ADVERSE EFFECT REVIEWS

What follows is a collection of reviews spanning 2006 to 2008. Apologies to those concerned whose reviews are older, but the previous website was not updated since early 2007. Please also note that, unless we are not aware of the country of origin, all the labels are UK based beyond those stated. Reviews here are by Richard Johnson, Kate MacDonald and Sacha Colgate.

ACOLYTES ACTION SQUAD Winkle Time CD (Early Winter Recordings, 2007)
Sheffield based duo A.A.S.?s debut album, Bust Of, surfaced 7 years before this follow-up, but it would appear absolutely nothing has compromised their often erratic and jagged swerves into the kinda terrain where idiosyncratic souls as disparate as NWW, Richard Youngs, Omit and The Gerogerigegege can also be caught stalking around. Throughout the eleven songs here a certain DIY aesthetic remains in check, but stealthily avoids the no/lo-fi trappings so often found attached, remora-like, to it. Instead, the production allows for the sounds and ideas to breathe. Which is a good thing, because there?s quite a lot going on here that commands it and would otherwise be reduced to sonic mulch. Mashed-up interludes greet spacious guitar passages, amp hum and electronic chattering gives way to solo female vocals, an Amon Duul-type ur-jam makes itself known, junk shop madness bubbles away, songs dissolve just as they?re beginning to form, languid flotsam coils around vague structures, and fragmentary noodling ripens the gaps. Fine stuff, skimming those places where the avant-garde is fucked around with even more and cast alongside different approaches to music without once either puffing on the air of pretension or falling into futile bedroom terrorism. Mysterious and quirky, yet never annoying, Winkle Time reveals much to hold onto without ever being obvious. A good thing in my increasingly battered book, f? sure. (RJ)
http://www.earlywinterrecordings.co.uk

ANT Footprints Through the Snow CD (Homesleep Music, Italy, 2006)
Thirteen unassuming stabs at the kind of fragile songwriting guaranteed to either send you towards homicidal tendencies or reeling into a pit of introspection so deep nobody but the most meek will feel compelled to cast a rescue ladder into. Either way, it?s a lost cause. As such music goes, this bobs along gently enough, but it lacks the magic or cynicism that can salvage it and unfortunately strays a little too close to the domain of the bedwetter for comfort too much. Ant may well possess a talent for exposing his heart with the aid of his keen songwriting abilities, but he seriously needs to grow some balls. (RJ)
http://www.homesleep.it

AUTOMATED ACOUSTICS Love to the Dedicated Listener CD (Alternative Blueprint, 2007)
A label which says that it celebrates artists who are unique and hard to categorise is a good thing. And, despite some initial misgivings, this disc grew on me as it went along. I started off not too sure about it, but got swept up in the sheer unpredictability of the sounds.
It ranges from some clever, almost AFX-like songs to a grooviness that reminds me a little of Bad Seeds? offshoot Crime & the City Solution, or a safer take on the sound of Xiu Xiu. At its strongest moments, it?s a breath of fresh air, something that really does defy comparison. At its weaker moments, it sounds a little too much like it?s trying to be music for art college students, striving for a strangeness that doesn?t come naturally.
The chief drawback of the album is that there is just too much of it. The whole project could have done with more whittling, to emphasise the potential of its high points.
A sort of wunderkind multi-instrumentalist, the character behind Automated Acoustics doesn?t seem to want for ideas, he just needs to refine a little more going forward. That said, he?s a young?un, this is only his first full-length album, and it seems that the future could be bright. (KM)

THE JOHN BAKER TAPES Volume One/Volume Two CD (Trunk Records, 2008)

Two fantastic insights to the (rightly) long revered and influential BBC Radiophonics Workshop via one of its three mainstays, the late John Baker, who, alongside Delia Derbyshire and David Cain, was responsible for creating some of the most amazing and visionary compositions to have arrived from true experiments in sound beyond those more self-conscious realms generally associated with them. Discovered by his brother, Richard, a large number of these pieces were considered lost until recently and an equally significant amount have never been released before. As such, both collections are invaluable on several counts.
On the first volume, collecting 49 rare and unreleased works recorded from 1963 to 1974, John Baker reveals some of his production techniques in between themes, jingles, public information broadcasts and soundscapes, etc. originally used for BBC radio and television shows and commissions elsewhere. Nestled amongst an array of melodic signature pieces, stabs of strangeness and humourous oddities titled and indeed used for ?Newstime BBC?, ?Building the Bomb?, ?Sling Your Hook?, ?Man Alive: UFO?, ?Barnacle Bill? and so on you?ll find an electronic opening for the film classic ?Dial M for Murder?, some non-broadcast cues, an interview for ?Woman?s Hour?, and far more besides.
The second volume collects a further 39 pieces not used by the BBC and is no less captivating than the first. Homespun jazz, library music, feedback loops, electronic jingles from adverts, more demented electro-acoustic passages, test tones, etc. recorded between 1954 and 1985 converge to embellish John Baker?s evident genius further. A soundtrack for Ridley Scott?s debut feature, Boy on a Bicycle, also makes an appearance, once again illustrating a love of jazz but also somehow magically fusing elements drawn, seemingly, from classical music and a colliery?s brass band. Otherwise, titles such as ?Electro-Suspense?, ?Electro-Weird?, ?Get Happy?, ?Pots ?n? Pans?, ?Piano Concrete? and so on probably point to everything you may think you know.
At times, both volumes fold together like Joe Meek?s more quirky forays rubbing shoulders with Nurse With Wound and, elsewhere, they prove themselves way outside such lazy confines on my part. Mostly, and somewhat more paradoxically, the albums add up to something which exist outside easy frames of reference. And, whether amusing or created for more serious purposes, the sheer scope of the inventiveness and energy behind it, can only be admired,
Complete with rare photos and liner notes, these two collections come wholeheartedly recommended to everybody interested in truly innovative music. As archives go, this one can only command repeat visits that will never once disappoint. The lines between insanity and genius in sound have once more been drawn. (RJ)

BEEHATCH eponymous CD (Lens, USA, 2008)
Beehatch is the result of a collaboration between Mark Spybey (ex-Zoviet France, Dead Voices On Air, etc.) and Phil Western (Download and platEAU), following ten years since they last worked together in Download and its being realised via the increasingly popular (and more convenient) method of file sharing via the internet; something that, given their respectively residing in England and Los Angeles, they could only do anyway.
Over fourteen cuts, they straddle those filmic areas they?re already known to explore, cut-ups, mashed passages of psycho-mulch, gentle looped voyages through light and dark, waking dreams in sound, electro-pop, and songs that could comfortably sway alongside the likes of Holger Czukay, Jah Wobble, Michel Banabila and some of Mark Stewart?s work. Lots of different elements are pulled together and there?s no doubting Spybey and Western?s knack for at least keeping them pumped full of blood, but the whole album suffers for being a little too disparate or blurred around the edges at times. The attention to detail, and even those warts that reside amongst it, is impeccable, but it feels as they?ve lost sight of the whole they?ve created in the process. (RJ)
www.lensrecords.com

FRANK BRETSCHEIDER & PETER DUIMELINKS flux CD (Korm Plastics, NL, 2006)
Although both of these artists have a pedigree in experimental music, I hadn?t been familiar with either of them until listening to this CD. Consequently, if you are familiar with them, I?m not going to be able to tell you whether this release is a logical continuation of either or their work. What I can tell you is that this is a collaboration (as opposed to a split release) and that it was recorded as part of the Brombron series put together by Frans De Waard, where artists such as Main, Tore Honore Boe and Jaap Blonk are brought together to work on a project for a fixed period of time. This is the tenth CD that the larger project has generated (there have been three more released since).
The music is an extremely minimal but likeable techno, with an irresistible pulse lurking beneath its sparse surface. It helps that the production is particularly sharp, so that the resulting sound mix has every whir and click perfectly placed. A flatter style would have rendered the work bland.
It could be argued that this sort of music is a more stripped down variant of the kind of thing labels like Sakho were doing in the mid-nineties, but the fact that it is so engaging shows that there are greater depths to be plumbed in that ocean. (KM)

CRESCENT Little Waves CD (FarCat, 2007)
This is the second album I?ve heard out of their total of five by this Bristol-based group. The last one being, well, their last album, from four years earlier, By the Roads and the Fields, which has been something I?ve turned to on many a wintry night since reviewing it. Little Waves sees the group moving from analogue recording to digital but thankfully losing none of the rugged beauty of the previous album. Singer Matt Jones? soft yet husky vocals once again recall a world-weary and (emotional) battle-scarred soul caught thick in the middle of a search for his lost self, whilst the music that backs it appears to be beamed from a time and space otherwise only to be found in dusty corners of record shops. No surprise then that Jones has cited 1930s gramaphone records, old folk and blues music, and even Indonesian Gamelan and the magnificent Pearls Before Swine?s One Nation Underground LP as being amongst the touchstones for Little Waves. This album possesses precisely the same feel of being from a slightly different place whilst neither compromising Crescent?s obvious songwriting ability or sounding unnatural.
Gentle acoustic melodies bind an array of instruments that include organ, horns, drums and homemade double bass together with a variety of environmental or found sounds which embellish the proceeedings perfectly. Combined with a very subtle nod towards contemporary electronica?s more adventurous plains, minute mistakes and a roughly-hewn edge likewise add to the setting.
As with the album before it, this is brimming with an earnest warmth, a rawness and bruised beauty impossible to resist. It suggests musty photo albums, walks along leafy paths after the rain has just cleared, staring out of a window of a derelict house, broken toys from one?s own childhood, buried dreams and well-thumbed pages. Such an air of sentimentality could so easily become trite in the wrong hands, but Crescent pull it off fantastically.
How it all compares to their lo-fi punk-inspired beginnings 14 years ago, I don?t yet know. Maybe it?s actually better I keep it that way? (RJ)
www.fat-cat.co.uk

THE DEATH RAYS Twelve Gauge Blues CD (DTK Records, Canada, 2007)
Balls-out, punked-up ?n? tremor-inducin? destructo-rock of the type first stoked by the likes of Black Flag or even Flipper, (un)healthily peppered with riffin? Stooges cruncherama, vocals that sound mercilessly torn from their lungs, psychotic sax blasts and all the trappings of a band doubtlessly aware of their cliched trappings but?re intent on having a fucken good time regardless of what I, or anybody else, thinks. Actually makes a change to have something like this around here, too. A massive flip-off to all the chin-scratchers amongst us. (RJ)
http://www.myspace.com/thedeathrays

KEVIN DRUMM Sheer Hellish Miasma CD (Mego, Germany, 2007)
If you?re going to call an album Sheer Hellish Miasma, as far as I?m concerned, you?d better be prepared to back it up. When you consider further that this release is actually a reissue of a much-lauded 2002 album (with extra material added), there was already a lot for Mr. Drumm to live up to by the time I had broken the seal on its tastefully minimalist packaging.
Perhaps if my expectations hadn?t been raised, this would have been a more enjoyable experience for me. Certainly, there are sections of the album that captured my interest, but nothing that truly won me over. The buzzy, layered drones of the first track oscillate and shimmer in a nice chorus effect, in a manner not dissimilar to some American power electronics, but without the PE spite. The second track is more rhythmic, with stuttering percussion hammering out an almost African cadence.
Unfortunately, after track two, which comes to an abrupt end, the album starts to drift. It meanders from tone to tone without much sense of dynamics and never builds on the energy of the opening tracks. This loss of direction is something I find Drumm shares with Jim O?Rourke, an artist with whom he has collaborated and to whom he has often compared.
Not bad, but not a sheer hellish miasma in either a bad or a good way. (KM)

