CMR 26.8.09
Limited edition lathe-cut records, vinyl records and CDs
rf [at] richardfrancis.net.nz
Box 9111-35, Auckland Mail Centre, Auckland, New Zealand
NEXT
Un Ciego - LA Softcore - Lathe 7-inch
AVAILABLE
Richard Francis - Together alone, together apart - CD
Francis|Guerra|Mattin|Stern - Vinyl 7-inch
Lugosi - Dawn - CD
jgrzinich - Intimations - CD
Roel Meelkop - (onkyo ok) - CD
M. Behrens - Architectural Commentaries - CD
Eso Steel - Technology of Sleep - Vinyl LP [20city]
OUT OF PRINT
Nest - Double Lathe LP
Sam Hamilton - Tropics - Lathe 7-inch
Ian-John Hutchinson - An Utterbook - Lathe 7-inch
Hometown Feilding - Clouds Across the Bay - Lathe 7-inch
Sci Hi - Lab Recordings - Lathe 7-inch+CDr Set
Bruce Russell - Acetate Blues - Lathe 7-inch
Pumice - s/t - Lathe 7-inch
Tim Coster - Rowboat/Blackberry - Lathe 7-inch
Infinitesimal - CMR - CDr
Richard Francis - Three Tracks - mini CD (co-released with Stateart, Germany)
EYE - s/t - Lathe 7-inch+CDr Set
Tetuzi Akiyama/Richard Francis - s/t - Vinyl 7-inch
Nigel Wright - s/t - CDr
Kiyoshi Mizutani - Yokosawa-iri - CD
Richard Francis - Watersheets - CDr (Japan tour limited edition)
Francis/Neville/Watkins/Stelzer - s/t - Lathe 8-inch
PRICES (NZ$)
Lathe 7-inch: $15
Vinyl 7-inch: $8
Lathe 7-inch+CDr set: $20
CD: $15
LP: $15
Email for postage rates
DISTRIBUTION
Selected titles available from:
Metamkine (France)
Eclipse Records (USA)
Aquarius Records (USA)
Fusetron Records (USA)
Mimaroglu Music Sales (USA)
Carbon Records (USA)
RRRecords (USA)
Alluvial Recordings (USA)
Improvised Music From Japan (Japan)
Norman Records (UK)
Rough Trade (UK)
Cold Spring (UK)
Drone Records (Germany)
A-Musik (Germany)
Dekorder (Germany)
Esquilo Records (Portugal)
Monochrome Vision (Russia)
Microsuoni (Italy)
Monotype Records (Poland)
NEST - 's/t' - DOUBLE LATHE LP
Nest is a moebius strip consisting of NZers Andrew Scott (mostly guitar) and Nigel Wright (mostly laptop). Scott plays guitar which Wright uses as raw material for creating real-time sound environments in which the guitar can move, the chosen path of the guitar laying the groundwork for the next sonic environment created by the computer to which the guitar reacts to in turn. Hence Nest attempts to circumvent traditional modes of improvisation, by creating a human feedback loop in which the players play not so much their instruments, but rather each other – a loop which finds the players relating not TO each other, but rather THROUGH each other. Ever inwards. Nest is concerned with principals of balance and dissolution of the individual ego. Nest attempts to work as a unified organism, dissolving the contributions of the individual into an amorphous evolving sound object. Nest sets processes in motion and lets them run their course. Nest trusts sound completely.
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Nest has previously self-released collaborations with MHFS and Tim Coster in small CDR editions. This LP is their first release as an unaccompanied duo. Wright lives in Auckland, New Zealand where he performs solo and in the duo Cathedrals (with Tim Coster). Scott currently resides in Los Angeles, California where he works in the duo Metal Rouge with Helga Fassonaki. He works solo under the name Un Ciego and in the duos Golden Krone (with Rohan Evans) and Huzun (with Tim Coster).
RICHARD FRANCIS - TOGETHER ALONE, TOGETHER APART - CD
Sound artists like Matt Shoemaker, Loren Chasse, and Steve Roden are some of the very few who are successful in turning found objects and field recordings into thoroughly engaging compositions that don't rely upon the flashiness of techniques to make their work successful. Add New Zealand's Richard Francis to that gaggle as well. It's been a while since any solo work has been available from Francis, who has previously recorded under the moniker Eso Steel; and more recently, he's been entertaining many a collaboration with his fellow NZ noiseniks such as Campbell Kneale and Michael Morley. On Together Alone, Together Apart, Francis turns to the miniscule events of daily life whose peculiar sounds capture his imagination. It could be a crackle from rain falling or the distant surf of the Pacific Ocean or a creaking electric radiator or the hissing static from television snow. It's these small sounds which Francis has recorded and stretched into relatively longer compositions. These rattling, crackling streams of softened white noise move in a synchronous fashion, much like the way that a huge flock of starlings can gracefully circle in the sky without bumping into each other, all moving organically in three dimensions. Think Loren Chasse, as if he were reworking any of Bernhard Gunter's compositions, making them rougher, in line with Chasse's Hedge Of Nerves disc. Headphones are certainly recommended for this album, as the last track is awfully quiet... at least, it is when there's a record store full of people. Very well done!
AQUARIUS RECORDS, January 2008
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The building blocks of 'Together Alone, Together Apart' by New Zealand's Richard Francis are 'sound moments': sonic interludes of a dozen or so seconds of environmental sound, whose subtle arrangements and cross-contaminations are the springboard for the compositions found here. Given the quiet volumes, sounds at the threshold of audibility are presumably those which have captured his imagination. A soft hiss and variable low end frequency introduce the first untitled track, with small crackles, glitches and echoes sporadically breaking through. The second is considerably more dramatic, with a flapping rhythm emerging from a grounded hiss like a moth's wings beating against glass. The final track is almost undetectable, even with headphones, and strengthens the connections between Francis's work and the reductive strategies of Bernhard Gunter or John Hudak. Here, swells of deep frequencies rise and fall along a fog of unsettled static, concluding a refined and highly recommended album.'
