, swampy, dirty, barroom brawling, pig fucking, wild rhythm and blues form one half of the long gone Doo Rag, the band that started it all. The best part (and we're assuming he's poking a little fun at some other overly-self-referencing white blooz groop) is, after continuously shouting out his name, and the label's name, when he announces the fact that he's a one man band, and then announces the band members one at a time: "Mr right foot on the ol' bass drum......"
Now available for the first time ever on CD. It's hard to believe after the band has been around for what, over 20 years now, has been played on top forty radio and has seen practically everything they've released, down to the most obscure tracks, get reissued, has only now had their first two -- now practically legendary -- eps released on compact disc. "The Shah Sleeps In Lee Harvey's Grave" is practically a punk rock anthem, or no less than the genre's swan song. Depending on how you look at it, maybe both. For the band anyway, the track was every bit a standard as "Free Bird" was for Skynyrd. I don't know what's weirder, the fact that these haven't been reissued until now, or that the band -- who at one time seemed destined to a life of cult obscurity -- has acheived such enormous mainstream success. It's all urine under the bridge now though, as you can have it all on disc and then some. Along with the original self-titled (a.k.a Brown Reason To Live) ep, and the follow up live PCPPEP from 1984, there are an additional three live ("Gary Floyd", "Matchstick" and an additional version of "Something") and one studio ("Sinister Canyon") bonus tracks that make it hard for those of us who already own the vinyl to resist the temptation.
Calla is a band that is pleading for redemption, but they don't entirely want to give up their tough guy / combatively masculine take on existentialism. Witnessed with singer Aurelio Valle's gruff delivery and his bleak lyricism, this formula of the rock singer holding onto the mythological trappings of being a rebellious bad-ass while seeking favor with the Lord is, of course, a very powerful and seductive image that parallels the individualistic ideals of the self-made American. Valle doesn't really offer any insights into these ideals; if anything, he runs the risk of falling into the self-pitying cliches of those ideals. However, the music, not the lyrics, is where Calla finds their true calling. Each of their songs on "Televise" brilliantly employ simple rhythm section progressions that recall a darker version of Calexico's gunslingin' swagger. On top of this, Calla's understatedly hypnotic arrangements, driven by high-lonesome guitar melodies and crescendos, appear as skeletal eviscerations of the epic riffs previously mined by Mogwai, Tarentel, and Godspeed! You Black Emperor.
Calla's compositional attempts at theatricality through rock minimalism sometimes seem a little forced, and the nihilistic depth-charges may be a tad too predictable in their ghosty references/resemblances to 16 Horsepower, Nick Cave, Mark Lanegan, Steve Von Till's solo albums, and of course Johnny Cash, but Calla is one step away from being a really great band; and when they realize that Valle should hold his tongue once in a while and let the music do the talking, they will arrive at greatness. But in the meantime, "Televise" makes for a very good, albeit slightly flawed album.
The true heirs to the Cale / Conrad / Maclise / Palestine / Flynt throne just happen to be kindred souls thousands of miles apart. And in cosmic slip up (or inside joke) they've both been given the same name, only transposed! I mean, come on, it was only a matter of time before Campbell and Kneale (or Neil and Campbell) would realise their destinies, and realise how perfect this collaboration would be aesthetically, as well as sonically! And it couldn't be more perfect. Tinkling chimes, shimmery cymbals and bells, creaking feedback, wild splattery percussion, bowel loosening rumbles, warm late night drones, all woven together into a wild and free, gorgeously invigorating, but completely soothing, otherworldly tranced out raga. Absolutely sublime. Fans of NC's Vibracathedral Orchestra or CK's Birchville Cat Motel need this for sure.
This album features 14 tracks with various combinations of Andreas Berthing, Kim Cascone, Audrey Kiritchenko, and Kotra remixing each other's source material through digital means. Whatever the source material might have been is irrelavent, as the the end results on "Fourfold Symmetry" are a polite demonstration of the parameters of abstraction of the digital glitch, with a dedicated metholodogy that favors anonymity and anti-emotionality. For all of the rhetoric about the chance operations and coaxing of errors between the man / machine interface, this album is exactly what you'd expect: bristling collages of granular synthesis and digital feedback from Max / MSP patches toppling computerized droning fluctuations of sound.
A word of warning about the packaging for the album: Nexsound has given themselves an interesting folio envelope held together by tabs extending from one of the sides of the folio. This design works alright on something flexible like paper (which works just fine for the Moglass album) but this album uses a rigid plastic instead of paper that will tear after repeated usages.
This is a recording of the speech Noam Chomsky gave at MIT one month after September 11th, dealing with the way that US foreign policy has contributed to terrorism in places like Turkey, the Middle East and Latin America. Chomsky clearly points out the absurdities of the American military action against Afghanistan as part of the "War on Terror," which has now morphed into an impending war on Iraq. While the situation in Afghanistan has dropped from the headlines (and even back pages for that matter), and this speech assumes some basic knowledge of US-led atrocities abroad and therefore takes on a bit of a preaching-to-the-choir tone, Chomsky provides some very interesting information on foreign policy matters (including many examples of the USA's total disregard for international law, even more examples of which, unfortunately, just may be cropping up in the near future). What's funny is that many of his examples are quoted from sources like the Wall Street Journal and Christian Science Monitor -- far from being an extreme voice, Chomsky simply reaches incredibly common-sense conclusions from readily available information, albeit information the power elite in our country happily ignore, comfortable in the knowledge that the American people will do the same. Scary stuff.