FORMICATION Icons for a New Religion CD (Lumberton Trading Company, 2007)
Ah, this is what reviewers dream of and fear. A record that?s hard to describe. It?s a challenge, of course and you start off your review wanting to communicate something of the atmosphere that these two musicians draw from a diverse collection of instruments (guitars and synths on the mainstream side, djembe and ?tooting horn? on the obscure side), except that knowing the instruments won?t tell you a thing about what the final product actually sounds like.
So, you start over again and try to think of words that might be evocative of the end result of all these processed guitars and tooting horns and such. Juxtaposed terms like ?mellow psychedelia? or ?undulating electronics? sort of help to approach the subject, but seem to miss the gracefulness inherent in it.
It?s only after a couple of listens that it strikes you that there?s something a little bit familiar about the sound, something in the back of your mind with which it forms a continuum. Coil. Mid-nineties to early-whatever-you-call-this-decade Coil is the closest link in sound and mood, which is fitting, since Coil themselves were notoriously difficult to describe.
This is not to say that the music is derivative, far from it, but sometimes a comparison is worth far more than a reviewer throwing terms like ?burbling? and ?mysterious? and ?morphing? at you. Well worth keeping a lookout for, now and in the future. (KM)
http://www.lumbertontrading.com

FORMICATION Agnosia CD (Harmful/Dark Winter, 2007)
Closely following their album for my very own Lumberton imprint, Formication bring us another handful of cuts that, this time, roll along a more pronounced emphasis on rhythms. Sometimes akin to a chattering alien computer or a funeral march past a foundry where a lonely worker sweats away, the rhythms swing nicely between being busy and more subdued whilst forever avoiding those more obvious beat trappings. Alongside ghostly psychedelic textures, distant wails, carefully woven torrents of amber hiss, finely-hewn pulses and equally measured minimal keyboard chord strikes, everything feels befitting of either a haunting film score or perhaps a chemically-soaked recess where nostalgia, lost days and reflection reign. Only the final, fifth track moves away from such anchorage towards the type of electronic interstellar gush they?re usually happy to fall adrift in, but it is still solidly executed and works perfectly. Just a shame the packaging (a black & white slipcase with sombre images on not so far removed from the approach adopted by many a dodgy goth group) betrays the music, unfortunately. (RJ)
www.darkwinter.com

FREIBAND Leise CD (Cronica, Portugal, 2007)
Ten compositions based on recordings his then three-year-old daughter made, using musical and non-musical instruments/sound sources, represent Frans de Waard?s Freiband?s third album. As with other Freiband material, the emphasis is as much on computer processing as the original material used for it, but while the realms explored are of a chiefly electro-acoustic nature they are never rendered sterile as a result of the environment. Rather, all manner of interesting thuds, pops, crackles, scrapes and suchlike weave around each other to form atmospheric textures, mostly gentle patterns, occasional rhythmic snatches and the general digital palette that could only too easily be staid if left in the wrong hands. Once again, Frans proves that he has a firm grasp on his inventiveness, possesses an ability to shade it in many ways, and refrains from allowing it to plummet into the very depths of boredom so much music of this nature is guilty of. (RJ)
http://www.cronicaelectronica.org

ERIK FRIEDLANDER & TEHO TEARDO Giorni Rubati CD (Bip-Hop, 2008)
Thirteen songs inspired by the poems of murdered Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini feature on this trans-Atlantic collaboration by downtown New York improvisation cellist Friedlander and prolific Italian electronic composer, Teardo, known otherwise for his soundtrack work, involvement with several groups, and remixes for bands or artists as diverse as Placebo, Girls vs. Boys, Rothko and Lydia Lunch. Initially based on 8 multi-tracked or single track responses to the poems recorded by Friedlander, Teardo reworked the recordings while adding piano, electronics and guitar along the way. From the plaintive ?Ricordi di Miseria?, with its haunting textures and the cello strokes given centre stage, to the alarmingly viable and vaguely electro-punk-gone-minimal cover of ?Warm Leatherette? that closes the album, Giorni Rubati both splits its seams with surprises and commands nothing but your full attention. Highly recommended. (RJ)
http://www.bip-hop.com

FUCK BUTTONS Colours Move promo CDS (ATP Recordings, 2008)
Imagine prime cut Spacemen 3 or even early Spiritualised sliced, diced ?n? sprinkled over a slightly more aggressive palette via some colossal mesmer-rhythms hewn like proto-industrial?s dancefloor cousin and ?Colours Move? may well hammer itself into focus accordingly. Dunno how this cut compares with the rest of this duo?s debut album, ?Street Horrrsing?, from earlier this year, but it simultaneously reminds me Terminal Cheesecake and newer cousins in fucken fucked and celebratory fuckedelia, Holy Fuck. A nice and chunky Andrew Weatherall remix, ?Sweet Love for Planet Earth?, seems as fitting as both the support slot to Mogwai and the fact this release can only otherwise be found on 12? or download. Apparently, the press have been creaming themselves over ?em, but I rarely keep abreast of such matters. At least it seems almost justified, for once, anyway. (RJ)

GUY GELEM Works CD (Split Femur Recordings, 2008)
Simple, minimalistic electronic rhythms and sinewy guitar melodies fleshed out by some often suitably atmospheric cello playing form the basis to this debut instrumental album by London?s Guy Gelem. Because it only too often falls near those kingdoms already signposted by the likes of Mum or Fridge, it isn?t the elevatory experience it?d probably like to be, but Works makes for a pleasant enough, if rather perfunctory, halfway house to them. Shame there were no more of the Italian folk touches, as witnessed on fifth cut ?Village?, peppered throughout, really. (RJ)
Split Femur Recordings Ashleigh, Main Road, Great Haywood, Staffs., ST18 0SU http://www.splitfemurrecordings.com

ROBERT HAMPSON + STEVEN HESS eponymous CDEP (Crouton, USA, 2006)
Four collabs all spanning the four-to-six minutes mark from Robert Hampson, otherwise known for his work with Main and Loop outside various collaborations, and US drummer/percussionist Steven Hess, whose own credits include Pan American, Fessenden and others. Half-submerged creaks, skittering shimmers and what sounds like a computer protesting at the bottom of a mineshaft wander into ripples created by mild cymbal sweeps, fragmented pulses, sequences of minute pops ?n? poots and vaguely rhythmic whorls. Neither unpleasant or particularly unexpected but, rather, somewhat unremarkable. Sometimes wish Hampson would just squeeze some blood out of his pores again, to be honest. Whatever, limited to 500 and probably long gone, like you actually care? (RJ)
http://www.croutonmusic.com

HUNTSVILLE For the Middle Class CD (Rune Grammofon, 2006)
Pretty incredible long-player by the Norwegian trio of Ivar Grydeland, Tonny Kluften and Ingar Zach, who?ve long been involved with the free improvisation world already documented by Grydeland?s Sofa label on a number of releases since 2000. Here, however, they utilise all manner of instruments from guitars, double bass, banjo, tabla machine and various others originating from India to explore a more recent interest in drone, country, folk and electronic music. Opening song, ?The Appearance of a Wise Child?, tethered to around 15 mins worth of driving, hypnotic percussion and snatching some random vocals along the way, largely sets the tone for the remainder of the release. Organic textures snake around each other, rhythms staple everything to that juncture where everything points to an apex of unadulterated ecstasy, and discernible ur-strums combine with frenetic bows and scrapes for that only too important raw effect so hard to find in this day of software-generated sterilisation. Only second track, ?Serious Like a Pope? loses its grip slightly as the pace is whittled back to a near Fahey-esque approach rendered better on fourth and final cut, ?Melon?, which furnishes us with a comparatively stripped and gentle touchdown to the proceedings. Nonetheless, Huntsville sound like their experience within such realms of music is paying off. The product of people who know their game without having let their imagination or yearning to voyage to new places suffer. Fucken dandy in my book, I have to concede. (RJ)
http://www.runegrammafon.com

KEPLERS ODD Strena Seu de Nive Sexangula CD (Fractured Spaces, 2008)
Trio from Sweden?s third album with seven untitled and largely agreeable slices of moody yet sinewy guitar-led instrumental pieces which gently nod towards The Cure?s classic Seventeen Seconds and Faith albums whilst sucking on the same air as comparatively more contemporary artists such as Stars Of The Lid and Labradford. There?s a heavier emphasis on the foggy swirls and post-industrial sounds buried way down, but the overall tone is one of minimalist melancholy and rather subdued despair. Everything mostly hangs together with both a meaning and intent that belies the ?noise-drone-ambient? angle heralded by the press sheet, anyway. Only the fourth and fifth cuts? meandering into Skullflower-esque distortion-anchored landscapes gives the general effect a slight hammering, unfortunately, as they appear to be borne of an idea to prove Keplers Odd worthy of the ?noise? school more than anything more focussed or, well, rich in feeling. I?m all for noise, but it has to be harnessed or have direction. In the context presented here, it carries no weight and deflates an otherwise good album. All the same, worth keeping a half-mast peeper on, at the very least. And I certainly wouldn?t mind investigating the previous albums, either. (RJ)
Fractured Spaces Records, 5 Serjeants Green, Neath Hill, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, MK14 6HA http://www.myspace.com/fracturedspacesrecords

DAVID KRISTIAN Ghost Storeys CD/DVD (C0C0S0L1DC1TI, Canada, 2008)
?Last studio? album from prolific and highly revered Canadian electronic music composer, David Kristian, collaborating here with Ryosuke Aoike, Japan?s much vaunted Manga animator responsible for creating Catman and Perestroika, on five films based on Japanese ghost stories. The music itself veers through those spaces where appropriately drifting penumbral shimmers wrap themselves around distant knocks, crashes and taps like ectoplasm manifesting into menacing forms. While shades of Lustmord or the moodier textures behind Thomas Koner?s arctic explorations instantly leap out as reference points, we mustn?t lose sight of Kristian?s intentions here or, indeed, the fact that he conducts them perfectly. As a starting point to his newfound direction as a soundtrack composer, these thirteen compositions represent nothing but a mission firmly accomplished.
Aoike?s five silent shorts, working themselves through gloomy hues, never overstated abstractions, neatly hewn graphics and sequences often as haunting or evocative as the music itself are a sheer pleasure to watch despite what generally appear to be rather simple premises. If, like myself, you?ve not seen any Manga films in a long time, these may well just convince you that the time to redress the balance is way overdue. (RJ)
www.cocosolidciti.com