THE WIRE 286, December 2007
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Despite still be young of age and nature, Richard Francis has been active in the field of music since 1996. You may remember his Eso Steel band and his CMR label which he uses these days as a vehicle to release lathe cut records from the New Zealand scene. But here he releases his own work on a CD. Since many years Francis' work deals with field recordings and acoustic objects, such as fabric, wood, plastic, 'self noise of home stereo amplifiers', loudspeakers and record players. He writes that he is inspired by 'a particular moment of sound heard in my surroundings, [I've] come to call these brief sonic impressions 'sound moments', of 10-20 seconds in length where my attention is drawn to an interesting combination and arrangement of sounds'. His music is not a recording of these moments, but rather a 'cover' version using different sounds. That is a nice way, but hard to check out. We didn't hear these original sound moments. Three lengthy tracks here of not too careful music. It seems to be based, at least from this perspective, on a bunch of loops, which fade in and out in an irregular mode. Continuos sustaining sounds of crackling sound, low sonic rumble and debris flying around. Is it drone music? Well, perhaps it is. Is it microsound? Indeed, it might be. But it's harsher, more present, certainly in the first two tracks. It doesn't lull the listener to sleep. Perhaps it's musique concrete? It is, but the aspect of a continuous sounds built from loops may suggest otherwise. I think this is the strong thing from this CD. It sounds familiar but upon close inspection it's not easy to lump this into any genre. A strong CD, that at just under thirty minutes, is perhaps a bit short. Another piece would have been most welcome.
VITAL WEEKLY 596, October 2007
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Most of the time, we walk around with our sensory system only partially activated. Lost in thoughts, just a small amount of the astounding richness in images and sounds around us reaches our consciousness, while the rest is filtered out as unnecessary, superflous data. To Richard Francis, this loss of information is a waste. In fact, his musical cosmos experiences its big bang each and every instance his mind picks up a fascinating emmanation, a hollering sound or a subtle noise. His art can be seen as an act of sharing - and on „Together alone, together apart“ he allows the listener to partake in three short, but vivid street scenes from the city of his memory. For it is a process of remembering, reconstructing and recontextualising which puts the pieces of the puzzle together. Francis is either not interested in simply carrying a microphone with him wherever he goes or aware of the inbuilt difficulty of capturing a sonic impression on tape. Recordings of indoor and outdoor events and spaces can therefore serve
as a spark or a valuable basis to start the compositional process with, but they are never an end in themselves. Different materials, such as Wood, Plastic and various fabrics carry an equal importance in realising his vision, as do old-fashioned record players. The composer, in the eyes of Richard Francis, needs to become truly active again and make use of his own hands to shape the immaterial images of his memory into music. Even though I greatly appreciate the work of the manifold field recording labels out there, there is a lot to be said for returning repertoire-responsibility to the artist not only in terms of the finished product but also in terms of its physical sound realisation. In the case of Francis at least, the direct physical contact with his materials turns a music full of hiss, grinding, white noise and granular events into a human and emotional art. While a thick layer of static covers up many of his manipulations, it never serves as a cloak to hide his true face, but rather as a blanket to keep the body warm. Even when there seems to be nothing happening, one instinctively attributes this to the active will of the performer of following the natural breath of the piece. On two of the three tracks contained in„Together Alone, together apart“, this leads to silent textures moving as delicately as a curtain caressed by the evening wind. Track two, with its nervous subcurrent, is the exception, albeit a nuanced one – in the gentle undulation of its insectoid frequencies, all edges loose their sharpness. It is an associational style, its skin bearing resemblances to processes like rain: Never resting, yet always calm. Richard Francis' approach is a remarkable renunciation of the general tendency of experimental music of seeing the world holistically. His works instead search for the hidden meanings contained in every atom, their implications and emotive effects. This is also why they can take up to ten minutes to describe moments, which may have lasted no longer than a couple of seconds. The reason is obvious: Time is irrelevant for a composer, who wants his oeuvre to be accurate but not objective. In the end, both concepts will undoubtedly come to the same conclusions. But it seems important to have someone out there who keeps both eyes open all the time, searching for those singular diamonds lost all too often in our daily lives.
TOKAFI, November 2007
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Richard Francis lists “field recordings of indoor and outdoor spaces, handling of fabric, wood and plastic and self noise of home stereo amplifiers, loudspeakers and record players” as the sources for “Together alone, together apart” – common and marginal sounds, that you would not necessarily notice. However, Francis’ use of these sounds adds a layer of mystery to the quotidian – not mystery in a surrealist tradition, though, but a process of abstraction that leads to intensified sensual awareness and brings about an oscillation between absence and presence of physicality. This is also reflected in the description Francis gives of his approach: “Each piece was inspired by a particular moment of sound I heard in my surroundings. I’ve come to call these brief sonic impressions ‘sound moments’, of 10-20 seconds in length where my attention is drawn to an interesting combination and arrangement of sounds. I attempted to draw or notate the sound moments, with the intention of composing a kind of ‘cover version’ of each one. During the recording process, each piece took a feel and sense of its own, while retaining some relationship to the original sound impression.” Compared to earlier works, such as “Technology of Sleep” or “20 Ways” (both released under the name Eso Steel), the overall sound of “Together alone, together apart” has become softer and more refined (in part due to a shift from analogue to digital equipment, I’d assume), while still maintaining a distinctly rough textural character and focusing on the concrete (‘concrete’ as in musique concrète) qualities of the sound rather than on extensive digital manipulation, thus again achieving the highly organic effect that had been characteristic of the aforementioned releases. Track one and two weave low-end bass sounds, gritty textures and very vague, far-away melodic hints, into a dense fabric, with the individual elements continually shifting in and out of the listener’s perceptional focus. This density produces an intensely immersive effect, which is, however, not based on sheer volume, but on the phenomenological richness of the grinding, hissing and humming sounds that emanate from the speakers. The third and final track, recorded three years earlier than the other two, then changes density for reduction and presents sparse, circulating low frequency pulses, which are accompanied by delicate hiss. The result is no less intense, though, and is here brought about by the almost complete withdrawal of sound, which demands an amount of concentration that borders on absorption. One might notice a certain imbalance between these different approaches, but eventually they prove to be complementing and to be equally convincing examples of Francis’ skill to transfer acoustic traces of movements, electric currents and spatial situations into restrained, yet powerful abstractions. Rated 9/10
EARLabs, December 2007
SAM HAMILTON - TROPICS - LATHE 7 INCH
Sam Hamilton is from New Zealand, and on 'Tropics' he turns his electric guitar into an automatiing machine, moulding steel strings into children's toy bells and lopoping them to infinity. Hamilton's an arch conceptualist, and here he correctly reads the lathe cut single as the perfect medium for compositions that privelege decay and dissolution. It's rather like a short-form version of William Bassinski's hyms to disintegration. though the alienation effect of the processing also brings to mind Oren Ambarchi's more traditionally lovely moments.