One of the more recent Circle records finally released on vinyl by our pals at Static Caravan. Good thing too since the cd is out of print. Double lp, colored vinyl in a nice gatefold sleeve with some of the most tripped out artwork we've seen in a while, different from the cd version. Here's what we had to say about the cd when it first came out.
Is there such a thing as Circle overload? We don't think so. In their case, you can't have too much of a good thing. A brand new disc of their hypnotic avant-rock compositions. Newer than their recent "Andexelt" album, and just as good. Not as sparse and dubby as that disc, "Prospekt" is rather heavier and denser, mesmerizingly repetitive as always, and kinda startling, with some incredible vocal acrobatics / operatics in the opening track "Dedofiktion". Really great!
The history of the legendary New Zealand indie label Flying Run quite literally begins with The Clean. Impressed by a slew of The Clean's live performances in their home town of Dunedin, New Zealand back in 1980, Roger Shephard began Flying Nun, simply in order to release the band's first single "Tally Ho." That song, an upbeat but simple post-punk number that crashed together jangling guitars and persistant organ melodies, surprised everybody with a considerable amount of commercial success in New Zealand, and became one of many songs by The Clean that found enthusiastic audiences in the US during the college rock days of the '80s, offering a quirky, exotic alternative to staples like REM, the Replacements, Robyn Hitchcock, and Elvis Costello.
Formed in 1978 by the Kilgour brothers David and Hamish, The Clean never stooped to the depths of the Gallagher brother's public fisticuffs; but the band -- which flushed out its membership with Robert Scott and (in the early days) Peter Gutteridge -- spent more time broken up than together. Yet, their eternally catchy pop songs became the blueprint for almost all of the other Flying Nun bands (in part due to the numerous Clean related projects on Flying Nun, including The Bats, The Great Unwashed, Bailter Space, Snapper, Stephen, and others). The Clean's self-explanatory "Anthology" runs through their numerous albums, offering a good chunk of their fantastic early work (the aforementioned "Tally Ho," the "Boodle Boodle Boodle" ep, the "Great Sounds..." ep, and a couple of oddities) on one disc. Edgy yet unswervingly optimistic, these songs were sloppy four-track recordings of monomaniacally simple rhythms, cacophonously jangly guitar melodies, and happy-go-lucky vocals. Disc two contains excerpts from the '90s albums "Vehicle," "Modern Rock," and "Unknown Country," which marked a considerable polishing of The Clean's sound, in part because they recorded that material in well established studios like Blackwing studios in London, but also as the songs, while still simple in their own right, were slightly more restrained.
Highly recommended!
Of all the glitch guys, as I like to call them -- Noto, Komet, Byetone, and the entire Raster-Noton raster -- Coh's Ivan Pavlov, has always been the one to take the glitch into uncharted territory. See Coh's bizarre 'Love Uncut' record from a while back and his bizarre 'metal tribute' record 'Iron' which was decidedly non-metallic. So while this latest record is not necessarily a surprise, it is surprisingly beautiful and once again shows Coh to be truly original. The glitch takes a back seat on these 4 seasonal recordings. Instead the computer is used Oval-style, to take organic sounds and transform them. 'The Colour Of Beauty, Summer Is Red' is by far the most beautiful track Pavlov has ever recorded, with creaking swells of violin, warm and thick, with a definite 20th century classical vibe, lots of space and dynamics. Dreamy but also ominous. Quite reminiscent of Oval's 'Diskont', but chopped up and spread out into a glacial rhythm of throbs and pulses, dramatic swells and vaccuum like silences. So nice. 'Winter Brooding Underneath' is another winner, a massive drone sculpted from slowly bowed cello, huge, rumbling, slowly-shifting low end, with the timbre of the cello stretched as far as (in)humanly possible into an oscillating sea of lower register vibrations. Breathtaking. 'As Ripe As Autumn's Tears' is a totally spare pleak-scape of single reverb drenched piano notes ringing out into space, bookended by field recordings of rain. Skeletal and lovely. Finally, 'Springs Come Shooting: Make Love, Make War', is a Pavlov guitar solo, clattery and scratchy and noodly, but chopped and recontextualized into some decidedly non-guitar-like sounds. This track is as close as this record gets to actual 'electronica' or 'techno', with a steady, gradually mutating, electronic rhythm sounding a bit like a super lo-fi Kraftwerk.
Comes on MASSIVE 180 gram vinyl in a gorgeous, super thick gatefold sleeve, with a painting for each track.