ANDREW LILES & JEAN-HERVE PERON Fini! CD (Dirter Promotions, 2008)
I have to ?fess that I sometimes now baulk at the idea of reviewing material concerning my friends, and this particular release is a double-barrelled example in that it features Mr. Liles and is on Steve Pittis? label. Thankfully, however, the former, despite my presently rather featherweight criticism of there simply being too much available by him now being completely at odds with my own endorsement of his work via releases on my own labels, has barely made a duff record yet, whilst Pittis? Dirter Promotions is very much a kindred spirit to my own labels in that it?s never been hip, is dedicated to purely reflecting Steve?s own interests, and has indeed crossed over with mine at several points. Basically, our labels are in the same (possibly sinking but certainly stinking) boat, and always have been. Returning to the point about Liles? work, however, I think my problem with there being so much output by him now stems from the belief that he?s going to slip up very badly at any given time now, but my fears are violently cast aside with absolutely every new record I hear by him these days. And this collaboration with one of Faust?s founders is no exception.
Beginning, as it does, with a welcoming Faust-type drum loop and Jean-herve yowling and protesting that, as the title suggests, ?The Drummer is on Valium?, plus all from metallic clunks and scrapes to what sounds akin to an android gibbon deeply in pain and some rockin? guitar, the tone is largely set for an album that appears to get better, and perheps more skewed, as the following thirteen cuts unspool their very guts. As the piece begins to plummet into some nicely hewn noise towards the end of its 8 minutes running time, we?re given the usual few seconds pause before ?I Do Not Like To Get Wet? assumes a posture dominated by Liles? presence.      Trademark flirtations with the carnivalesque and downright absurd bubble ?n? foam away, hinting at those cloud-strewn netherworlds Liles? ouevre has continually poked its tendrils at since first crawling amongst the moonlit shadows. Only a rusty trumpet really seems s to bag the air trapped by Jean-herve, but rusty brass is welcome into my palace any day. Third track, ?Shut Up & Sit Down?, sticking to the two-to-three minutes mark dominating most of the pieces and held together by the kinda plaintive enough guitar strums that wouldn?t be outta place on an early post-punk record, pays witness to more of Jean-herve?s vocals and all kinds of indiscernible, mutated noises spiralling from a Lovecraftian rift clearly exploited elsewhere. Whilst its only too apparent that the recent Faust collaborations with Nurse With Wound represent an inevitable meeting of minds, Liles and Jean-herve alone together mould far more fantastic shapes from the subconsciousness than you may?ve heard in quite a time. Not only that, but Fin! Really fucken, uh, ?rocks? in places, too.
Indeed. Work your way through the looped breaths, rasps, muted bass drums pounds and complaining horse of ?Shake Your Hooves? and there?s so much fantastic guitar fuzz to swathe yourself in you can almost hear early Skullflower battling it out with The Stooges. Which is precisely one of the reasons the instrument itself was invented for, as far as I?m concerned, and I vehemently advise seeing a doctor if you stupidly think otherwise.
Of course, guitars don?t cloak the album entirely, however. Other tracks, such as ?I Lost Faith in Words?, consist of a haphazard yet playful collection of cut-ups, gadgetry and vocals, and ?Congo Bongo La La La? is virtually self-explanatory aside from the additional employment of a flute and gleeful speed-fuckery. Then, penultimate piece, ?It?s Too Loud? kicks off with a couple of layers of Jean-herve saying god knows what in German before we?re sent reeling spacewards with more six-stringed lunacy. The signs proclaiming there being two geniuses at work don?t have a solitary chance of remaining mounted?
Friends or not, this is a grand album. My objectivity forever rules regardless and, well, if any of you fuckers trust me, you can sure as hell count on me regarding this release. The only disappointing thing is the shitty, almost throwaway artwork. It looks like the kinda album one would find on RRR or a dodgy US noise label. The music deserved better. (RJ)

GETATCHEW MEKURIA, THE EX & GUESTS Moa Anbessa CD (Terp Records, The Netherlands, 2006)
It had been a considerable amount of years since I last heard The Ex before this album, and I?d never felt particularly won over by their rather Gang Of Four-inspired delves into angular and sometimes noisy rock, but this collaboration both caught my attention and jolted it for six almost immediately on the very first listen. Getatchew Mekuria is a highly respected saxophonist from Ethiopia who, now in his 70s, has been playing in his own, almost free-leaning, style since 1947. Utilising typical Ethiopian signatures, his vibrato blasting takes its main cue from a war-chant that then spirals wonderfully into colourful melodies, blistering attacks and more mournful refrains. Alongside The Ex?s staggered rhythms, mannered anger, punked-up guitar cuts, buoyant (but not cloying) playfulness and the addition of a horn section whose own accompaniments swell everything out perfectly, the eleven songs barely contain a passion I?ve hardly heard outside certain Polish groups originally snagged in the ?Yass? circuit of the 1990s. Overtly, the album represents a highly spirited meeting of minds downright impossible to ignore. And, heck, if this illustrates what The Ex have been up to in more recent years, then those early misigivings of mine need to be retracted immediately. Likewise, as quite possibly my first (small) helping of Ethiopian music, it sounds like an entrance paved in gold. Would have loved to have caught this live, and no mistake. (RJ)
Terp Records, PO Box 635, 1000 AP Amsterdam, The Netherlands
www.terprecords.nl

DAVOR MIKAN Tauschung CD (Cronica, Portugal, 2007)
Four years in the making, the 28 miniatures (as, indeed, they generally are; only one piece goes over the four minutes mark, only a few hover around the two-to-three-minutes length, and the remainder range from eleven seconds to being barely much longer than a minute) here by Mikan, a Vienna-based artist given to combining algorithmic music with handmade sounds, resemble the type of scrunched-up electro-acoustic compositions RLW has perfected over the years. Balls of light and dark bounce against jagged and often jarring micro-patterns teased into something then invitingly teased elsewhere. As with other such works, this is not a place to turn to for comfort or to get dragged along by. Instead, Mikan creates a completely absorbing space where sounds are explored and pushed into new realms perfectly reflecting the whole gamut of emotions without the crutches served by convention. It is music designed to climb inside, and it works fantastically. (RJ)
www.cronicaelectronica.org

GEOFF MULLEN thrtysxtrllnmnfstns CD (Entschuldigen Entgeoff, Germany, 2007)
Combination of treated guitar drones, textures, electronics, banjo plucking and suchlike on a debut album which sucks on the already congealed juices of what certain people have been calling ?Americana? during recent years. Although it functions on an agreeable enough level, it is hard to imagine this work being capable of fulfilling those with more demanding appetites. Certainly, the multi-layered mininimalist drone pieces are okay, but they?re ultimately similar to only too many other processed mulch works of this nature. Put them next to any other such artist?s work and I?ll give a big bag o? sweets to the person who can discern Mullen?s own endeavours from them. No lie. On other cuts not so readily anchored, a subtle folk-ish leaning can be occasionally whiffed between the patchwork of glitches, pops and micro-parps, but Leafcutter John?s throne won?t be toppled yet. Again, it?s all okay, but we now live in a world where only too much music is merely ?okay? when, let?s face it, more of it should be fucken gobsmackingly blinding. Kudos must be given for the handmade feel of the packaging, however. Each copy of the album arrives with digital prints by artist Sarah Powers glued to the front and back of the digipak, plus a cloth bag inside containing a photo and info sheet by Mullen. More artists/groups could learn from this, at the very least. (RJ)
www.entschuldigen.com

NíD Plate Tectonics CD (Aufabwegen, Germany, 2006)
Posthumous release by this Swiss-German trio dedicated to mostly drone-bound sounds, noise manipulation, foggy samples and dialogue snatches. Here, three lengthy pieces encircle some fantastic voyages through muted hum, looped voices, gentle vibrations and the stench of noxious ooze. The last one, ?35000 Feet Below the Ocean Surface?, clocks in at almost 22 minutes and hints at a leather-clad NWW surveying a desert of black ash. Which works a treat for me. (RJ)
Aufabwegen, P.O. Box 152, 50441 Cologne, Germany http://www.aufabwegen.com

PURE SOUND Submarine CD (Euphonium, 2007)
This release advertises itself as "ambient, avant garde, experimental", but I have to say that this release doesn't really match up to these adjectives. The first track, ?Breathe Deep, My Love?, comes on like an ersatz Can (complete with ?Mother Sky? bassline), and what follows is a bunch of acoustic guitar strumming and plunking, samples of World War Two-era monologues and quotes, submarine-like beeps and bloops (do you see?), some sardonic (and to be honest, tiresome) vocals, rumbling loops and drones, various bits of found sound, and so forth. There are some nice touches here and there, such as the atmospheric piano playing of ?Get My Cutting Head Down?, however, but on the whole there is a lack of focus present, with the impression that Pure Sound are attempting to squeeze in as many sounds and ideas as they can, which don't always work well or hang together. In addition, they are treading a well-worn path in respect to what they are attempting, and I found my attention often drifting whilst listening to Submarine - a case of "heard it all before", perhaps? Mixing songwriting and atmospherics can work sometimes, but it's a tricky thing to pull off, and to be honest, I feel that Pure Sound have somewhat missed the mark. (SC)

RAN SLAVIN The Wayward Regional Transmissions CD (Crónica, Portugal, 2007)
Latest work from this Tel Aviv-based audio-visual artist, anchored to the fundamental premise of marrying sounds from the Oriental Middle East to contemporary glitchworks. It?s an idea bursting with a promise, however, which generally fails to live up to the album?s opening highlight of ?Village?, which succeeds because it is carried along by Israel?s leading singer-songwriter Ahuva Ozeri?s three-steel-string instrument, the Bulbul Tarang. And, despite her appearing with the very same instrument on a further three songs, only ?Hagalil? and ?Wayward Initial? from these vaguely sniff near its warmth and immediacy. Between these pieces, we witness at least an edging towards the original idea, if not the fullest realisation of it.
The remainder of the album relies too heavily on the already stated software fuckery methods that now only seem incredibly lazy, easy and, of course, only too often employed by a grey and sickly tide of clueless bastards with absolutely nada to offer.
What could have been a truly enterprising venture turns out to be, unfortunately, yet another album that, certainly during its finer points, hints at a scope far wider than it possibly even originally set out to. Pity it?s swiftly cut short by its predictability.
A truly wasted opportunity. (RJ)

PETER REHBERG Kapotte Muziek by? 3? CD (Korm Plastics, NL, 2007)
Digital-noise artist Rehberg, more commonly known as Pita, here works source material from Kapotte Muziek?s first workshop, recorded in 1997. Approximately 17 minutes of amorphous sonic buggery tweaked into something quite beautiful, with all the cut-ups and junkyard mayhem of Frans de Waard?s KM outlet buried, perhaps, like a corpse in the cellar that?s still making its fragrant presence felt. Such collaborations, I strongly maintain, should always subsist on the fundamental idea of hitching the original material to completely different points. Narratives, sounds and even the most vague of notions need to be both thoroughly explored and then redressed. And Rehberg understands this perfectly. Shame it?s such a stupidly short release, really. (RJ)
http://www.kormplastics.nl

SHINING Grindstone CD (Rune Grammofon, Germany, 2007)
Persuasive second album by a Norwegian rock outfit whose combined background in jazz, theatre, pop and film music clearly pays dividends if Grindstone is anything to go by. Despite a blistering assault into the crevice where Prog joins forces with what many tend to deem ?Art-rock? (as with most such terms, it?s so wide and variable that it cannot be pinpointed to any particular sound; rather, it?s a generic badge to be pinned on the lapels of those whose ?rock? dabblings are ?clever?, ?intelligent?, ?sophisticated? and simply steer clear of the ?dunt? trappings so many musicians in the area vy for?I?ve see ?Art-rock? levelled at all from Roxy Music, Magma and Pere Ubu to Peter Hammill, Wire, and Godspeed You Black Emperor!, and none of them bear many similarities. Nonetheless, I?ll run with it for now anyway), there are huge ?n? juicy dives into the domain of the film soundtrack via haunting or even bombastic sections, plus healthy dips into other waters altogether. ?Moonchild Mindgames? starts out like something you?d expect to hear emanating from a decent jazz bar before then getting itself entangled in some dark strands o? wisp perhaps left by a recordist for an old B-movie. The bizzarely titled ?Stalemate Longan Runner? picks at medieval scabs also found elsewhere, and ?To Be Proud of Crystal Colours is to Live Again? is a short instrumental that wouldn?t be out of place on Danny Elfman?s fantastic score for Tim Burton?s Edward Scissorhands. Meantime, ?ASA NISI MASA? actually succeeds in making vocoded vocals seem acceptable.
At certain intervals it brings to mind fellow Scandinavians Circle and at others maybe Goblin if they?d been put together by Ozzy, but such parallels cannot realistically be drawn for too long. Above all, this is just a great, very lively and inventive album so stuffed with sonic protein it?s impossible to leave unattended. Shining make rock music sound like the kind of banquet even unsociable ragamuffins such as myself would only too happily attend. Incredible work. (RJ)
http://www.runegrammofon.com
http://www.shining.no