THE WIRE 289 March, 2008
IAN-JOHN HUTCHINSON - AN UTTERBOOK - LATHE 7 INCH
Can't say I know much about Hutchinson, but here he's assembled a musique concrete travelogue of time spent in Taiwan. There's a fair bit of street sound, public announcements that float through dead air, and some outrageous local pop music much like those Radio Thailand/Algeria compilations released on Sublime Frequencies, not to mention an unwelcome appearance from Australian teen House act Madison Avenue. The 45rpm 7inch format feels just right for concrete, the brevity demanded by time/space restrictions really focusing the composer's attention.
THE WIRE 289 March, 2008
HOMETOWN FEILDING - CLOUDS ACROSS THE BAY - LATHE 7 INCH
Mark Sadgrove is a New Zealand expat currently resident in Tokyo. Hometown Feilding is his latest solo cover and Clouds Across The Bay is one of his most virile, screwy audio missives. Sadgrove uses C-Sound software to render his sources unintelligible, mulching everything into the musical equivalent of obsessively scrunched balls of paper, the entire audio spectrum folding in on itself. Clouds Across The Bay feels tense, though a sliver of blissful texturology sometimes slips through the net.
THE WIRE 276, February 2007
SCI HI - LAB RECORDINGS - LATHE 7 INCH AND CDR SET
Sci Hi is the latest pseudonym for New Zealand’s Paul Winstanley, who first came to attention in the mid-1990’s with a series of CD (as Paul H Locasta or Paul Giilford) on the Tempo Kannan Bail label that were eye-crossing explorations for bass and frazzled electronics. He also released the staggering ‘Water Regions of the Southwest USA’ album under the name Artificial Subterrane via Charalambides’ Wholly Other imprint, and collaborated with texan trombonist Dave Dove in The Dave Dove Paul Duo. Now back in his homeland after his mid 90s relocation to Houston, Texas, Winstanley’s approach to electronics is as singular as ever. Lab Recordings is constructed entirely from sounds generated by electronic feedback. This beautifully packaged lath 7” and full length CDr folds impatient peals and deep. Thrumming blurts of noise into abstract arrangements that are almost acedemic in approach – though this stuff sits just as comfortably in home recording environs as it would in an electronic music department. At times Lab Recordings references the wild storm and splutter of his earlier recordings, and for anyone lucky enough to have had their circuits fried by Winstanley/Locatsta’s 1995 album Heaven on Earth, Lab Recordings will partly feel like an extension of previous form. But his approach is now more refined, each volley of miniscule trills or wave of low-end hum positioned with almost surgical accuracy. Feedback represents the bruising of electronic systems, but Winstanleys careful organisation of willed malfunction does nothing less than bruise the air itself.
THE WIRE, 2006
FRANCIS|GUERRA|MATTIN|STERN - VINYL 7 INCH
Recorded two years ago in Auckland, it has Richard Francis on computer, electronics, field recordings, Anthony Guerra on electric guitar, electronics, Mattin on computer feedback and Joel Stern on electronics and field recordings. Don't let Mattin scare you off in this lot: one side sounds like a thunder storm recorded from a big distance which fades gradually into a drone and the other side is at the higher end of the spectrum, but with lots of subtle crackles. It's good to see Mattin not doing so many noise things these days and become the more all-round computer musician. These four like to play things soft and controlled and its great.
VITAL WEEKLY, 2006
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With infalable precision and all around the world, supergroups have failed to live up to people’s expectations. If you’re on a thinly populated island as remote from the rest of the planet as New Zeland, however, teaming up with the best the country and its immediate surroundings have got is simply a modus operandi. On the face of it, therefore, there was nothing special about the recording sessions leading up to this Vinyl EP in Auckland in March of 2004. Admittedly, calling this line-up of underground actors a supergroup at all is stretching things just a tad. On the other hand, these four composers and sound sculptors have definitely all built a reputation for their uncompromising musical personality, their mushrooming and continually proliferating body of work, their decided preference for expressing themselves most clearly in collaborations and an omnivoric taste for anything that suits their visions. All of these shared attributes can however not fully mask the gaping differences that remain. At least on paper, Mattin’s ardent noise emmissions should clash with Joel Stern’s detailed field recordings, and one could expect Anthony Guerra’s feedbacked electric guitar to come to a collision with Richard Francis’ dense, organic scrapescapes. Surprisingly, the big bang of opposing energies never materialises. On both sides of this truly delectably packaged 7’’ lathe cut, each member of the Quartet instead treads softly and with deep mutual respect for the steadily unfolding momentum of the music. Right from from the very first second after the curtain has fallen and the performers are steeped in the sepia-tinged light of the spots, their interaction is immensely concentrated on each and every pulse, signal or tinest of noise around them. And yet, while this reverential approach can sometimes lead to stalemates, with all players carefully avoiding shifting the balance with an unmeasured step or a sudden swing, Francis, Guerra, Stern and Mattin still maintain a relentless urge to push forward. Their tracks move from deep, distorted bass ruminations to more airy drones, developping continually within a nervous continuum. It’s noisy, it’s crispy, it’s glitchy, grim and granular and if you allow your attention to stray only once, you risk missing the best bits. What’s more, despite their desire to transform into an indivisible new entity, the individual voices of the performers can clearly be discerned at every moment. As a listener, you can place your personal emphasis on any of the four personalities or you can follow the way their voices close in on each other without ever completely melting. The most common characteristic of a lot of improvisations, an abundance of egos, is thankfully absent from this release. There are no solos, no narcistic outbursts, no credits to any composer in the liner notes – in fact, there aren’t even copyrights attached. In defiance of the demands of the cultural tabloids, it is not an amalgam of big names but the refusal to inject the typical dose of machismo into their music which makes this a veritable supergroup.