The exact history behind this record is vague as no one from the recording sessions can remember when it was recorded more specifically than sometime between 1985 and 1986, placing "Dawn" nebulously as the fourth, fifth, or sixth album from Current 93. Yet, one thing remains very clear about this album, "Dawn" was the final Current 93 document that featured David Tibet's blood curdling sermons of nightmarish imagery, fronting the C93's gnarled collages of noise, tape loops, and studio effects. After this album, Current 93 pursued and refined the style that they are known for now: "menstrual minstrals and apocalyptic folk songs," where the history of UK folk was infused with pantheistic mythologies, that expanded beyond the apocalyptic prophecies of Current 93's early work. David Tibet has previously scoffed at "Dawn" because of the relative ease at which he, Steven Stapleton, and company produced this record, through the use of looping collages. While such a dismissal indicates Tibet's belief that Current 93 would be best as a UK folk vehicle, it doesn't acknowledge how powerful Current 93 had become in using this medium to convey Tibet's drug addled visions of the apocalypse. Almost all of the images of "Dawn" are recontextualizations of Catholic imagery or inverted bastardizations of Catholicism. Snippets of liturgical chants, medieval vocal chorales, and rounds of carillon bells phase in and out of loops from Aleister Crowley incantations, funeral dirges, and the ubiquitous voice of Tibet, whose snarling voice has been processed into wraith like slashes of malevolent noise. The opening track "Great Black Time" -- which appears in two slightly different versions on this CD reissue -- also features the odd intrusion of The Beach Boys' "California Dreaming" amidst crashing waves of church bells.
The recently reissued "Dawn" is certainly not as stong as Current 93's early masterpieces "Dogs Blood Rising" and "Nature Unveiled," yet it remains an solid document of post-industrial / nightmare culture from the early to mid '80s.
The Scots certainly have a magic touch when it comes to creating absolute pop splendor. Just think of artists like Belle And Sebastian, Mogwai, Teenage Fanclub, Arab Strap, not to mention supergroup The Reindeer Section... and then there's this band! You might recall Windy and Cup both gushing over the Delgados' last album The Great Eastern a couple of years back. Oh my! Well, we're happy to report that with this, their fourth full length, they've picked up right where they left off. That is, continuing to finely craft their splendid compositions full of a swirling carousel of strings, woodwinds and horns, honey-sweet male and female lead vocals, and an angelic choral accompaniment. Plus they've done so once again with the notable presence of Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Sparklehorse, Mercury Rev) in the producer's seat. Such a wonderful combination it is! Making for an even grander big picture than they created together on the super lush Great Eastern. Clouds of shimmering cymbal crashes punctuate the glorious, dramatic atmosphere, definitely revealing that distinct Fridmann touch. Wistful, lulling melodies are introduced in the most spartan of settings -- a lone voice and guitar -- but soon build to epic proportions. And the lyrics? Ah yes, quite capable of stirring heartswelling sighs and misty eyes from the coldest of men with their crushingly bittersweet imagery (lyrics are included in the cd booklet). If you've even a glimmer of affection for glorious orchestral pop, the Delgados are for you! Luminous and lovely and so very recommended.
Note: Includes a video for their song "Coming In From The Cold" and two bonus tracks not on the Mantra UK pressing.
The German avant-noise / art band from the '80s, Die Todliche Doris, made a commitment that they would only play each of their songs but once EVER during live performances. However, during their numerous gigs in art galleries, punk squats, and concert halls, the band would quickly run out of material or risk compromising their earlier declaration. So instead, Die Todlich Doris would play back previous live performances and lip-sync to the backing tape, all the while recording the live show of them lip-syncing to a backing tape! In doing so, Doris captured the general atmosphere of the space, the lo-fi grit of tape technologies, and layers of crowd noise. Conceptually, "Live Playbacks" is very similar to Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting In A Room" in which Lucier re-recorded himself uttering a text 32 times in order to manifest the resonnant frequency of a specific room; however, Doris' version becomes a thick swamp of noise rather than a pristine phenomenological investigation. Only a couple (literally, two!) of these are in stock, and restocks are unlikely, so act fast.
This is an unexpected direction for Rhode Island cd-r label Last Visible Dog. Some sort of 20th century / chamber / avant / classical. Abstract, shimmering strings, soaring but leaving lots of space. With occasional bursts of percussive clatter that sounds like someone jumping in a giant pile of bubblewrap! Lots of pizzicato plucking and Bjork-ish howling, stuttered, non-sensical vocalisations, wild bowing/sawing on the strings, and percussive tapping/slapping on the instrument bodies. Wild and weird and truly out there.
We've got just a *single copy* of this hard-to-find video documenting The Ex, stalwarts of the underground avant rock scene since they began in 1979 -- that's over 20 years ago! Contains lots of footage documenting their famously intense live shows, conversations with all of the band members, rehearsals, much insight into their view of punk as DIY way of living, which they apply in activities such as self-releasing records, etc. A nice glimpse into the world of a band that has inspired cultish devotion amongst many (including some here at AQ) not to mention Tortoise, Sonic Youth, Dutch avant jazz pioneer Han Bennink, Tom Cora, etc. 52 minutes. Color. Made by Swedish filmmakers, subtitled. First come...