SWARMS The Silver Hour CD (Vendlus, Norway, 2008)
Five compositions recorded between 2002 and 2006 by a group revolving around Kim Solve, Petter Berntsen and several others caught on those icy winds often found nestled amongst the fjords of their native Norway. Somewhere between The Hafler Trio?s blend of plaintive textures and Biosphere?s ventures into frozen gush, Swarms own take on matters, unlike so many others nestled amongst such folds, at least avoids falling into that awful and cloying cod-horror post-industrial fissure so many morose Scandinavians seem to lick their blistered lips into a lather over. Muffled voices, chains dragged slowly along distant floors, broken rhythmic rasps and sighs, ghostly yet enchanting nods amongst the static, and a very carefully measured approach to the matters at hand prevent Swarms from appearing like an unwanted guest at a party. This is a good way to drift into some stray thoughts. And I speak as somebody cloaked in heaps o? reservations initially. So, yeah, take it as gospel, if you choose? (RJ)
www.vendlus.com

TROUM Aiws CD (Transgredient, Germany, 2007)
AIWS is the first full-length release by this German duo since 2003 and collects recordings from between 2002 and 2005. With a title translating as ?eternity? in gothic language or representing an abbreviation of ?Alice-In-Wonderland-Syndrome? (I have no ?net access as I type, so haven?t the faintest idea what this is right now, unfortunately), it collects nine melancholic drone-orientated pieces drafted from guitars, e-bow, accordion, voices, Sufi-songs, flute and the forever enticing surface sounds from old vinyl. Everything is recorded in analogue and, as the cover itself proudly proclaims, no computer, sampler or synths were used, which is no mean statement in itself if you have a rough grasp of recording and production techniques but still gasps a welcome sigh when placed next to today?s Ableton-bound explorers into little sonic kingdoms. Overtly, Troum work with slowly shifting foggy textures where other sounds also get knitted in to add to the mood, though. At times, it draws from similar pools to certain minimalist composers or, say, some of Eno?s ambient works, but the atmospherics share a malignance or sense of gloom more commonly associated with the duo?s own post-industrial peers. Occasionally everything drifts into some beautiful miasmic patterns, such as on the opening ?Amhateins?, and the following ?Aggilus?, but elsewhere Troum?s handle is lost and replaced by a more generic and predictable approach. It is clear Troum possess the ability to create droneworks that are majestic and powerful, however. Let?s hope they continue to nurture it. (RJ)
For more information, visit Drone Records: www.dronerecords.de

VARIOUS ARTISTS Audiotoop CD and 28pp book (Korm Plastics, NL, 2007)
A very curious release, this - it appears to be a spin-off from a series of live events (also called ?Audiotoop?) that took place in early 2005 in the Netherlands. This CD and book package has the feel of being geared towards young children, with the book consisting of artwork and illustrations provided by each of the 10 (mainly Dutch) artists present. This impression continues with the initial track by Jana and Bertin (?English Spoken?), which has both performers discussing some increasingly daft scenarios, whilst occasionally being interrupted by some seriously irritating bargain basement sounds. Henri-Chopinesque vocal manipulations are essayed on Freek Lomme en Remco van Bladel's ?OERatiaudio Empir?, and much of the rest of this release features spoken word combined with either washes of electronics, or (more frequently) musique concrete-type juxtapositions. The most engaging moments come from the distinctly non-Dutch Bohman Brothers, whose ?This Is Rocketscience? combine their often-humorous whispering and ranting with their unique take on electro-acoustic sound manipulation. The CD as a whole is a pleasurable distraction, and a novel take on an area of music that can often be bogged down by the po-faced and humorless. It's not the sort of release I would find myself returning to regularly, but I do like its lack of pretentiousness and sense of fun. Worth checking out if you're in the mood for some Low Country shenanigans. (SC)

CHRIS WATSON ? BJ NILSEN Storm CD (Touch, 2006)
Three lengthy pieces culled from a collection of recordings made over the course of several years of storm fronts on the respective shorelines of these two renowned artists. The first, by Watson alone, catches the lapping waves, gulls and suchlike from Budle Bay, the Forth and Tyne, etc. making for a natural setting that steadily drifts along towards something more enchantingly alien. ?SIGWX?, the collaborative second entry, snares a cyclonic North East gale and thundery rain along with an air of Viking menace lifted straight from the Baltic sea, and the third and final piece, by Nilsen alone, catches various coastal locations recorded straight to DAT from his native Sweden. It all adds up to something simultaneously comforting and recognisable as well as faintly disconcerting. A fine balance not altogther removed from, say, some of Eric La Casa?s equally engaging work. Turn out the lights. Sit back. Ride those waves? (RJ)
http://www.touchmusic.org.uk

WoO Mobi Rock CD (rx-tx, Slovenia, 2007)
Debut from an improv guitarist from Belgrade otherwise known for his being a founder of the Belgrade Noise Society and one-time member of noise-rock outfit Off. Over ten cuts, WoO, as he now calls himself, casts his line into that space where gadgets and devices such as remote controllers, mobile phones, a computer mouse, radio receivers and a bow are employed as source material for sonic miniatures to rub alongside guitars and pedals. The results amount to a mostly melodic and atmospheric fabric of loops, drones, inconspicuous random clicks and shuffles, delicate sighs, melodic pings and twangs and suchlike over gently swaying rhythms. It?s all rather pleasant and slots readily alongside so much other material operating within the electronica spectrum but, unfortunately, like the vast majority, has little to actually elevate it beyond the homogenised morass it has trickled from. As with nearly all such music, there?s little to distinguish each of the artists responsible outside their being located in different cities or countries or whatever. Pleasant and very slightly interesting is all very well, but is it really enough? (RJ)
http://www.rx-tx.org
http://www.belgradenoise.com

Z?EV/FRANCISCO LOPEZ Buzzin? Fly/ Dormant Spores CD (Black Rose Recordings, 2007)
Sadly, this is music that some would describe as ?ambient?, simply because that seems to be the going term for music that doesn?t have drums or traditional style guitars. The problem with that definition is that it is considered synonymous with ?nothing really happens? and there is a world of chthonic wonder to be found in the depths of the sounds herein.
It?s virtually impossible that any fan of experimental or concrete music will not have happened upon the works of either Z?ev or Lopez in their travels. Each is prolific, respected and established within the community. The album is a split, rather than a collaboration (hence the divided title) with the first half, comprised of five shorter linked tracks, belongs to Z?ev, the second, a long single piece, to Lopez. The two halves are a nice match, with the almost blissful organic drift of the former leading nicely into the intense rise and fall of the latter.
This release is all about the texture and progression of sound, so if you are looking for something that truly is ambient- something inoffensive that meekly fades to the background- you might want to look elsewhere. If you?d prefer to throw on headphones for something that will reveal itself more with each subsequent listen, you could do a lot worse. (KM)

JOHAN JOHANNSSON

by Ed Benndorf

Well, this is partly what, for me, Adverse Effect, is about. Exchanging ideas or information, garnering new places to visit, being introduced to new worlds, discovery and, of course, encouraging participation. And so on. Which is precisely what has happened in the case of this following interview by my good friend Ed at Dense Promotions in Berlin. He offered this translated version of an interview he conducted quite recently with Icelandic composer Johann Johannsson, following the release of his astonishing 2006 album on 4AD, IBM 1401, A User?s Manual, and, for sure, after having heard a copy of the CD Ed then sent me, I had to agree. To do otherwise would have been an act bordering on insanity. The album itself comes from an artist I know absolutely nothing about but want to learn more. Reason alone for including this interview?

The music on IBM 1401, A User?s Manual recalls Howard Skempton?s Lento, Michael Nyman or perhaps Max Richter. It successfully weaves a rich, symphonic yet melancholic approach with subdued electronic sounds based on tones generated by the old computer of the album?s name and occasional voices that wouldn?t seem out of place amongst some of, say, FSOL?s work. It?s music that sweeps you mercilessly along to a state you never really wish to return from (but know you must). I have no idea how this particular album compares to Johannson?s other releases, either. In this very same sense, the following interview is going to be as interesting for me as I hope it will be for you.

Let?s read on?

?: Please tell us about your father's career in computer technology. How difficult was it to program a melody into an IBM 1401 and record it in 1964?

JJ: It was certainly not one of the things the IBM 1401 was designed for. It was a very businesslike machine, used in banks and accounts departments. My father learned of a way of programming music on the computer when he was studying, in Berlin, actually. The machine emitted strong electromagnetic waves and when you put a radio receiver next to it, the radio would pick up those waves as a tone. Then, by programming the memory with certain commands, melodies could be produced. This was something the engineers used to do after work, as they were all music enthusiasts a well as programmers. My father was the maintenance
engineer for IBM in the ?60s and ?70s.

?: When did you find your father's tapes and what was your first reation when listening to them?

JJ: He told me about the recordings sometime around the year 2000 and I asked to hear them, as this story fascinated me and I found it instantly very intriguing. I resonated very strongly with a lot of themes that interested me. Listening to the tape, I was struck by the emotional attachment that the engineers seemed to have for this machine. That they went to the lengths of documenting its demise and making this kind of farewell ceremony. I thought of making a piece using these tapes as soon as I heard them.

?: How did it develop into the idea to elaborate the tapes into a composition of your own? How did you transform your father's melody into a composition for an orchestra? Was the starting point your father's melody, his spoken word passages or something of your own?

JJ: It took me a while to find a way of using this material. In one part, the machine plays an old Icelandic hymn, and I took the first five notes of this melody, looped them and used the loop as the basis for the piece. Then I wrote the string melody in counterpoint to this 5 note loop. In part 4 of the album, the string melody is presented without the loop, in a darker, more flowing version. The 5 note theme crops up here and there in the piece, in part 3 for example. There are recurring themes and elements creeping up here and there, the bell sound of Part 2 becoming slowly more and more ring-modulated and finally metamorphosing into the subsonic boom of Part 4.

The spoken word passages are actually from a recording of an old instructor´s manual for the IBM 1403 printer which was on the same tape that my father recorded the computer music on. The instructor or narrator´s voice reminded me of the voice of HAL from 2001, a droning, mechanical, but not-unfriendly voice reciting this outdated technical jargon as if he were an oracle reciting some ancient wisdom. When I decided to incorporate this voice into the piece, it really started to come together as a whole.

?: Why was the orchestra recorded in Prague and not in Iceland? Please tell us about the additional recordings made between 2003-06 in Reykjavik, Zürich, Madrid etc. What influence do they have on the final record, what did they
change?

JJ: They have great players in Prague and fabulous recording studios. We´ve performed the stage version of the piece many times since the debut in 2002 and in some of the venues I did some recording, if the venue sounded really good. Some of the Erna´s vocals were recorded right after a performance in Zurich, and some of the Hammond organ recordings were done in a beautifully sounding hall in Florence. Generally, if the hall we played in sounded nice, I did some recording there.

?: How much of the original music for dance is in the album? Why did you think it was necessary to change the original music? Will there be an additional DVD release with the original music plus visuals from the performance?

JJ: All of the 4 original sections from the dance piece are there, plus some additional music I wrote especially for the CD version. The piece went through a lot of changes over the years. I originally recorded it with a string quartet and this is how we performed the piece for a long time, but it needed a bigger, more dense sound, so I decided to score if for a large string orchestra. I also added a new fifth section, a vocal piece, ?The sun´s gone dim and the sky´s turned black,? which is based on a poem by Dorothy Parker. It seemed like a good ending to the piece, to give the computer one final song.

We´ve made a really good film documentation of the piece which was commissioned by the Royal Museum of Art in Antwerp and [was] shown there until early December [2006]. A DVD release depends on finding someone willing to fund this. I´m hoping 4AD will do it.