TOKAFI, August 2008
LUGOSI - DAWN - CD
Although I have always listened with much interest to the lo-fi droner rocks of New Zealand, and for a while collected that kind of stuff, I must admit I never heard of Lugosi. They existed in the mid to late 90s and included Campbell Kneale (now known of Birchville Cat Motel), Andrew Savage (of Sunship) and one Leon Schutz. In my defense I should say that Lugosi releases were usually on lathe cut records and cassettes, so not easy to get. 'Dawn', just released on CMR (who announces to concentrate more and more on obscure music from New Zealand), is their only real CD and has six improvisations recorded in 1998. Apperentely the three boys play guitars and keyboards. If ever you want a recent blue-print of New Zealand's droner rock, than this CD provides it. Long sustained guitar tones, somewhere between a strummed note and feedback and little bits of percussion are the main ingredients. Drone for sure, but on an entirely different level than say Mirror, Ora or Monos. The drones from bands like Lugosi (or K-Group, Surface Of The Earth or Sandoz Lab Technicians, to mention a few others) are upfront, slightly aggressive, but at the same also, at least for this listener, trance-like and hypnotic. Not being a collector of the music per se, I think this is another damm fine addition, and another new name to watch (just in case one runs into some of the older stuff).
VITAL WEEKLY, 2005
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Plenty of New Zealand avant rock/free noise ensembles have looked to Sonic Youth for inspiration, almost always stripping away the pop sensibilities from Evol and Sister to get at a slow burning core of crackling ether. The Dead C and Gate are the best known for such work, although Surface Of The Earth, RST, and Dean Roberts’s defunct duo of Thela offered wonderful variations on this theme, as do the posthumous recordings of Lugosi. Fronted by Campbell Kneale, who has since gone on to form the unstoppable Birchville Cat Motel, Lugosi broadcast an oceanic torrent of languid distortion held together by sedate elliptical pluckings and loose rhythm structures. Often awakening within a stupor of controlled feedback, Kneale and company weave big sweeping sinewave motions, serpentine sitars, and snarling amplified buzz into the moire patterns of molten drone rock deconstruction.
THE WIRE 255, 2005
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Although I have always listened with much interest to the lo-fi droner rocks of New Zealand, and for a while collected that kind of stuff, I must admit I never heard of Lugosi. They existed in the mid to late 90s and included Campbell Kneale (now known of Birchville Cat Motel), Andrew Savage (of Sunship) and one Leon Schutz. In my defense I should say that Lugosi releases were usually on lathe cut records and cassettes, so not easy to get. 'Dawn', just released on CMR (who announces to concentrate more and more on obscure music from New Zealand), is their only real CD and has six improvisations recorded in 1998. Apperentely the three boys play guitars and keyboards. If ever you want a recent blue-print of New Zealand's droner rock, than this CD provides it. Long sustained guitar tones, somewhere between a strummed note and feedback and little bits of percussion are the main ingredients. Drone for sure, but on an entirely different level than say Mirror, Ora or Monos. The drones from bands like Lugosi (or K-Group, Surface Of The Earth or Sandoz Lab Technicians, to mention a few others) are upfront, slightly aggressive, but at the same also, at least for this listener, trance-like and hypnotic. Not being a collector of the music per se, I think this is another damm fine addition, and another new name to watch (just in case one runs into some of the older stuff).
VITAL WEEKLY 464, 2005
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Lugosi – named, one presumes, after the immortal Bela and not the dreadful old Bauhaus song – was a group of Wellington New Zealand-based droners featuring Campbell "Birchville Cat Motel" Kneale, Andrew "Sunship" Savage and Leon Schutz which existed from the mid to late 1990s and left behind a small collection of limited edition cassettes and vinyls, many of them on Kneale's own Celebrate Psi Phenomenon imprint, releases on which are extraordinarily hard to find. All the more reason then to applaud Richard Francis's decision to release these six magnificent brooding yet luminous frescoes recorded in 1998, appropriately enough in a church. Clayton Noone sits in on "Frostmelt" and thickens the plot admirably. Trying to keep up with Kneale's prodigious output is as time-consuming as it is expensive – and I'm failing miserably – but hardened BCM fans and devotees of slowmotion drone rock should think twice before passing this by.
PARIS TRANSATLANTIC, 2005
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2005 may turn out to be the year of Campbell Kneale. Earlier this year, the New Zealand drone engineer brought his Birchville Cat Motel to the Bay Area where he played about a gazillion shows of jawdropping, mindscraping minimalism; then he released the monstrous album of post-Earth / Sunn O))) heaviosity under the moniker, and you can't forget that he also released the album Chi Vampires which may be the best Birchville Cat Motel album to date. Now, there's one more album that bolsters our already high esteem of Mr. Kneale: the first proper CD from Lugosi. This dense psych-drone ensemble was fronted by Kneale and operated throughout the '90s in Wellington, New Zealand. Kneale flushed out the line-up of fellow New Zealand guitarists and multi-instrumentalists including Andrew Savage from Sunship, Leon Schutz, and Clayton Noone from CJA and Armpit. Lugosi conjured hypnotic, radioluminscent, billowing washes that reflect the damaged, rural psychedelic urges of early Flying Saucer Attack and the late-period, ecstatic minimalism of Spacemen 3. They actually recorded the bulk of their doped-up dream music in the Lower Hutt Baptist Church, furthering the transcendent metaphors their work already embraced. Drone on. Bliss out.