The Australian label Lexicon Devil has certainly picked an unusual scene to ressurrect from the mires of terminal obscurity, as they've been reissuing a handful of records from the mid-'80s psych-electronic-noise rock scene of Milwaukee. It's probably a stretch to qualify this as a 'scene,' since the bands in question had only a handful of rotating members in a couple of guises, specifically F/i, Boy Dirt Car, and Vocokesh. F/i began as a trio with Richard Franecki, Greg Kurczewski, and Brian Wensing, although Franecki parted ways in 1990 to form Vocokesh and record solo albums, leaving Wensing in charge of F/i, which theoretically is still operational. Despite its subtitle as being rare and unreleased, "The Past Darkly / The Future Lightly" was originally issued as a 3LP set on RRRecords with a tiny pressing of 300 copies in 1989, and makes for a pretty good overview of F/i's diverse history that runs from gritty electronic passages to dusted psych rock explosions. The earlier electronic pieces are clearly the best work in F/i's catalogue coming across as droning fields of sound not unlike Conrad Schnitzler or MB. The move to distorted and wah-wah heavy hypno-space-rock never quite rises above bearing a passing resemblance to Hawkwind, Blue Cheer, or the early Skullflower rock explosions. Pretty great stuff though.
In 1893 composer/prankster Erik Satie wrote a short piece for piano called "Vexations". Though the score fits easily on one page and is simple enough for even the the most novice of pianists (once they get over the note "spelling" jokes peppered within) to perform, the piece was never played in its entirety -- as the composer indicated -- until 1963. This was due to the performance instructions provided by Satie that the piece be repeated a mere 840 times, a command that would extend the length of the piece to well over an entire day -- give or take a few hours depending on one's tempo. Seventy years later John Cage and several friends, working in shifts, managed to complete it in a brief 17 hours. While Satie's intentions may have been of a humorously philosophical nature, the following century would see a veritable pissing match of composers writing longer and longer symphonies for bigger and bigger orchestras. While Morton Feldman would most certainly never be confused with the likes of grandpa Mahler, he had an ever exceding tendency for maximilizing the minimalism of his later works. We saw not long ago here at Aquarius the release of his 4 hour marathon "For Philip Guston". In a country where, with every passing year, A.D.D. is less a rare condition than the norm, Feldman's large scale works such as this exist as an anomaly. Webern's brief atonal morsels of the early 20th century seem more fitting to our current temperment. Feldman's later compositions are not only unrealistic for concert performance -- world premiers aside, they won't be entering the short list of the performance canon any time soon. At times the raison d'etre of these pieces seems to be more of an ascetic exercise for aspiring young performers. This performance of String Quartet No. 2, clocking in at a little over 6 hours, is a true test of a musician's endurance. A whole new set of preparations are to be taken into consideration, not the least of which is how to deal with nature's eventual call. And you can bet that prestigious, well paid string quartets like Arditti are not likely to be found cooped up in a studio for something like this. No, this is for young bucks paying their dues. While prestigious in their own rite, having played around the globe at numerous festivals to acclaim, the photo on the inside of this package of the Flux Quartet shows four young -- most certainly recently graduated from fine conservatories -- musicians with smiles on their faces (presumably this was before their non-stop performance of the piece). And while the continuing dedication of performers willing to endure such suffering is certainly a testament to the importance of Morton Feldman as one of the great composers of the late 20th century, it has still taken technology a little more time to catch up. While a single compact disc is good enough to hold the entirety of Beethoven's 9th symphony, it falls way short of handling the behemoths penned by Mr. Feldman. "For Philip Guston" which needs to be chopped up and spread out over 4 CDs would have necessitated 10 LPs back in 1984 and "String Quartet No. 2" exceeds Guston by two hours. Enter the DVD. With its ridiculous storage capacity, a single DVD can retain even the longest of compositions. You can put on "String Quartet No. 2" as you sit down for lunch and be finished as you sit down for dinner. For those of you *still* without a DVD player in this day and age, all is not lost. This edition also comes in the traditional CD form and it takes up a mere 5 discs. Don't worry, Feldman wouldn't begrudge you to listen to this piecemeal. His expectations of the listener are much less than that of the performer (and you can read all you want into his opinions on both) and he would probably encourage you to approach it in much the same way as one would approach a painting in a museum. Or maybe, as Satie might have wished, an elegant piece of furniture.
Fonoda is a German post-rock quartet that leans heavily on the blissed-out precendents of that genre, with plenty of nods to Seam, Low, Mogwai, Slint, and other proponents of cinematic, melancholic intrumentals. Quite pleasant.
I somehow missed out on the first round of this reissue a little bit ago, but luckily for all of us, it's popped up again! This is an amazing collaboration between two totally incredible musical explorers, french chanteuse Brigitte Fontaine (with percussionist partner Areski) and avant-jazz greats Art Ensemble of Chicago, recorded during the Art Ensemble's stay in Paris in 1969. Though coming from very different backgrounds, each artist's idiosyncratic approach, commitment to experimentation, disregard for genre boundaries, and keen sense for improvisation and working collaboratively yields an album that pushes each performer to new heights. The blend of Fontaine's vocals, Areski's understated percussion, and the Art Ensemble's horns is really seamless, evoking the mysterious, intriguing sounds of lounge jazz in a dada cafe, or, well, an intellectual french chanteuse melding avant-folk with free jazz, which is exactly what it is. Brigitte Fontaine is becoming more and more cemented as one of my absolute favorite artists ever whith each reissue I get my hands on. So great, so recommended!
We raved about the first Furisubi cd-r a while back, a huge, punishing, stumbling Black Sabbath homage/tribute/cover, with thunderous guitars and retarded drumming. So I was mildly surprised by how mellow 'Limb Of Copernicus' was. Just guitar and organ, playing gently against each other in a world of drone and reverb. Steadily, gently strummed guitars over glacial and unwavering organ drones, that only occasionally shift subtly. Like Fahey jamming with Birchville Cat Motel or Troum. Quite gorgeous actually. Fans of Windy And Carl, Landing and space/drone rock in general will dig this a lot!