?: Would you say that "IBM 1401" is a progress from your earlier solo releases? If so, in what way, how does it differ from earlier compositions?

JJ: It´s a logical step, I would say. It´s really closer to Englaborn than Virthulegu Forsetar and it was written around the same time as Englaborn, in the autumn of 2001, It was a very fruitful year.

?: Who is Sigvaldi Kaldalöns?

JJ: A famous Icelandic composer. He wrote the hymn, ?Island Ögrum Skorid?, and this is the hymn that the computer is playing in my father´s recording. It´s an old fashioned patriotic hymn, played at every state occasion, like an alternative national anthem.

?: Did you take music lessons? Do/did you study(contemporary) classical music, contemporary composition, atonal music?

JJ: I´m self-taught as a musician apart from piano and trombone lessons until age 18. As a musician I come from a rock background rather than an academic one. My academic background is in literature and languages. I´ve studied orchestrating and harmony on my own and had some good informal tutoring.

?: What is your opinion about the oeuvre of Ennio Morricone?

JJ: He´s the maestro. Amazing orchestrations and a master of melody. He and Bernard Herrmann are the film music giants. Morricone can work in almost any style and make it instantly recognizable as his own.

?: Michael Nyman?

JJ: I love the Greenaway soundtracks and his ?70s experimental work. His book, Experimental Music, was very influential on me as well..

?: Steve Reich?

JJ: I started Apparat Organ Quartet initially to play his piece ?Four organs? and other early minimalist organ music. We never got round to it and started writing our own pieces instead. ?Different Trains? is brilliant, the way he uses the sampler with the strings and his treatment of speech as a source of melody and rhythm in that piece is just amazing.

?: Graeme Revell?

JJ: I don´t know his work so well, although I do love some of the old SPK stuff..

?: W.A. Mozart?

JJ: I really only know the Requiem, if truth be told, which is of course a divine work of genius. How I managed to avoid Mozart in this anniversary year is amazing in itself.

?: Karlheinz Stockhausen?

JJ: I read some of his writings which I liked a lot. I love the conceptual strength of his work, like the whole Licht opera cycle is amazing in its complexity and scope. I loved Gesang der Junglinge and Hymnen especially. I tried to capture some of the sound of early ?50s electronic music in some of the sections of IBM 1401. I love Morton Subotnick, Xenakis and the musique concrete guys.

?: Arvo Pärt?

JJ: He´s an obvious influence on IBM 1401. I, like a lot of people, fell in love with his work as soon as I heard it. Cantus for Benjamin Britten and the Gospel of St. Matthew especially. Some of his work is sometimes too clinical for me, too ascetic. Then he turns around and writes something like Aline which is so simple and beautiful but full of complex emotion.

?: Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson?

JJ: A great man. Some of his best work is not even available on CD, which is a shame. When I DJ (which does not happen very often) I always play ?Crowleymass?.

?: Your most admired composer?

JJ: I think Haendel. And Burt Bacharach.

?: Please tell us about possible connections to Sigur Ros, Björk, Reptilicus, Ghostigital, HÖH and Stilluppsteypa? Did you see Kukl live?

JJ: I did see Kukl live once or twice, once I think supporting Einstürzende Neubauten in Reykjavik. To this day I don´t know why they let me in as I was way underage. The Eye is a great record. I did a project with Jonsi from Sigur Ros as a part of the first Kitchen Motors series of concerts in 1999. He sang vocals on a track on an album of mine in the same year. He also works with Kitchen Motors sometimes. Bjork I know from Reykjavik´s bars and cafes and she lends me her celesta sometimes. I used to work in a bookstore with one of the
guys from Reptilicus and the other member, Johann E, is still one of Iceland´s hidden musical treasures. I work with Stilluppsteypa sometimes, recently under the name Evil Madness. We just did a record on the Icelandic label 12 Tonar.

?: What is the Apparat Organ Quartet? How does it differ from your solo work?

JJ: AOQ is a collaboration I have with 4 Icelandic musicians and composers, We are 4 organ players and one drummer. We play old ?70s electric organs, obscure analog synths and early digital casio keyboards. We don´t use those instruments in a kitsch way, we play very serious music. Sometimes it´s quite grand and epic and sometimes quite danceable as well. We call our music "Machine Rock and Roll"? Our only album is the one we put out in 2002, which is available in Europe on Skelt, although we also put out a single on Duophonic a couple of years ago. There´s a new album in the works, which could be out next year or the year after? We work quite slowly.

?: What is Kitchen Motors?

JJ: KM is a think tank and an art organization, sometimes a label and sometimes a musical group. We started as a group of people who sat around dreaming up our favourite combinations of musicians and then actually contacting them and inviting them to collaborate. This resulted in a series of concerts which we then recorded and released under the name Motorlab. The idea was to create a kind of spark which would result in new hybrid forms, and exciting mutant combinations. Apparat Organ Quartet started as a Kitchen Motors project, for example. We also did a collaborative CD between Pan Sonic, Barry Adamson and an Icelandic choir. We put out an album last year called the Kitchen Motors Family Album, which was kind of an overview of the scene in Reykjavik, with exclusive tracks from a lot of the main artists. Kitchen Motors is more an abstraction than a concrete thing, we don´t have an office and only have meetings sporadically, usually combined with dinner parties.

?: Are you expecting offers for OSTs from Hollywood? From Germany/Europe? Or would you prefer scores for theatre productions?

JJ: I´ve done a few feature films in Iceland. I´m doing a score for a Hungarian film at the moment. I love writing for films and it comes very naturally to me. It always has to be the right project though, something that I really connect with.

?: What's next on your live/release/production schedules? Any plans to perform/record in Germany?

JJ: I´m planning some tours with my ensemble, a UK tour in November and some European dates next year. Hopefully some of them will include Germany. I have some ideas for the next album, but I haven´t decided what will end up on it. The IBM 1401 album is part of a series of three albums based on artificial intelligence/cybernetic themes. I´m still not sure when I´ll do the next one, although it´s partly written already.

***********

William Basinski

by Richo

WHEN WILLIAM BASINSKI?S MINIMAL COMPOSITIONS FIRST CAME MY WAY VIA RASTER-NOTON?S SHORTWAVEPIECES LP IN 1998, I ENJOYED THEM IMMENSELY BUT, FOR WHATEVER REASON, DIDN?T ACT ON MY IMPULSE TO DISCOVER MORE ABOUT THIS NEW YORK ARTIST UNTIL AROUND SIX YEARS LATER, WHEN I FIRSTLY TRIED TO GET TO HIS CONCERT AT THE HORSE HOSPITAL (BUT FAILED, DUE TO A RIDICULOUSLY EARLY STARTING TIME NOT CONDUCIVE TO THOSE OF US LIVING OUTSIDE LONDON) AND, SECONDLY, WITH DURTRO & DIE STADT?S JOINT-RELEASE OF THE VARIATIONS: A MOVEMENT IN CHROME PRIMITIVE 2CD. THE LATTER JOLTED MY SENSES INTO TOUCH AND, SUBSEQUENTLY, SENT ME REELING HEADLONG TO A PATH OF CAREFREE, LATE NIGHT, CREDIT CARD PURCHASES. SHAKING WITH ANTICIPATION THE WHOLE WHILE, I HAD TO OBTAIN WHATEVER ELSE I POSSIBLY COULD BY THIS SEEMINGLY MYSTERIOUS FIGURE, NO MATTER WHAT THE PRICE OF THE FUCKEN MONTHLY MINIMUM PAYMENTS...

AROUND THE SAME TIME, DAVID TIBET ALSO WROTE AND URGED ME TO INTERVIEW WILLIAM BASINSKI, SUGGESTING HE?D BE ?PERFECT? AND WORE A MANNER WARMER THAN I COULD WISH FOR. THE TIMING WAS IMPECCABLE AND, DESPITE FEELING AS THOUGH I WASN?T IN A STRONG ENOUGH POSITION TO GRILL THIS SOMEWHAT COLOURFUL CHARACTER, AGREED THAT LIGHT I HADN?T BATHED IN BEFORE NEEDED TO BE SHED ON HIM.

THE MUSIC OF VARIATIONS... NODS VERY HEAVILY TOWARDS THE BEAUTY THAT CAN BE DISCOVERED THROUGHOUT WILLIAM BASINSKI?S BACK CATALOGUE OF MINIMALISTIC, MOSTLY LOOP-ORIENTATED PIECES, WHERE THE LANGUAGE OF COMPOSITION APPEARS TO SPEAK IN A TONGUE WORLDS AWAY FROM THE POINTERS THAT HE HAS CLEARLY LEARNT SO MUCH FROM. HOWEVER, IT?S A BEAUTY THAT SWATHES SOMETHING FAR DEEPER AND CUTS MORE INTERESTING SHAPES THAN SUCH TRAPPINGS MAY AFFORD. CERTAINLY, THERE?S SOMETHING OF BRIAN ENO?S AMBIENT SERIES HOVERING OVER BASINSKI?S WORKS, AT LEAST IN THE SENSE THAT THEY PERFECTLY COMBINE MELANCHOLIC WAFTS WITH CLOUDY TIMBRES FORMED ON AN ALIEN MOONSCAPE, BUT ENO?S PHILOSOPHICAL EMBELLISHMENTS OVER SONIC GARDENING DOUBTLESSLY HOLD GREATER SWAY. IN THIS SENSE, BASINSKI APPEARS TO BE TWISTING SOMETHING ENTIRELY NEW AND REFRESHING INTO A THOUGHT-LOOP ENO HIMSELF ONLY, REALLY, LIKEWISE TAPPED INTO.

ON CERTAIN DAYS, I MIGHT WELL ARGUE THAT NYMAN, REICH, GLASS AND MAYBE EVEN LAMONTE YOUNG CORNERED JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING AS FAR AS THIS PARTICULAR MAP IS CONCERNED. HOWEVER, NOBODY CAN DISPUTE THE FACT THAT PAUL PANHUYSEN, CHRISTINA KUBISCH AND CHARLEMAGNE PALESTINE HAVE ALL ADDED NEW CONSTELLATIONS. AND, BY THE VERY SAME DEFINITION, WILLIAM BASINSKI SHOULD FIGURE EQUALLY AS HIGHLY. ULTIMATELY, MIND-MUSIC RARELY ARRIVES SO BEAUTIFUL OR EXPANSIVE.
SINCE THIS INTERVIEW WAS CONDUCTED, A NEW ALBUM HAS APPEARED ON HIS OWN 2062/MMXII IMPRINT, THE GARDEN OF BROKENNESS, AND SUCCESSFULLY NAVIGATES DIFFERENT CORNERS OF WILLIAM BASINSKI?S PATH.

?: Considering how long you have been recording music, your work seems to have only gained more exposure in recent years. Why is that, do you think?

WB: Well, it probably has a lot to do with my frustration early on with traditional record label channels and sort of giving up on finding an audience for a long time and being a luddite for years. I only started getting online in 2001 and doing email and promoting my work that way, so I guess I had to wait for a whole new system to come along to get my work out there. Once, when Olaf Bender from raster-noton was in NY, he was talking to me at my kitchen table and said, "Billy, you really should be doing more for your work!" It kind of shocked me and really made me think. At the time I didn?t know what more I could do, but after I got fed up with my shop, Lady Bird, I decided that if I wasn?t willing to lose everything to get my music out there instead of piddling around with all this other stuff that was supposed to pay the bills but didn?t, then I would end up regretting it for the rest of my life. In the next three years I did almost lose my loft twice, but miracles happened that saved it each time, and the work kept coming and the response was really overwhelming for me. Honestly, I thank the people my age for having children that get my work. Many of my fans were born around the time I was doing my early works in NY. The 21st century has been very good to me so far. I really never thought I would live to see this kind of appreciation for these works so, as you can imagine, it is very rewarding for me...a real gift!