AQUARIUS RECORDS, 2005
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Most ‘free rock,’ borne of free jazz’s ecstasy and rock’s hulking volume, bristles with over-amped intensity. However, New Zealand’s free rock and free noise contingent do things differently. The Dead C birthed a genre with their laissez-faire take on the ‘rock song,’ their songs brimming with an oxymoronic ‘tense lethargy,’ the sluggishness of the vocals and guitar textures paradoxically bristling with anxious energy. The great development of the first wave of free noise artists was the jettisoning of this tension. From Surface of the Earth’s treacly hum to Lovely Midget’s submerged fidelity and RST’s careful, ponderous walls of guitar texture, New Zealand free noise is largely devoid of exertion. Lugosi is one of the earliest groups formed by Campbell Kneale, who works solo as Birchville Cat Motel. The group’s music is liquid, atomized, and it moves in geological time. The trio (joining Kneale is Andrew Savage of Sunship and Leon Schutz) were great believers in drone-as-bedrock, and there is always an earthing hum rolling from the speakers. The group plots heavy-lidded textures and the simplest phrases and melodies that skim the surface like a stone skipping through water – except it’s been filmed and played back at 1/48th the original speed. Like the best free noise of its era, Dawn is an oddly luminescent experience, the simple blocks of sound pieced together in such a way as to infer some great, glimmering structure assembling itself in slow motion. The result is almost pathologically gorgeous, a noise record with all the sharp edges sanded to a soft, blurry down. And slow as fuck. After this, Kneale’s work became more compositionally exact, his Beautiful Speck Triumph double CD a particular highlight. He then re-discovered his metal roots with Chi Vampires and the Black Boned Angel project. That Kneale would move (back) into metal is no surprise – no less an authority than Brian Eno once proclaimed metal one of the first ambient musics. Dawn is a protean glimmer from Kneale’s well-trained eye.
DUSTED MAGAZINE, 2005
JGRZINICH - INTIMATIONS - CD
Close to a decade ago, two emerging sound artists living in Texas thought it clever to compress their names into unpronounceable monikers. Hence, we now have mnortham (Michael Northam) and jgrzinich (John Grzinich). While the meanings of such monikers may no longer be relevant, they're permanent fixtures for both artists, like faded tattoos. Throughout his career, Grzinich has played second fiddle to a handful of acousmatically minded composers, including Northam, Seth Nehil and Rick Reed. 'Intimations' is his debut recording despite a wealth of those collaborations. This album began as a series of recordings for piano, with Grzinich quieting all of the attack from whatever he was performing and stretching into sustained drone undulations. The incessant chorus of cicadas and the calm lapping of the Aegean Sea interject distinct environmental overtones amid the ephemeral and amorphous flutter of Grzinich's heavily processed tonalities. 'Intimations' sleevenotes flip back and forth between a philosophical cry to reorder the nature of perception and a personal exposition of the construction of this music. Where the former is tentative in its questions and answers, the latter is poetic in its sombre, solitary mood, more in keeping with the spirit of the music to be found here.
THE WIRE 244, 2004
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This is among the top most mind numbingly ethereal recordings I have ever heard in my life, ranking high up there with Nurse With Wound's 'Soliloquy for Lilith'. The ambient drone is something born out of hyperventilation and cascading emptiness. Jgrzinich's Intimations are personal dark entries into the wondrous crossing between vapory industrial sound and delicate field recordings with experimental piano. His past work has included duo recordings with peer acousticians Seth Nehil and MNortham. The hushed ambience of these sounds is actually quite piercing, with just a paranormal presence, only a permeable sense of realism, providing a textural aura --Mute crackle, wispy crunch, still crumble. The track “Sun in Hand, Stone in Water” has a menacing circular tone that curls like chronic vertigo. Oblique mist that snakes as the disc closes with an organic leak of water that sounds as if it is falling atop a glass piano, causing a fountain.
IGLOO MAGAZINE, 2004
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Multimedia artist John Grzinich has a remarkable series of releases under his belt in collaboration with mnortham, Seth Nehil (who indeed helps with some recordings on one track of this cd) and the Frequency Curtain trio, but oddly enough this is his first solo album. Co-released by CMR (New Zealand) and Maaheli (USA/Estonia, where Grzinich currently lives and works), "Intimations" immediately stands out as one of the best 2004 releases. Grzinich reaches a synthesis of field recordings and electronics which is, simply put, trascendental beauty. This kind of delicate, yet extremely powerful "acoustic ecology" reminded me of Lionel Marchetti's "Portrait d'un glacier" - textured organic drones created with a perfect merging of concrete sounds (running water, cicadas, blowing branches...) and electronic processings. The mystical intensity of "Sun in hand, stone in water", based on resonating grand piano clusters, also brinds to mind Osso Exótico's equally moving "Church organ works". Grzinich's writings in the inner sheet also offer interesting insights and theoretical reflections about sound, composition and listening experience. A truly awesome release.
CHAIN DLK, 2004
ROEL MEELKOP - (ONKYO OK) CD
I have mixed feelings about the solo material of Meelkop's that I've listened to: many excellent moments, but also less memorable ones that made the experience less engaging. On the contrary, this is a beautiful, cohesive, well-crafted work, one of those to which one returns quite frequently, despite its difficult nature. "(onkyo ok)" is based on manipulated field recordings taken by Meelkop, Hitoko Sakai and Frans de Waard (Meelkop's partner in Goem and Kapotte Muziek along with Peter Duimelinks) during Goem's 2001 Japanese tour. As expected, the 2003 re-work of the sources made most of them a sort of primal sound-clay, though now and then you can still recognize bits of pachinko parlours, coversations, crows, insects... A pretty dark and at times disturbing album, "(onkyo ok)" reminded me of a less minimal "Warszawa Restaurant" by Francisco López: put your headphones on, crank up the volume, and you'll find yourself immersed in a droning space, where once familiar sounds appear and disappear like ghosts, or vanishing memories.