Attention Stephin Merritt fans! Not to be confused with another similarly titled EP from FBH, this one is called "Lonely Robot" and is a brand new remix collection (fyi: the other is "Lonely Days" and was originally released in 1997). This 7-song EP features two new songs and five remixes of songs from their Eternal Youth album. Tackling the remix duties are FBH's own Christoper Ewen, Sunroof (not Matthew Bower's Sunrrof!, doing a fine minimal pulse rendition), Client, Soft Cell's Dave Ball (sooo dancefloor!) and Rob Rives (even more so!). Have to say, Ewen's reworking of "I'm A Vampire" into an extended mix actually fares much better than the original version. Maybe it's because the sorta clunky lyrics of the verses are a bit more obscured by the electronic dance melodies, and the ultra catchiness of the chorus is brought more to the front? Not really an essential FBH / Merritt release, but it does provide for a solid 39 minutes worth of mostly boogie fun with Claudia Gonson's lovely, droll vocals drifting in and out to sweeten the party atmosphere.
Unfortunately a split and not a collaboration, 'Assholes Of The World...' finds New Zealand's Campbell Kneale and Japan's Kohei 'The Fast' (aka Guilty Connector) joining forces in the elite brotherhood of noisy assholes! Kohei starts things off quite unlike the stuff we're used to hearing from him, a simple, static high register drone. But that doesn't last long. All sorts of speaker shredding intrusions pile up on what is now a howling air raid siren-like screech, and then immediately into a sort of Merzbow-ish rhythmic stutter. The second track is a 4 minute blast of hyperchaotic metallic noise. Like some sort of ACTUAL SONG buried under the rotting corpses of Merzbow and Masonna.
You might think Kneale would pull out the big guns and answer back with a mighty blast, but he instead shows some gentlemanly restraint, and offers up one of his most serene pieces yet. What sounds like a single strike of a bell, stretched out as far as it will go, slowly oscillating, sound waves spreading out forever. Subtle insect-like flutters and the SPAREST percussion imaginable, a tiny bit of clatter, a reverby thud every couple of minutes. Quite nice, and a surprisingly subtle rebutt to Guilty Connector's boot to the face.
Here's an excellent live soundboard recording from this classic Krautrock power trio, performing at their early, uber-heavy peak. It's all drugged-out, mostly-instrumental cosmic stoner guitar jams, of course. You get versions of "Stone In" and "Der LSD-Marsch" from their spacey first album UFO, and "Bo Diddley" from their anarchic second album Hinten (which hadn't yet been released with this concert took place). Fans won't be disappointed -- it all sounds pretty great considering that these tapes were never originally meant for release, and the Garden Of Delights packaging job is superior as always, with a thick booklet of notes and photos.
Guru Guru have always been one of our favorite '70s German groups, definitely among the heaviest and freakiest in their early days, as documented here. Former free jazzers Mani Neumeier (drums, lots of drums) and Uli Trepte (bass), together with ex-Agitation Free axeman Ax Genrich, went on some heavy psychedelic improv trips yet to be exceeded. Perhaps Caspar Brotzmann heard these guys whilst but a toddler, years before he began his Massaker trio?
The Hafler Trio has built a career out of confusion, controversy, and a willful complexity of mixed metaphors. Andrew McKenzie -- currently the sole provocateur behind The Hafler Trio -- admits as much in describing his work with the following allusion: "Think of the conjuror distracting the audience with the right hand while reaching behind for the rabbit behind his back." Thus, the historical validity of The Hafler Trio's recording of Tristan Tzara's self-evidently titled "La Chanson Dada" should be suspect. McKenzie fashioned the musical accompaniment to the French text from a score by Georges Auric, a composer who was connected to the Surrealists and Dadaists in his work scoring Jean Cocteau films; however, Cocteau was a source of ridicule for Tzara. Of course, this doesn't necessarily polarize Auric from Tzara; but initial investigations offered little evidence of working relationships between the two. Such a historical puzzle is perfectly in keeping with The Hafler Trio's back catalogue.
In the realm of aesthetic sensibilities, however, "La Chanson Dada" is highly atypical for the Hafler Trio, as McKenzie has crafted this piece with a great deal of reverence for Auric's compositional style of repetitive elements, into a simple, swaying waltz for strings, harp, harmonium, and voice.
Curious to say the least.
The title in English, as given on the spine of this lovely package: "To Start With, Let's Remove The Colour!" This disc comes in a handsome sort of mini-lp gatefold sleeve, colored not Haino's usual black, but shades of grey -- grey being appropriate for the ghostly voices that mass in ever-layering loops over the swirling, jazzy jangle of Haino's guitar playing here. No, this is not a high-volume assault, and there's no shrieking vocals either. Rather this disc is Japanese psychedelic improvisor extraordinaire Keiji Haino's most recent foray into the realm of the mysterious, delicate, and quiet. He's heard here solo, in a mode seldom if ever before beheld: this is the home-recorded Haino, with overdubs! You can imagine him in his bedroom, earphones on, hunched over his guitar, mic, and four-track. It's a close-up, intimate scenario, the mind's eye focusing on his fingers on the guitar strings and his cryptic words whispered not far from the microphone, rather than the massive amps and flailing hair that you might envision when listening to his louder live performances with his "rock band" Fushitsusha. This is some sort of gentle, damaged, haunted, cave-dwelling blues, in the realm of (but not quite like) a Jandek or Kemialliset Ystavat. Track six (of eight), "How Did You Know? Mistaken" is the centerpiece, a half-hour opus of otherworldly genius.