?: Your music follows the Minimalist tradition yet remains imbued with deeper emotions than usually found in it. Would you say that you deliberately set out to do this?

WB: I do come form a formalist tradition, and early on found inspiration in eastern music and early minimalism but I worked with sounds and melodies that resonated with me. I've been a melancholic since birth, am very sensitive to my surroundings and know suffering, so I'm attracted to minor chords and keys and such. I was greatly affected by blues and gospel music. The piano variations, which are really the seeds of a lot of my work, come from a distilled 3 chord progression that is in much of popular western music. When the experiments work for me usually something unexpected has happened that fascinates me. When that happens and I can listen again and again, I know I've recorded something that resonates, perhaps even heals me. I'm seeing now that others relate to this human quality, this quality of brokenness as well.

?: When did you first become attracted to such music? I understand that some of Brian Eno's work from the 1970s served as a kind of signifier, but was there anybody else?

WB: Yes, when I first heard Music for Airports I was mesmerized - I felt such a connection to the lilting melancholy in that beautiful record. I felt a real desire to try to evoke that feeling in my own music. I had begun hearing Terry Riley In C, and Steve Reich?s come out and, particularly, Music for 18 Musicians, with it?s shifting phases. James (Elaine) was a major record collector and worked at used record stores in those days in San Francisco, so he had everything...Popul Vuh I loved, Klaus Schulze, [Tod] Dockstader, Tangerine Dream, Conrad Schnitzler, Conny Plank, of course Kraftwerk, Lou Reed, Fripp and Eno, Pink Floyd and then Chopin, Debussy, Ravel, Xenakis, Yma Sumac -you name it, instant production music - he had just about everything experimental , (and classical, jazz, etc.). So I had a lot to listen to and enjoy. But to begin my experimentation with loops I began with some parameters I learned from the masters. I was fascinated with Cage?s techniques: prepared piano - the way he used chance, I loved Reich?s feedback loops, Frippertronics? drones and Eno?s lyrical melancholy and also, very importantly, the sounds of San Francisco, the city itself, were a huge inspiration to me - the way the clanking cable cars, hissing electric buses, foghorns in the distance all melted into a glacial shimmering fog. So I began planting and harvesting melodies to see if I could grow into a real composer - at the time, I wasn?t sure what I was doing would even be considered music, but I enjoyed it and stuck with it for my own enjoyment.

?: You began as a classically-trained clarinettist and saxophonist before moving onto experimenting with loops. What created this shift of interest? Furthermore, how do these mediums compare for you?

WB: Ohhh boy, well, I did work hard on my clarinet, but it was really out of survival instinct and necessity. You see, I was so strange and such a queeny, dorky, skinny kid, I would have been beaten to a pulp had I stayed out much...this I found out in Junior High, so I pretty much just did my school work and tried to get home without getting too bruised to practice. I was lucky that my parents picked a really great high school district for music for us to move to in Dallas and we had the best music department in the whole south. My clarinet teacher was the retired former head of the music department at Indiana university and he was fantastic and really worked on me as did the band director who was a tyrant but fab. Huge man, Howard Dunn...boy, could he throw a baton! I loved being first chair as a junior and playing all of this difficult music...the more thirty-second note triplets, the better... We won contests all over the south that year playing very difficult orchestral transcriptions for symphonic band. Cappricio Espanol, The Pines of Rome, Hindemith?s Symphony in B-flat, some other very difficult music I can?t think of right now. My teachers of course wanted me to be a first chair clarinettist for the NY Philharmonic or Boston Pops or something, but I wanted to be David Bowie, so I got my clarinet teacher to find me a fabulous saxophone, which I bought with my own money from mowing lawns, and started learning Edgar Winter solos and such (Bowie's sax playing's not so great, but so what, he's a fucking genius rock star, so who cares!). When I joined the jazz band in my senior year, the symphonic band director was furious that I would ruin my embrochure and demoted me to second chair. Well, the jazz band won all the contests that year and I ended up going to North Texas State University, which is a huge jazz school like Berkeley in Boston, but Berkeley is more for guitar players and NTSU was more a big band/sax kind of school. Anyway, I got there and thought I knew how to improvise and would place in one of their famous big bands, but when I got to the auditions I heard these players...monster players, they were called...guys who had come off the road with professional big bands like Woody Herman and whatnot, and just wanted to hang out, play cool music with the Grammy winning college band, the 1 O'clock Jazz Band, and do the legendary drugs that were blooming everywhere like the roses in this little Texas college town. Anyway, I got so nervous when I heard these other guys warming up, I bombed the audition, changed my major to composition and started working on my chops in secret with the other young guys and gals my age...

?: You continued to play the saxophone in performances throughout the '80s as well. Can you tell us something about these?

WB: I eventually developed my own style and continue to play, though not as much lately. There?s nothing like being able to let go and blast off into the alpha waves playing a wind instrument - and the tenor sax - the sound of it - there?s nothing like it! I played in many bands in NY, the most famous was the legendary English rockabilly band, The Rockats. I met them at the RCA Building in NY in the early eighties, probably around ?83. We had seen them in Los Angeles in about ?79, where I had gone to play some sax for Black Randy and the Metro Squad?s ?Pass the Dust, I Think I?m Bowie!? We were at some club in LA after the session and Levi & The Rockats were playing in this cool old club and there were dolled up bad girls in tight dresses, with big bee-hives and lots of mascara and false eyelashes - really cool film-noir bombshells - it was exciting! Anyway, back to ?83, I?m in NY and got a call from some old friends at NTSU who wanted me to be the sax player/keyboard player for a video for an English pop artist on RCA they were music directors for. His name was Rodway. The video was for the then brand new MTV, and they were paying me so I was excited and showed up for the shoot. We were put through some moves by a queeny choreographer for a while, then got into our duds and make-up and waited our turn. In those days, they would do simple 2 camera performance videos on a sound stage and would have 4 or 5 bands a day come in and shoot them all one after the other. Well, it turned out, the Rockats were there too, sans Levi, and I met Smutty Smiff, who was the gorgeous androgynous upright bass player with the outrageous sleeves of tattoos on his arms, and he offered to help me with my quiff. So that was a thrill and we hit it off and he introduced me to Dibbs, who was then leading the band, and I told them I thought they should have a tenor player and gave them my number. Well, they actually called me a few months later and asked me to come to a rehearsal to check me out for some upcoming gigs at The Peppermint Lounge and The Ritz and some club in New Jersey. Things worked out and I did the gig - was even swarmed by papparazzi and groupies at The Peppermint Lounge as the "new Rockat, Rockin? Billy B". I think I may have even been in a photo in Creem magazine (I?ll leave that to David Tibet to find out for sure!). Anyway, this was lots of fun for me, but the biggest thrill was getting a call late that summer that the opening act for David Bowie?s show (Serious Moonlight tour) at Hershey Park in Pennsylvania had dropped out at the last minute and the Rockats had gotten the gig. We played in front of 30,000 Bowie fans - who were kind of throwing stuff a little bit (luckily the stage was really high - and had a chain-link fence around it) until my rockin? sax solo, then they actually cheered!!! It was fab - and, I was introduced to my idol, David Bowie, as he was making his way to the stage for his set. I almost fainted, I was so stunned. Well, that night after we got back to the city - they wouldn?t take me back to Brooklyn, even though it was right over the bridge from the East Village - but even though we were always broke, I wasn?t about to get on the subway with my saxophone that late at night - not after the experience I had just had. Not on this night. So I splurged and flagged down a taxi and had the most amazing cruise over the Brooklyn Bridge; very elegant, quiet older black man driving, Coltrane on the radio, the full moon hanging low over the East River...I was in heaven! Serious Moonlight indeed! It was a night I had dreamed of all my life. Shortly after that the Rockats broke up. Smutty and I stayed friends and played around a little bit but I think he went back to England shortly after, so nothing came of that, but Smutty was a great guy, I always loved him! I think it was after that that Dan Cameron, the art critic (now director of the New Museum, asked me to do a rockabilly project with him. It was called Infra-Dig. And it was originally just me and him. He had made these chaotic clunky drum machine tracks of some favourite rockabilly songs of his and I played all the parts on the saxophone with effects - usually in a dress. I remember playing at this club in the east village called 8 BC, back when you would walk past burning dumpsters and burnt-out buildings to get to this hole in the wall that had dirt floors, but a very high stage with a deaf white rabbit that would come hopping out on stage sometimes during your set. The opening act for us that night was a couple of geeks called They Might be Giants!!

Anyway Dan, bless his heart , had absolutely no musical talent but continued to add musicians and even got a record project going, but when it all started to go in a direction I couldn?t abide, I had to walk away... I also played in a band called The Gift ( I hated the name, I wanted to call it the Twiggs), but it wasn?t my band; it was Cynthia Sley and Laura from the Bush Tetras, Kathy Rey from the Bloods, and Vinnie - I can?t think of Vinnie?s last name right now, but he was the drummer and he was cute! So cute everybody in the band except Kathy got a big crush on him and that ended up causing big problems later - leading very shortly to the break-up of the band. We played at CBGB?s and a few other clubs. I would do solo shows as well. Performed with the tape loops and taped soundtracks with the saxophone, mostly at art type events or outdoor concerts sponsored by the lower Manhattan Cultural Council. They were really great early supporters of mine. I did a gig at the Plaza of the World Trade Center in about 1984 for a lunchtime crowd. Hahn Rowe helped me with that one. We also did some really great stuff together in the very early eighties. And I later had him help me at Arcadia with Hymns of Oblivion and also mixing the first Murmurs album, which I produced. He?s a terrific musician and producer. I believe he did Antony?s [Of ...the Johnsons - Ed] first record as well. I did a sold out, two night, two hour show called Static Wilderness, I think it was, at the Anchorage of the Brooklyn Bridge for Creative Time - another early great supporter of mine. James Elaine did this massive post-apocalyptic set for me and I had backing tapes with the loops and did three extended saxophone pieces, one on tenor, one on alto and one on soprano, wandering around this set filled with old taxidermal animals, dead trees and lots of smoke and fog in a costume after Nijinsky?s afternoon of a faun - sort of a pan look that was very charming and sad.

After The Gift, I joined a really great gothy new wave band called Dem Vakra, which got a big following in NY at the Pyramid club, etc. This was a really terrific band but the timing just wasn?t right - NY bands were not being signed at that time. The stuff would probably sound great now with all the resurgent interest in The Cure, The Smiths, Roxy Music, etc.

Besides the various R&R bands, I had met Gretchen Langheld in the art scene in the mid 80s. She was such a beauty and, finding out we were both sax players, we hit it off and she invited me to a rehearsal of her new band, the Gretchen Langheld Ensemble; later known as House Afire. She wrote these beautiful Latin, African jazzy tunes (I guess it would be called "world music" now) and eventually got a lot of fantastic musicians, most notably the fantastic percussionist and shakere player; the beautiful Madeline Yayodele Nelson of Women of the Calabash fame...together to go wild taking turns improvising on these little charts. She got gigs all over NY and we developed a big loyal following, playing eventually at venues such at Lincoln Center and Town Hall. She managed to keep this big 10 piece band together for about 10 years in various incarnations, put out two albums, the second produced by a Japanese label. We did a whirlwind tour of Japan, were treated like royalty - I rode in an elevator with Miles Davis at the Capital Tokyo Hotel where we each had our own big room! It was really fabulous. This was around 1989, I think. Then we came back to NY and things had changed - the next gig we did was at the old Knitting Factory, where they paid us $25.00 each and while we were on stage, blowing the roof off, the local junkies were upstairs stealing all of our leather jackets and whatever else was there! To top it off, my car keys were in my (favourite) leather jacket, as was my little mini-computer address book with all my contacts; it was pouring down rain, cold and the van had a flat tyre!!! Baaad day! Amazingly, a few weeks later, James saw my leather jacket for sale by some bum on a blanket on the sidewalk right out in front of The Drawing Center, where he worked at the time, so he got it back for me!!! And, you won?t believe this, but I actually got my notebook computer back a few weeks later - spotted it on a table of electronic junk at the Grand Street flea market! I picked it up turned it on, and there were my addresses - I couldn?t believe it! I asked the guy how much he wanted for it. I think he said $60 or something, I said I?ll give you $10 - take it or leave it - this is mine! He took it!