CHAIN D.L.K., 2004
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Roel Meelkop centres his attention on an urban Japan but proposes a more subtle intent and a compositional approach resembling the numerous manipulated field recordings of Francisco Lopez. Blurring most of the details from his original recordings into hissing reverberations and Ambient field rumblings, Meelkop presents his soundscape as an aggregate of muffled white noises sporadically punctuated with fleetingly recognizable events.
THE WIRE 244, 2004
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In 2001 Roel Meelkop and his friends of Kapotte Muziek/Goem went off to Japan to do some concerts and present an installation of work in the Kawaski City Museum. It was Meelkop's first visit to Japan and, probably like many others, he was overwhelmed by some of the sheer noise, both in nature aswell as in the city. The cars, the patchinko, the karaoke and the semishigure. Always he keen to record sounds from his environment, Meelkop went out with a recorder and microphone and in the following years he worked on a new work 'Onkyo Ok'. Unlike his previous work, he now tells us on the cover what he used sound-wise:'field recording during the summer of 2001 in Japan'. Of course it wouldn't be Roel Meelkop's music, if you would easily recognize these sounds: Meelkop is an expert of transformating sounds in his computer, but he never leaps into the deep, obvious holes of DSP. Sometimes I think he uses extreme equalization and the methods of collages. No endless banks of DSP, plug ins and what is there. However, it must also be said, that the collage element that was so often present in Meelkop's music is getting less and less. More so than before he let's things happen as they happen. Taking a large chunck of sound and let it sort of naturally evolve from minor changes in the sound spectrum. Many of the so-called microsound composer develop their own style which they hardly seem to get rid off, but Meelkop, after this previous releases, moves on, in a more rigid, minimal style. Minimal but not along the lines of Lopez; Meelkop's music can still be heard, even at a low volume. The 'Onkyo' is 'Ok', as long as we are able to hear something - good thinking there.
VITAL WEEKLY 420, 2004
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Dutch sound artist Roel Meelkop has been mining the same territory since the early ’80s, when he started the influential sonic art ensemble THU20. This transitional stage had Meelkop formulating and organizing his ideas on sound and contemplating how best to realize them. But it was only during the mid-’90s, through numerous collaborations with fellow electro-acoustic conspirators, such as Frans De Waard and Peter Duimelinks (who, together with Meelkop, form electronic rhythm group GOEM), along with the acquisition of a sampler and computer, that he was able to achieve the control and freedom he desired. (onkyo ok), Meelkop’s debut outing for recently established New Zealand imprint CMR, is composed entirely from field recordings made during his summer tour of Japan in 2001. Ably assisted by Hitako Sakai and old buddy De Waard, Meelkop has directed his attention on Japan’s vast urban areas, entering the very heart of its great cities and surrounding regions. Unlike the work of, say, Chris Watson for Touch or Lawrence English for Room 40, the strength of Meelkop’s recordings is not in their clarity and immediacy, but rather in their opaqueness, rendering source materials unrecognizable. Life in a metropolis is condensed to a blurry rushing pulse and harsh thrum, as the sounds of daily life (trains, motorbikes, radio static, the human voice and the ever-popular pachinko parlors) vie for attention, before all noise artifacts will eventually cede to one, allowing the listener to focus on a specific object or happening. Such a delivery demands concentration from both the ears and mind, and prevents the listener from recreating the scene, often one of the treats of field recordings. (onkyo ok serves as an interesting document of the Japanese landscape, taken as it was at the start of the 21st century, a sonic sketch of the very lifeblood that pulses through the arteries of that country’s great cities.
DUSTED MAGAZINE, 2004
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The six tracks on onkyo ok by Dutch sound artist Roel Meelkop (THU20, Kapotte Muziek, GOEM..) were sourced in field recordings he made with Hitoko Sakai and Frans de Waard during a Japanese tour in 2001. As ever, that world "field" is misleading – unlike Kyoshi Mizutani's exquisite Yokosawa-iri, which launched New Zealand-based Richard Francis' CMR label has a couple of years ago, Meelkop's sonic raw material is predominantly, though not exclusively, urban in origin. Meelkop is not the first Western sound artist to be seduced by infernal clatter of the slot machine (Jonathan Coleclough, Janek Schaefer and Bernhard Gal have been too), but his pachinko parlour processing is more abstract and complex, with filters and effects teasing out subtle ghostly frequency strata. Though obviously drawn to the acoustics of the teeming, information-overloaded media-saturated Japan we all think we knows, Meelkop also documents the sound world outside the city, where the blabber and smoke of human life is replaced by the bleak cawing of crows in a windswept field. The final track's draughty rumbles – rolling thunder, an advancing subway train? inside or outside? urban or rural? – are progressively and disconcertingly intercut with snatches of conversation until the roaring suddenly ceases just before the six minute mark, leaving us adrift on what sounds like a desolate station platform, just like the discarded empty cigarette packets that adorn the CD insert.
PARIS TRANSATLANTIC, 2004
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From extremely delicate field recordings rendered by nature and captured by Hitoko Sakai, Frans de Waard (Beequeen, Kapotte Muziek) and taken under the editing and mixing creative wing of multimedia artist Roel Meelkop (Goem, THU20) while in Japan in 2001, Onkyo OK is a wasteland of miniature sound effects and low-level drone. Split into six discreet track sections, and infecting your ears with the fade in and out surrealism of the instant, these three blend in the awkward candor of fluorescence with undercurrents of backstage at a typical rock concert in any major city, but you'll have to listen in real closely to catch any of that. It's like a big old compactor with a digital faceplate on the fritz. The concave hiss of early morning in an open field brings geese, a fountain and a whole lotta primordial hiss. The sounds of industrial clatter circles inside my head(phones) but is with such fusion that beside for commenting on the daily warpath of life's impossible balance nothing is clearly delineated in terms of discreet personal instances or happenings. It's all blended together, like a tie-dyed ragdoll being shaken (not stirred). The home stretch of "Onkyo OK" provides a muffled static being dragged closer to the edge. It's an arduous, wind-swept climb, building slowly like a plane taking flight in turbulance and sounding as though it is coming full force directly at you. What appear to be shutters engaged to hold back some of the pressure only partially prevent some of the perforated airflow through. The sink is sudden and the end is abridged.