This album is creepy yet comforting. Eerie and mesmerizing. And fucking amazingly beautiful. We can only hope Haino's four-track output continues -- and why just guitar? Maybe next time he'll turn to some of the many ethnic instruments that we're sure fill his chambers...
"Nineteen American Waysides" features 19 recordings from highway rest-areas made all across the US, including insect choruses, garbage truck hydraulics, twittering birds, gentle rain storms, and lots of rushing din from the nearby freeways. Occasionally, Haire played back processed versions of the "Victrola Favorites" cassettes curated from the Climax Golden Twins' collection of Victrola 78s. These murky waltzes, operatic arias, and spoken word snippets -- all swimming in the lo-fi grime of antique 78s -- are wonderful and wistful sounds, that contrast nicely with the clarity of the rest of Haire's recordings. A curious but meditative piece of recording that is well worth checking out.
Having worked as a studio engineer and producer in Seattle for the past 15 years for a broad array of musicians such as Joe McPhee, Jeff Grienke, Carl Stone, Kill Switch...Klick, and Eyvind Kang, Doug Haire is a man obsessed with the nature of sound. While professionally he deals with relatively traditional realms of composition, his obession lies in field recordings, as he explores "the ways in which we recognize, differentiate, map and navigate our sonic environment," to quote the manifesto of the Seattle organization Phonographers' Union, which Haire belongs to. Not as much a purist as Douglas Quinn or Chris Watson, but far less process oriented than Eric La Casa, Haire has built a series of pristinely recorded and produced collages which elegantly crossfade between environmental focal points.
Super limited so don't dawdle.
The Brothers Hinds return with another eclectic release. Don't let the title fool ya, this is a far cry from a typical dub mix collection. It's a super trippy meltdown of jazz, drum'n'bass, and yes, some dub too. As always, well executed and with a few unexpected twists thrown into the mix.
This trio of Danish freaks delved into the psychedelic, progressive styles of the day (1971) to produce this underground hard rock artifact, now reissued via Akarma in one of their trademark gatefold cd sleeves, like a minature version of the original vinyl packaging. Hurdy Gurdy were a "heavy" band, in the '60s sense -- there's more Hendrix than Black Sabbath here. Their repertoire is quite varied/inconsistent, from catchy vocal numbers to convoluted hard rockin' instrumentals. One track is a great, folky sitar-driven rock raga a la the Incredible String Band, but others are Cream-y electric blues numbers. All boast suitably far-out lyrix. File with Captain Beyond, Toad, High Tide, and similar hard rock obscurities of the era.
The entity that released the phenomenal and weighty 10-cd wooden box set known as "Improvised Music From Japan" (box, label, website) is now also a magazine. Printed in both English and Japanese, this squarebound, digest-sized debut issue runs to about 132 pages (with the Japanese text occupying the second half, or first if you read it back-to-front Japanese style). And, it comes with a cd compilation bound inside the front (or back) cover. Reviews, interviews and essays by and about the likes of Otomo Yoshihide, Seiichi Yamamoto, Ami Yoshida, Uchihashi Kzuhisa, Phew, Aki Onda, Taku Sugimoto, Sachiko M, Toshimaru Nakamura, Utah Kawasaki, and many others make for fasinating reading if you're the sort of avant-garde music fan at all curious about the underground Japanese improvising scene. There's a review of, and translated excerpts from, a book called "The History Of Japanese Free Jazz" which us English-only types will find to be extremely tantalizing. Perhaps a full English translation of the book could be future project for the industrious Improvised Music From Japan folks? Info about such artists as Masayuki Takanyangi, the Taj Mahal Travellers, and Kaoru Abe is certainly hard to come by in the West, so it would be nice...
Meanwhile, on the compact disc, there's works by Toshimaru Nakamura, Haco, Yoshio Machida, Masahiko Okura and others. Creaking door ambience, silence, acoustic guitars, shortwave static crackle, field recordings, laptop computers, trombone drone... it's a really nice disc, proof of why this scene deserves such a journal.