Anyway, back to House Afire. We did a few more gigs in the ?90s, with the darling and legendary - none other than - Debbie Harry, singing with us. She was so fantastic! Such a pro; she showed up at rehearsals, no make-up, perfectly prepared in Gretchen?s non-air-conditioned loft, worked hard, she was so super - just one of the "boys", and we quickly all got over our [being] star-struck and had a lot of fun. And lots of fun at our big Valentine?s day gig. She put a couple of Gretchen?s songs on a recent album, I believe. Gretchen Langheld has a website now, where you can check out her music and is living in the Woodstock area playing with the various fine musicians living up there.

?: Likewise, in the late '80s, you opened Arcadia, a loft for the creative arts, in New York. What kind of events did you host there?

WB: Yes, this was around the time I was just speaking about. [In] 1989, we moved from Jay Street in downtown Brooklyn to our new home in Williamsburg, later to become known as Arcadia. I named it that because of the gothic arched ceilings and the feeling of being in another world when you arrived there. It was a netherworld of music, poetry and love! When we got it, it was full of pigeons and just a filthy ruin, but we spent months fixing it up with the settlement money we had won after a long legal battle for vacating our old loft for a dubious office project. It became apparent to me in the months I spent scraping the ceilings and restoring the place that we could have a stage at one end and the main room was a ballroom! So that?s what we did, and I built a recording studio with a snake on to the stage and we started hosting events the first year. At that time I was working on the Hymns of Oblivion song cycle, with lyrics from Jennifer Jaffe of the art group TODT. I also began producing bands then, so this was the group of young emerging talent that I would pick from to do the various themed series' we put on seasonally for 7 or 8 years. The events were legendary. Antony performed there many times, trying out new things; Rasputina, the Murmurs, who I was managing and producing; I would perform; poets, other singer-songwriters and bands I can?t remember - our most legendary concert was a spectacular performance by Diamanda Galas for a Hallowe?en event, where she tore the roof off with her extraordinary, had-to-be-there, performance of her blues and gospel material. It was mind boggling (at one point, I thought my head was going to explode - but in a good way!). She even told me later, she thought it was the pinnacle of her career. Arcadia is a special, special place, and I always felt it had to be shared, so it was a great pleasure to be able to do those events as long as we did. They never made any money and I always spent a fortune on new sets and flowers in the dressing rooms. The artists always got paid good money so, of course, everyone wanted to perform there but, being a performing artist myself, I wanted to do things right and make sure the artists got paid and had a beautiful experience. Well, we went broke doing it, but had a great long run and anyone still around from those days - and we had people from all over the world attend those concerts - will tell you what an amazing, memorable, magical time they had at Arcadia.

?: What became of this loft space?

WB: I still, by the grace of God, have it. It is still the headquarters of MMLXII, 2062 and Musex International. Since James took the job curating at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in 1999, I?ve had to have a series of roommates and lodgers, so it?s been a little tough for me, but since my music has begun to take off, I spend more time doing a little touring and try to stay in Los Angeles with James as much as I can. I?m hoping to raise funds to begin Arcadia events again in the next year or so, with a particular interest in experimental music this time, so please pray for that!!

?: New York has always had a vibrant music community and, indeed, I notice that fellow New Yorker Antony name-checks you, too. Do you feel a part of this, though?

WB: I?m very much a part of it. When I was working with the Murmurs, I saw a Blacklips Performance Cult performance at the Pyramid Club and was profoundly moved by Antony?s songs and his singing. I told him so after the show and asked him if he?d like to come to the studio to visit. I told him I loved his music and I thought he should really concentrate on that more than the theatre pieces. He came and we talked and he showed me a demo he?d been working on, on his four track, and asked me to help him flesh it out, so we did that. I began having him at Arcadia each season and we became very close friends. A few years later, I was asked t by Annie Bonney to put together a show at the legendary NY avant-garde space The Kitchen. At the time I was working with this ad-hoc group of fantastic musicians who would get together at my loft on Saturdays and play - we would just record everything - called Life on Mars. So I put this show together called Life On Mars and Other Music from Other Worlds for the Kitchen. It was going to be us and I invited Antony to put a band together and join us. He was in the process of putting the first incarnation of The Johnsons together, which I was a part of... playing clarinet and saxophone. Well it turned out my band was greaaaat at the loft, but we did a preliminary concert at the space here in lower Manhattan prior to the Kitchen gig and one young player got so out of control it turned into a nightmare and I dissolved the band right after that. So, James and I were working on this 20 minute trip-out film that was kind of like a low budget 2001: A Space Odyssey, and we called it Life on Mars? We showed that at the Kitchen after the premier performance of Antony and the Johnsons, and then my friend, the sculptor Sasha Noe brought out his amazing beer bottle smashing machine for the finale, so it was quite a spectacular evening in the end. I continued to play with Antony and the Johnsons for a few years until my own work was calling me to cut back on other projects. Antony has since refined the band and the performances to such a wonderful level of intimacy - I?m so proud of my daughter! Antony calls me Mom! Anyway, we love each other and stay in touch when we can. I had the pleasure of joining him, Devendra Banhart and Coco Rosie for two dates in Seattle in April and it was a wonderful experience.

Looping back again, I showed Life on Mars?, which hadn?t been seen publicly since the first Johnsons concert at the Kitchen, and Coco Rosie and Devendra were just fantastic - the whole show was sooo special. I was thrilled to have been invited to be a part of it.

?: Is Life On Mars still active?

WB: No, that was a summer project of whoever showed up on Saturdays during my loft sales, before I had my store. We?d jam and I?d pop out if any of the girls had questions or to make a sale or whatever, then get back up there on the stage and jump back in.

?: And do I detect that you're still something of an old Bowie fan...?!

WB: Umm-hummm!

?: Does more traditional song or perhaps rock-based music hold much fascination for you?

WB: Oh, yeah, of course! Who isn?t slain by a great song? I have my attempts, believe me! I may even release Hymns of Oblivion one of these days, if I can get up the nerve! I have other songs as well - about all my dead friends - the blessed ones who didn?t make it, who lived fast and died pretty - god bless ?em.

?: Your fairly recent release, Variations..., was formed from recordings from the early '80s where the reels had subsequently degraded. This idea of exploring decayed sound first arose on The Disintegration Loops, however, didn't it? Is there something perhaps analogous behind this interest...?

WB: Actually the Variations... were really just recorded very badly on old tape with poor recording techniques - I didn?t know any better, was learning as I went along, and didn?t really know what I was doing except that these were early experiments and I was liking the results. I had no idea if anyone would consider it music, but I found it fascinating, so I kept on.

?: Would you say that this idea of utilising or exploring 'accidents' is of equal importance to you as composing itself?

WB: Oh yeah - if something unexpected or accidental doesn?t happen, I would bore myself to death.

?: During the past few years, you have begun to create videos and films as well, yet the only way of getting to see them is through your own label, 2062's website, isn't it? Are there any plans to release any of them commercially?

WB: Well, IDEA is supposed to be releasing a very subtle and beautiful trilogy, Variations, in a small edition, so we?ll see. The DVD of Disintegration Loop 1.1 was released last year by HEADZ in Japan. The films usually are shown at festivals and sometimes museums and galleries. We just showed Trailer for 1000 Films at a group show at Cherrydelosreyes Gallery in Los Angeles and there is a very small edition of 5, which is available through the gallery. We showed a new very fabulous version of a film featuring a new mix of The River, by the same title at The Museum Of Contemporary Art in LA for their Visual Music Exhibition in February at the Walt Disney Concert Hall REDCAT multimedia space. I also presented it at the Palladium theatre in Rome in March.

?: Do these films ever get shown elsewhere?

WB: I sometimes show one or two when I?m touring - depends on the context. I showed one at Instal last year with my performance, and at the Horse Hospital in London and venues in Italy when I was doing the Anatomy of Melancholy tour.

?: What's behind your label name, 2062?

WB: Music & Media Laboratories & Unknown Industries, Inc. is the name of our production company or MMLXII for short. It?s to hard to say EM EM EL EX EYE EYE, so I changed it to its translation as if you were transcribing the Roman numerals, 2062. It?s much easier to say "twenty sixty two" and I like the sound of it and the numbers.

?: Is the label purely dedicated to releasing your own work?

WB: Yes, I?ll be lucky to get to re-mastering and releasing all the work I want to before I die and, believe me, it?s a full time job running the label, which I still do by myself. After my experience producing bands and dealing with major labels, I encourage everyone to do it themselves. Living in NY and LA, I have very high overheads and the only way I can make any money is to release the material on my own label. So all you kids out there, please if you like the music, buy it! And if you want to buy it from me, just go to the website and email me (I?ll send it right out with a signed thank-you note!) The website is a shameful mess, but I just haven?t had time to get to it - I?m going to do it very soon, I promise!

?: Going back to The Disintegration Loops album, from 2001, now...it was made in response to 9/11, wasn't it?

WB: No, these loops disintegrated in front of my eyes and ears in late July/early August 2001 in the studio at Arcadia. It was an incredible experience for me and I spent the month listening to them and inviting friends over - Antony [and} my friend Howard Schwartzburg, who was in Life on Mars; ?Billy,? he said, ?you?ve done it!? Steve Roden was in town and came over and we listened - I had all these pictures in my head of the pastoral American landscape, the Hudson River School, and what happened to those glorious landscapes when they started chopping down the trees and raping the countryside. I took my laptop out to my friend Ruth?s house in Montauk and we listened to the loops as we watched the sunset over the pond..it was so idyllic. And then a couple of weeks later on that gorgeous crystal clear September morning the landscape changed before out eyes, the world changed in an instant. It was the end of the world as we knew it and we saw it all in real time. It was a dreadful shock which unfolded in enormity as the days went on.

?: Obviously, to declare what happened as awful would be an understatement, but how do you feel about it now, given everything that has happened since?

WB: Very sad. The world seems to be in its own disintegration loop. I was walking down Via Corso in Rome when I was there in March and had this thought that the world ended 2000 years ago and all of this cascading nonsense we experience was just the after-noise as the dust slowly settles. Regarding 9/11, one tries to get some distance from a tragedy, but this one is mentioned in numerous articles in the paper every day. You can?t read a newspaper without someone referencing "9/11". The other day, I was listening to National Public Radio, as I do every day here in California on KCRW, and they had just released the firemen?s transcripts of their transmissions from that day, and hearing some of these frantic SOS calls on the air, I was immediately reduced to tears. It all came back and it was just so horrible. It?s very hard to describe or understand what it was like in NY those weeks if you weren?t there.

?: Can you explain the cover for that album as well, please? It certainly stands out alongside your other work...

WB: The covers for the D-loops are all stills from the video I shot that night from my roof as day turned to night of the billowing smoke in lower Manhattan. The film is called Disintegration Loop 1.1 and is a video elegy . It was released on DVD by Headz/Japan in 2004.

?: You very rarely perform live, do you? Why is this?