IGLOO MAGAZINE, 2004
M. BEHRENS - ARCHITECTURAL COMMENTARIES - CD
For more than a decade now, M Behrens has been translating the textural fluidity of environmental sounds into clinical electroacoustic compositions that often refer to architectural space. 'Architectural Commentaries' fits comfortably within Behrens's impressive catalogue, offering a whirlwind tour through a structurally complex but certainly virtual space.Behrens's investigations centre on how the grey ambient washes from cooling and heating mechanisms change when resonating with different rooms. His detached objectivity over his subject matter keeps the furnace pipes, air conditioning ducts and radiators from becoming a replica of the Lynch/Splet Eraserhead soundtrack. Even when Benrens actively scrapes his contact microphones across the smooth metal of those ducts, this album never sounds creepy; rather it retains the frosty, depersonalised facade that comes across in The Hafler Trio and Francisco Lopez. Behrens rounds out the album with an incredibly quiet piece piece of music concrete previously released on RLW's massive Tulpas' five CD set.
THE WIRE 222, 2002
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Architectural Commentaries is one of studied detachment. M Behrens has long been creating impressive electro-acoustic pieces from environmental sound, and here his attention is focussed on the small sounds buildings technology generates and its resonant effects in a variety of room spaces. The resulting constructions of sound feel like architecture in their own right and avoid sonic cliche. Although for the most part quiet, they never drop below the threshold of consciousness as their source material would, and remain fascinating. Anyone who has taken time to sit in an acoustically active modern building and just enjoyed listening to it go about its business will appreciate the pleasures on offer here. I am reminded of sitting in the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts in Norwich and listening to its automatic environmental controls flickering and twitching around me, and the strange feeling of sonic vacuum you get in a building when forgotten air-conditioning suddenly cuts out. As an effective dramatisation of a largely ignored acoustic environment, it is a huge success.
NTH POSITION, 2002
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The second CD by CMR from New Zealand is by busy bee Behrens (this must be his fifth or sixth release of this year). Behrens' subject of this release may not come as a surprise, regarding pictures on former releases and remembering his first release on trente oiseaux. This disc contains five tracks, of which the first three use basic material recorded in several countries. The last two tracks are a rework of the RLW remix for Tulpas and a soundtrack for a video by Torsten Grosch. The first track has an almost organic feel to it, as if a building has come to life, breathing, squeaking and maybe even moving slowly from one spot to the other. A rest is taken every so often. The second track is in a similar vein, but instead of the building moving, it seems as if someone is moving through it, going from one space into the other. All around, 'machines' are buzzing and rumbling and doors and windows seem to open and close. The third piece goes even closer into the buildings intestines, focusing on the machines themselves and all their strange behaviour. Now these descriptions may give the impression that these pieces are made by using pure field recordings, but that is certainly not the case: many sounds have been edited (stretching, filtering and so on) and the compositions are very apparent. There is simply a certain lyrical quality to these works, that balances very well with the material used. Track four is the RLW remix and seems to be a little out of place here. It sounds more electronic and more subdued. However, a spatial quality is certainly there. Track five dates from 1992 and that can be heard quite well. It is very different in structure from the others, dronier and noisier. And surprise: there is rhythm sometimes. FX are more obvious and the time signature is quite a bit faster. I would have to say the first three tracks are definitely my favorites.
VITAL WEEKLY, 2002
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New Zealand's new electronic composer label is CMR. With two releases to date this is the newest offering from M. Behrens. Stylistically dissimilar to former releases on Portugal's SIRR.ecords and Bernhard Gunter's Trente Oiseaux label, this one has more in common with his work on Raster Music (Germany). Plotting, technical and cold - this disc is filled with industrial references, moving and staid. Made up of five long-playing tracks Behrens recycles sounds from Switzerland, Japan and other countries with a soaring, aerodynamic quality as heard on the opener Architectural Commentary 1. As a visual artist Behrens has created a few installation works which use similarly applied techniques to make for an interactive audience. SoundVision (Portland, OR) is considering mounting his work The Unknown, one such installation piece, for early 2003. With its high pitch steel-on-steel-like reverberation this minimal work bears only light resemblance to anything else currently in the world of noise. This tenured artist has proven again that big sound comes in that which is restrained and manipulated to a level of researched intimacy. Architectural Commentary 1 builds itself around winds, in ways like a common household dryer, whirling and traveling in a mechanical two-step. The abstract layers of scraping and digging construction site operations utilize multi-channels and make for a unique dimensional superimposition. These field recordings only hint at what is really lurking behind Architectural Commentaries which proves to be true to Behrens singular vision. This vision has a soul, and in its perfect combination of drone and frequency the tiny drills and engines associate with one another creating an unusual tonal quality. Excerpted from RLW's Tulpas (Selektion), CMR and Behrens has included the track quersumme rlw. Originally released on this four disc set, many folks may have missed their opportunity to either purchase or afford this now classic collection, but herein you can appreciate the reason for its notable inclusion. Consistent to his low-level patterning of minimal (residual) noise this eleven minute piece has a light-speed sonic quality in its structural technique. The track builds and peaks and crashes and flows with fluid succession. There is a volcanic rumbling that is at its core. Der Raum, the final track, jumped from my system and shook the room at top volume as it opens in mixed-up, fast cut mechanics. This repetition is weighted by interim subtonal grounding, but this track is out of its seat in the actionist approach it takes. Originally composed in 1992 for a video soundtrack by Torsten Grosch it was digitally remastered for this set. This disc is filled with creaky metal doors, hand held devices, whirring tools and a point of view.