Been meaning to list this for a while now. Wild, thrashy black metal complete with pounding rhythms, growled black metal shrieks, shredding leads, weird acoustic break downs and ghostly clean vocals. This one man band was originally given the name Mikael and on this disc he is soley responsible for: "burning ax onslaught, nuclear thunder, holocaust cannons, mesmerising atomospheres, and all tortured screams of sorrow and hatred." Nice. Very reminiscent of Mercyful Fate (partly because of the slightly silly falsetto parts), Celtic Frost, Destruction and the like, but with some definite Norwegian black metal bits. But there is plenty of that one man band weirdness that seems to come with that following of that elusive metal muse: off kilter melodic breakdowns, bizarre choruses (kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself), the aforementioned falsetto, bizarre song titles: "Meditations In A Cold And Dimly Lit Room", "Tantric Lunar Slumber", "Grim Vendetta", "Headbanging Maniac" and one of the best thanks lists ever:
"Hail to the metal gods: Mercyful Fate, Voivod, Destruction, Iron Angel, Living Death, Necrovore, Possessed, Bathory, Celtic Frost, Necropolis, Piledriver, Exorcist, Malhavoc, Hobbs' Angel Of Death, Slayer, Necrophagia, Metal Church, Nasty Savage, Running Wild, Vectom, Goatlord, Nigro Mantia, Acid, Sepultura, Venom, Razor, Omen, Desexult, Desecration, Onslaught, Massacre, Kreator, Fates Warning, Death, Destructor, Dark Abbey, At War, Carnivore, Destroyers, Carrion, Judas Priest, Flames, Pokolgep, Sacrifice, Violent Force, Oz, Savatage, Iron Maiden, Attila, Sodom, and so many others ingrained in my psyche!!! I spit on those who choose to pose, and thrash with all the rest!" He even thanks Jesus Christ. Really amazing and amazingly strange.
"Somebody In The Snow" was the 19th album for Jandek who recorded this in 1990, and doesn't deviate from the path set by its predecessor "The Living End" in polishing his avant-folk/blues songs into a small subset of relatively tasteful recordings. Yet, this album is not without its eccentricities and creepy mysteries. While there are a couple of acoustic guitar numbers, Jandek mostly plays electric guitar with a signature laziness, allowing all of the twinkling notes to swim in the spring reverb from his amp. The woman previous referrenced as "Nancy" makes another round of appearances, occasionally singing duets with Jandek including the stunning a capella track of sustained vocalizations "Om."
Yet more interestingly is the arrangement of "Come Through With A Smile" which is also sung by "Nancy" and is eerily similar to "Your Other Man" from "The Blue Corpse." That earlier song, perhaps my favorite individual Jandek song, is a psychologically bleak portrait of a jilted lover resigning himself to post-breakup isolation. The arrangement for "Your Other Man" is about as straight-forward as Jandek ever gets, with an anxiously strummed repetition through a declining chord progression. If it is true that "Nancy" was his former girlfriend and "The Blue Corpse" was an autobiographical tale about their breakup, then the similarities in the arrangement of the two songs is particularly unnerving as it implies a brooding animosity towards "Nancy" that was once sublimated within Jandek's hermetic shell yet now has surfaced with a sly wit referencing one of his previous albums. Yet this curious piece of history in the Jandekian mythos doesn't overwhelm any of the music, which remains cool, distant, and restrained.
"Somebody In The Snow" would be a great place to start for those discovering Jandek for the first time; but at the same time, this album is certainly a highlight from one of the most unique artists from the past three decades.
For a couple of years at the end of the '80s through the beginning of the '90s, the mysterious Texan avant-folk artist Jandek produced his most polished and refined recordings. Yet at the same time, these recordings could never be described as anything but Jandekian. The songs are still led by angular mutations of blues chord progressions that constantly meander out of tune and occasionally return to archetypal melodies; however, the production quality is distinctly balanced. The guitars -- which alternate between electric and acoustic -- sit comfortably within the stereofield, never striving for the nails-on-the-chalkboard abrasion as heard on previous Jandek albums (e.g. the damaged blues of "The Modern Dance" or the celebratory weirdness of "Telegraph Melts"). The drums while typically arrhythmic and clunky also politely stand behind the other instrumentation. Thus, "The Living End" -- the 18th album by Jandek, recorded in 1989 -- is a comparitively 'well-adjusted' and less manic-depressive. Allan even made the passing remark that Jandek sounds almost soulful here. In keeping with previous spectulation about the small company who make themselves known within Jandek's world, the woman who had previously been called "Nancy" and may have been his girlfriend makes an appearance on this album singing on a couple of tracks. Might they have gotten back together?
What fits within a 4.25" x 7" x .25" space perfectly? SF artist Chris Johanson's glossy pink covered paperback book. It's positively bursting at the seams with his creations - many from his gallery installations. Pages of drawings and text printed on pink blue and yellow paper are interspersed with oddly sized foldouts and full color photos. His rough often blurrily inked depictions and commentary on local street life reveal a sea of often disembodied faces - homeless, business men, clowns - and a clutter of speech bubbles. Recent exhibits all over the place. Here's your chance to see what the hubub is all about.
One of the so-called Terrastock Nation's heaviest ass-kickers, Pacific NW "space-rock" troupe Kinski continue their levitational ascent with this new full-length. We've especially been looking forward to it ever since Sub Pop released the teaser "Semaphore" ep late last year, which garnered high marks from us. The so-heavy-and-wintry-majestic-that-it's-almost-black metal title track from that ep reappears here, alongside seven new cuts that both drone-on and rock-out. Lengthy epics abound, structured to begin with moody, melodic mellowness before bursting into denser action at the half-way point, and are primarily instrumentals, with the fuzz of the overdriven guitars and the wallop of the drums taking full flight. From repetitive shoegazer post-rock to experimental pop to ambient Floydian psych, Kinski never falter, always full of energy, with sheer "set the controls for the nearest black hole" gravity-multiplying heaviness never far from kicking in. With "Airs", Kinski should be taking their place in the space/drone rock fandom realm next to the likes of Circle, Sonic Youth, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Subarachnoid Space, and a host of your cosmic krautrock greats of the past. Ol' Klaus would be proud.