WB: I go when I?m asked and can afford it. I?m 47 years old and a bit of a hermit, so I do what I can. Air travel is a nightmare now, and I won?t travel with equipment other than a laptop. Some people find laptop shows boring and I can understand that, but I enjoy [it] when I get an audience that knows how to just close their eyes and listen. Much of my music is experimental and happens in the studio and is best enjoyed in the privacy of a listener?s own environment, so I [feel] conflicted about concerts - but I do go when I?m asked, if I can.

?: Did you enjoy your show at London's Horse Hospital last year, though?

WB: Of course, I enjoyed myself immensely. James Hollands and everyone there treated us so nicely. David Tibet was there and some other very close friends and we just had a fabulous time. James Elaine was there as well and I got to introduce him, so that was very special for both of us.

?: Clearly, you keep yourself very busy. What keeps you motivated?

WB: I?ve got so much work to do yet and, as I get older, I realise I may not have that much time, and it is my responsibility to the people who love this work, who need it, to get it out there to them, so that?s my motivation. I get wonderful notes from people every week telling me how much the work means to them and it really means the world to me to be able to have some part in touching people?s hearts in that way.

?: Finally, what can we expect from you next?

WB: Another Piano Variations - one of my absolute favourites, originally titled Variations for Piano and Tape...It will have a subtitle, Pantelleria, and pictures from an idyllic artist retreat/vacation we had there two years ago. Still [also] trying to figure out what to do with Hymns of Oblivion and Queen of the Damned and lots of other stuff; you have no idea!

Since this interview was conducted, the Variations for Piano and Tape CD was released in mid-2006 on William Basinski?s own mmlxii imprint.

Visit www.mmlxii.com for more information.

FRANCISCO LOPEZ

by David Wells

AS MANY WILL KNOW, FRANCISCO LOPEZ PERFORMS IN DARKNESS TO BLINDFOLDED AUDIENCES AND HAS RELEASED MANY WORKS ON CD, VINYL AND DVD, MOSTLY AS ?UNTITLED? PIECES WITH LITTLE OR NO ARTWORK AND COMMERCIAL PACKAGING. LOPEZ?S DESIRE IS TO CREATE A PURE SONIC REALITY FROM MATERIAL THAT IS TAKEN FROM MANY ENVIRONMENTS FOUND THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, BE IT CITIES OR TROPICAL RAINFORESTS. ADVERSE EFFECT SENT SOME QUESTIONS...

?: You recently collaborated with Jorge Simonet on the DVD release Untitled 91 and I think you have another DVD project due for Asphodel? Given the strong emphasis on profound listening regarding your live work and audio releases, can you explain your motivation in working with a visual medium?

FL: My work with sound is heavily focused on the strength of sound alone. Actually, on all the possibilities of creation of perceptive and spiritual universes through sonic space. However, I have an interest in visual creation as well. It is a bit of a spin-off effect of my textural work with sound, I believe. As with other media, I have no interest in representation or specific narrative. My approach tends to be naturally phenomenological, towards the development of immersive worlds of exploration for the listener/viewer. A particular feature I'm most interested in is the 'unfinished' character of the creations. This basically means that a large amount of the creative process rests upon the receiver. This amounts to both freedom and responsibility. All of this is present in my work with visuals, as it is in my work with sound, and in fact constitutes an essential aspect of my way of approaching creation.

?: It is perhaps well documented now that you perform in darkness and ask the audience to wear blindfolds for your live shows. Can you say something about the experience from the responses of your audiences and any feedback that you have received in response to your live shows? Has the decision to use the blindfolds been vindicated in these responses?

FL: I'm always very careful about making clear for the audience that the blindfolds are provided as optional. Nobody is ever forced to use them. I emphasise, however, that using them dramatically increases the potential of sonic matter as a 'gate' to access areas of experience and spirit that are normally not accessible. This might sound obvious (and is indeed a very straightforward strategy) but it only becomes clear as a necessity when you go through the immersive experience of sonic space I develop in the live performances. I've carried out this set-up hundreds of times in all kinds of spaces and for all sorts of audiences, and the reactions are overwhelmingly positive. There's always someone that cannot take the kind of intensity created by those special intensive listening conditions, but most people find it surprisingly effective and appropriate to reveal 'hidden' layers of richness and power in sound. A relatively common reaction (even from people with no previous experience in 'experimental' music) is one of being transformed and overwhelmed by that sonic universe that unfolded out of nowhere and mutated around and through the audience during the live performance. I'm much more interested in creating sonic spaces than in making music. I want the listener to become a traveller of that space.

?: Your approach to sound is often regarded as phenomenological and there are many similarities. Was phenomenology an influence in your approach to sound?

FL: Not at a theoretical level. I actually got to know a bit of phenomenology after having been doing this kind of work with sound for many years, so it's more a realization of the relationship between an intuitive approach and a well-elaborated philosophical discipline. From my perspective, phenomenological approaches to creation have historically given rise to amazingly interesting results, like in the cases of Pierre Schaeffer or Robert Irwin, for example.

?: You have strongly criticised Cagean philosophy and some views expressed by Acoustic Ecologists such as Murray Schafer's concept of schizophonia. Personally I find the analysis of the latter interesting and thought-provoking but find its use as a premise for concluding how sound should be implemented a limiting proposal. Both of these schools of thought seem particularly prevalent in academic institutions and this extends further. Why do you think it is the case that they continue to exert such influence and remain largely unchallenged?

FL: Well, there are plenty of ideas that remain unchallenged, some good and some others not so good. There are also plenty of reasons for this, some of them clearly related to the social acceptance of clichés or widely extended stereotypes. Cage's or Schafer's ideas are not simple whimsical thoughts, but well articulated conceptions. In different ways, they've both created an interesting corpus of thought about the practise of work with sound and its relationship with the world. For me, it is simply that I don't share their view of the sound practise and of the role of both the real world and the creator within this practise. Furthermore, I think their conceptions and their influence have historically led to very boring results, creatively speaking, giving rise to sonic creations that heavily rely upon procedural, semantic or representational elements that are germane to sonic matter and, more importantly, that transform the potential of sound as an open medium for the listener into a message carrier or a symbol of a rationalized process. For me, this is a historical loss, a dissipation of what perhaps is the most essential natural virtue of blank matter, sonic or otherwise.

?: Could you elaborate on the ?reality? of your work. As I understand it, you would say you were dealing with reality directly in your work as your approach deals with the reality of the sounds in themselves whereas a critic may say, for example, that a car door shutting is simply that and that manipulation of this sound constitutes an abstraction that removes it from reality? Further to this, how do you define the soundworld, if I may call it that, that you create, in relation to your concept of sonic reality? How would you define this relationship?

FL: Surprisingly, in most cases a car door shutting (or for that matter, any 'normal' sound event) might not be recognized as such unless we have a visual or contextual reference being perceived simultaneously. That's why recordings of sounds produced by most 'normal' things do not allow to recognize the sources, and also why film sound practise largely relies upon the simulation of 'normal' sounds through weird means that have little or nothing to do with the real sources. All of this is related to a symbolic or representational apprehension of 'reality', as opposed to a phenomenological approach to it. 'A car' doesn't exist in reality, the concept of a car in general (without reference to a specific car we're seeing or referring to) is an abstraction of reality or, in more precise terms, a model. The same applies to any specific entity from 'reality', like the sound of car door shutting. There is an infinite number of car door shutting sonic entities. The second aspect that makes the apprehension of reality so tricky is the potential independence of different ontological properties of an entity. The sound of the car door shutting is as much a property of the car door as of our hearing. Actually, sound - as something ?hearable? - is by nature a solipsistic concept. A concentrated perception of sonic 'reality' naturally leads to the consideration of sound matter as an entity by itself, regardless of its origins. Recording intensifies this process, as it spatially and temporally splits sources and sound matter. Personally, I have very little interest in dealing with 'reality' in a representational way. Instead, I feel attracted by the multiplicity of phenomenological 'reality' of sonic matter as a medium.

?: How do you regard different sonic matter? Do you view some as richer and full of more potential than others or is there something in all matter that you can work with?

FL: Working with the processing, mutation, merging, transformation, etc. of sonic matter is closer to cooking than to traditional music-making. In my view, it's not about the performance control of an instrument or the compositional control of structures made of discrete units produced (and reproduced) by human performers. It's way more open and less regulated. If you've got good 'ingredients' to start with, something tasty is quite likely to arise. But of course you still need to be a good cook. This is totally a subjective matter, as it couldn't be otherwise, but my position is that the more we focus on the richness and subtleties of this 'taste' (i.e., the phenomenological properties of the matter created, not the judgement of its meaningful / symbolic features) and the more we move away from the recipes and the structural methods and tricks, the better for the openness of the sonic worlds created. I have my personal preferences for raw sonic matter, but these are wide enough to include a myriad possible sound events from 'reality', from waterfalls to trains, from frogs to elevators, from fire to engines. Regardless of the sources of the sonic matter, in my field recordings I normally search for material that is rich in terms of frequency content, dynamics, depth and spatial features. This is of course very general but there's really nothing more specific in my search for raw material, as I keep my ears and my expectations open.

?: How do you compose the pieces in your recorded work and how does this differ from your work live? I know you mix and process the material live? You have stated that you become immersed in the material as you are working with it, is this state of immersion what you seek in all your work and does it dictate the finished composition?

FL: I forcefully refuse to talk about the way I work with sound. I do my own field recordings and then move onto a long process of multiple 'mutation' and 'evolution' (with inheritance, diversification, etc.) to transform the raw material according to what I feel that a specific sonic matter can convey. Sometimes there's no transformation at all. Described in this way, however, this is what thousands of other people are doing today, transforming all kinds of raw material in all sorts of ways according to the available technology. A technology, that - in general terms - is the same for all of us (something that never happened before at this scale). I believe that what's important is not how we do things technically but spiritually, which obviously is not so easy to define, but surprisingly natural to perceive. Immersion in the work (both in the studio and in the live performances) is definitely something I pursue. I'm convinced that it works to the advantage of creating a richer and more focused sound world. As it does for the enhancement of the spirit. But the studio and the live situation are two different worlds in terms of working strategies and listening possibilities. In my personal experience, the live performance allows dimensions of physicalization and spatialization of sound that are impossible in any recording, whereas the usual home listening conditions of recordings - particularly with headphones - permits subtleties and blurred territories, including extended silence - that are hardly ever possible live. It's crucial to have a good sense for these differences in the potential of sonic manifestations that are indeed quite different substances and that have contrasting temporal and spatial characteristics. For this kind of work with sound, to follow the same creative strategies in these two realms is, in my opinion, an underestimation of their very nature.

?: How do you approach other music? Do you experience everything as sound purely in itself and do you feel those who appreciate your work perhaps extend their experience of your work to other listening experiences?. Do you feel it is possible to live in a total sonic universe when so much sound is bound with reference and distraction?

FL: Our perception and our apprehension of the world shifts constantly between models and actual entities. Musical features like melody and rhythm are intensely prone to generate models (we can easily remember that 'framework' of the music), whereas features like texture and spatial characteristics in sound tend to be essentially phenomenological (very hard to reproduce in our mind's ear in their absence). And then we have the natural human tendency to attach and reinforce social, historical and cultural associations to any imaginable music or sound. I listen to a lot of different music and obviously it's not all equally appropriate for a 'purely sonic' listening attempt. Actually, with a lot of (let's call it) 'normal' music (with melody and/or rhythm), this is quite a challenge, if possible at all. But the phenomenological features are always there and are always perceivable (that's why we dislike certain versions of songs we love). I don't think that any 'purely sonic' music is better or worse than a more 'musical' music, but I do believe that, while the latter is widely acknowledged and respected, the former is virtually ignored as a sonic universe. As far as creative activity is concerned, I've had always felt naturally fascinated by this other universe.

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