TJ NORRIS, 2002
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The second release from CMR features five pieces from sound artist Marc Behrens, collecting both new and earlier works composed over the past ten years. The first three pieces, "Architectural Commentary" 1, 2 and 3, represent the latest material, composed in 2001. The disc also features two earlier works: the fourth piece was originally released on RLW's Tulpas CD on Selektion, and uses source material by Ralf Wehowsky; and the final piece, "Der Raum," was composed in 1992 as the soundtrack for a video by the same name by Torten Grosch. Is it possible to make an architectural commentary with sound? If so, what would it consist of? Using source recordings made in different locations in Germany, Switzerland, France and Japan, Behrens seems to have created sound environments that both occupy and comment on the spaces of hypothetical buildings. He has woven silences, near silences (empty corridors), recurring sounds (a pattern in the mouldings, the stucco) and shocks of sound (a sudden break in the wall, an unexpected awning) together with a combination of dynamic, subtle and spatial electronic and acoustic textures and tones—metallic, synthetic, acousmatic (corridors, galleries, doorways, salons, halls). The pieces are fascinating explorations, providing the listener with a wealth of ideas, details and tensions which reveal themselves gradually with repeated listening.
INCURSION MUSIC REVIEW, 2002
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This recording seems to be made up of various found (or sought out) sounds, such as machine or building noises, mechanical distortions which are put together in a way that does not insist on a long attention span. I appreciate the changes, and found this to be a disk worthy of further considerations. After taking another look, i see pictures in the packaging of several structures sharing the architectural commentaries title. I don't know if they were used to create these 1st 3 pieces, but they might well have. Mechanical soft grindings, what sounds like metal parts moved by jets of air, panned severely, alternating with gaps of near-silence. It is as if you are moving thru the structures, encountering rooms where different processes are taking place, all within a sonic environment. It has taken me some weeks to even try to put into words my reaction to these pieces, and i doubt that i even come near to doing them justice. Great care has obviously been taken here, it is apparent in the set-up and the execution. The result is largely percussive, tho with greatly altered attacks & envelopes. This is not a recording you would listen to for melody, it is one that you would listen to for texture, for movement and investigation of artificial space. The 4th piece, "quersumme rlw", was also included on the 5cd rlw (ralf wehowsky) 5cd of pieces composed using rlw source material. The final track, "der raum", originally was composed as the soundtrack for the video of the same title by torsten grosch. This piece has segments that are more obvious, in terms of use of rhythm, volume changes, less obscured sound sources. I find it an undeniable (at least to me) fact that this is a very carefully considered work. Rarely do i see see a more appropos and well-chosen title than Architectural Commentaries.
EARPIECE, 2002
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Released in 2002 on the New Zealand label CMR, Architectural Commentaries couples three new pieces by sound artist Marc Behrens with two of his earlier works. The three movements of the title track explore microscopic sounds and amplified silence. For “architectures,” they give an impression of fragility but also irremediableness. Behrens’ music exists -- period. It fills your listening space quietly but resolutely. Architectural Commentary 1 is the strongest piece, maybe because it leaves its basic constituents (air, metal, nothing) more obvious and make them interact in a more immediate way, expressing a sharper sense of design. The two other tracks loose some of this focus, even sounding improvised at times. “Quersumme RLW” was Behrens’s contribution to Tulpas, a Ralf Wehowsky remix project from 1998 (the album was out of print by 2002). In the light of what preceded it, the piece sounds organic even though it consists of very quiet digital sounds. The 11-minute “Der Raum” was composed in 1992 as the soundtrack for Torsten Grosch’s video by the same title. By far the noisiest and most kinetic piece on this CD, it shifts a number of times from near silence to post-industrial madness. This regression through time helps shed some light on the three Architectural Commentaries, although they remain sonic enigmas of appeal only to the most adventurous of listeners.
ALL MUSIC GUIDE, 2002
ESO STEEL - TECHNOLOGY OF SLEEP - VINYL LP [20city]
¯ Reviewed together w. Brandon Labelle Shadow of a Shadow (Selektion, 2001)
Brandon Labelle and Eso Steel represent two increasingly divergent attitudes in the manipulation of environmental and contact microphone recordings. On the one hand, Eso Steel (New Zealander Richard Francis, now living in Japan) recontextualises his recordings through a poetic and almost intuitive sensibility; on the other, Labelle qualifies sound as a parallel vehicle to his post-structuralist verbiage about the complex semiotic webs between realms of language and sound, private and public, synthetic and natural, etc. Outside of their conceptual differences, Eso Steel and Labelle provide strickingly similar and androitly composed albums of electrical buzzings and fizzing drones, alongside the crisp crackles of a contact microphone amplifying tiny textural striations. Yet the broader contexts and intensions of the two artists sets them apart. Eso Steel provides a few discernable clues to shape his sounds into metaphors of an internal circuitry that runs quietly while the body is at rest; Labelle’s cerebral exercises tend to limit his music to a merely functional extension of the written word. Sometimes less is more.
THE WIRE 215, 2002
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Armed with a couple of microphones and a DAT recorder, New Zealand ex-pat Richard Francis can be found scouring the late night desolate streets of Tokyo, captured various textural striations and quiet electrical hums while the rest of the city sleeps. Working under his moniker Eso Steel, Francis transforms his field recordings into a bristling catalogue of experimental minimalism through a poetic and almost intuitive sensibility. "Technology Of Sleep" is an exceptional album of fizzing environmental drones and crispy textural grit, sounding much like the recent work from M. Behrens or the contextualized recordings from Loren Chasse.
AQUARIUS RECORDS, 2002
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an amazing record made up of what sounds like field recordings & bedroom studio electronix. there are a lot of sounds to listen to here, from near silence to drones to crackles & rumbles. well-considered arrangements make this a worthwhile subject to listen to repeatedly and consider what is going on. eso steel is richard francis, and since leaving japan for his native new zealand has started a new label, cmr (see review of kiyoshi mizutani cd from last issue). i recommend this for anyone who is into listening to soundscapes that depart from the instrumental into the environmental, albeit self-created ones.
EARPEACE, 2002