Yet another in the long overdue series of reissues from the legendary and under appreciated Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Not only an amazing player, but also as bit a character and as completely nuts as Mingus, Sun Ra or any other jazz greats you can think of. Best Kirk anecdote ever:
"In the late 60s we were in the studio getting ready to mix one of his albums, He wouldn't let me start working with the tapes until I could 'do it like me'. I didn't know what he meant. He told me to sit down and close my eyes. He got behind the chair and started to wrap my head, mummy style, with masking tape, from the neck up. Enough room was left for me to breathe. When Rahsaan was convinced that I couldn't see, he held a gun to my head and said 'I just want you to know how I feel all the time'."
The liner notes have more amazing stories from Joel Dorn long time producer / pal to Kirk as well as tons of cool Kirk quotes. Not sure if this was ever an actual release, seems more like a collection of random tidbits, but it has everything: Kirk on clarinet (rarely recorded), saxophone, manzello, stritch, Kirk talking/joking with the audience (even does a dead on Miles Davis impersonation), slow smoldering blues, wild live shows with Kirk on clarinet and tenor (also a rarity), playing two and three horns at once...it's all great. Really fun to hear how wild and excited the crowd gets, whooping and hollering. Like being at a revival meeting! If you're new to Kirk, this is as good a place as any to start. And most of it's unreleased so even if you got it all, you need this. RRK is GOD!
Stepping out from his day job in Wilco, Kotche really stretches out on these four pieces, all performed on acoustic and electronic percussion with occasional cello. This actually sounds a lot like something we would expect from Celebrate Psi Phenomenon (the awesome NZ drone label) or Last Visible Dog (esoteric RI cd-r label). From clicking clattering insect percussion over melancholy drones, wispy and ephemeral, to throbbing noisescapes augmented by chimes and bells, to faux gamelan glitchscapes to dreamy burbly ambience. Maybe Jim O'Rourke got a little too much of the credit for Wilco's new found penchant for experimental sounds...
A ten year anniversary double cd retrospective from the fabulous Laika! Even a decade after their debut, some amount of confusion still seems to linger as to the band's identity. Therefore, once again we'd like to state the following: Named after the Soviet space travellin' canine (the album cover is an awesome photo of the lil' doggie's bubble helmet!), this Laika is not to be confused with the other musical group of the same name (y'know, the one with The Cosmonauts) who are a surf combo. That said, this trippy groovy London quartet, lead by Ms Margaret Fiedler (formerly of Moonshake) and Guy Fixsen, have released three fine albums - 1994's Silver Apples Of The Moon (no relation to the band nor the Morton Subotnick album of the same name), 1997's Sounds Of The Satellites, and Good Lookin' Blues from 2000. A fourth full length is currently in the works. They're a melding of all the good stuff: complex and sexy electronics, hypnotic dubby bass, scintillating jazzy percussion, and Fiedler's seductive vocals. Meticulously piecing and layering it all together to set moods that crackle, smoulder and undulate.
The first cd is a compilation of highlights from their three previous albums, and the second features remixes, Peel sessions, live recordings and a *new* previously unreleased track! Will surely delight Laika fans until their next album finally surfaces, and win them some new admirers as well. Captivating!
Les Raillize Denudes (alternatively, "Hadaka No Rallizes") are the legendary and obscure '70s Japanese psych-rock combo that exterted a huge influence on the Keiji Haino/Fushitsusha/High Rise crowd. They're so obscure that it's just about impossible to find recordings of any of their music. Rare cd-r releases trade for big $$$, and the "Live '77" double vinyl bootleg that surfaced last year is now long gone. But, here's another volume. It's live, the sound quality is poor, there's no information about anything given (tho the color insert sleeve is nice) -- but the music is psychedelic grail-worthy. We've only got four copies, and won't be able to get any more. So, collectors: ready, set, go!
Lugois were responsible for one of my favorite CPP cd-r's, Golden Five Aluminum Lake. But fear not, Monarch is just as fantastic. Originally released as a cassette in 1988, Monarchg features CPP head honcho Campbell Kneale and his cohorts Andrew Savage and Leon Schultz. These four tracks were recorded in a NZ church and the sound reflects it, sort of liturgical and spiritual. Using guitars and synth mostly, these three offer up their worship, not to God or Buddah, but to their forefathers, the gods of NZ noise: the Dead C, Omit, & Gate, and make their offerings to that holy trinity. (Or the other holy trinity: Cale /Conrad / Maclise.) Simple, whirring drones, sounding like an army of slow motion squeezeboxes, with plaitive little melodies fighting to get their tiny heads above the thick ocean of drones.
This is dirge-y, dirty, grungy tribal FREEROCK. '3' starts off with churning hyperdistorted guitars, random, 'free' percussion, sometimes just a simple plodding thud, which all deteriorate into softly strummed guitars and found sounds, mysterious and ambient. The rest of the record is a meandering soundscape of clatter and buzz, drone and thump, skree and whir, all very atmospheric. Moments of Sunroof! like lo-fi bliss disrupted by bursts of spastic percussive splatter and amp/instrument malfunction.
