An eight-minute slice of glacial melodicism sandwiched between two half-hour vacuum-packed decanters of space music, Souns‘ Scenarios for the Real Self is as expansive as it is ethereal. The relatively concise interlude, “Natreal” (MP3), is almost unbearably light ambience. On either side sit “Frozen Ocean” (MP3) and “Evolution of a Flower” (MP3). They’re something of a return to form for Kikaku, the releasing netlabel, resembling the earlier organic, formless work by its founder, Pocka, aka Brad Mitchell, who of late has been hosting more riff-driven, if still electronic, work. Scenarios for the Real Self, originally self-released by Souns, is the label’s 85th release. The online liner notes include some astral musicology about the structure of a flower and the C major scale. And before writing this off as a handful of laptop presets set on loop, check out the list of equipment it was recorded on: an old Atari computer, late 1980s equipment like an AKAI sampler and a Yamaha guitar effects unit, and the estimable Yamaha MD8 multi-track recorder. One track, “Frozen Ocean,” was “edited slightly in ACID Pro,” the digital music suite. The album’s title was apparently borrowed from alternate-spirituality figure Robert S. Ellwood. More info at kikapu.com.
Roomy MP3s
Each of the six tracks on Gate Zero‘s 6 Rooms is intended to suggest a different space, among them a living room, a kitchen and an illusory locale on the Star Trek holodek. The experiment is an interesting idea, though no one would cry foul if all the tracks on 6 Rooms had simply been labeled “lounge.” They all have a steady beat (one occasionally reminiscent of Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing”), a pricey-casual feel and a moody flavor. The standout, inevitably, is the one intended to serve as a cellar — inevitably because the close confines seem to have restricted Gate Zero’s palette, and less is almost always more. The “cellar” track (MP3) is less frilly, less lush than the album’s other five. There’s more space between the beats, space that allows the background sounds, light puffs of circulating white noise, to make themselves heard. In the album’s liner notes we’re reminded, “A cellar is intended to remain at a constant cool (not freezing) temperature all year round.” And, true to form, the six-minute track is constantly cool. More on Gate Zero (aka Stefan Biermann) at his homepage, gatezero-music.de, and at the netlabel that released 6 Rooms, stadtgruenlabel.net.
Jason Kahn MP3s
“Whereas the Limmat runs deep and fast and appears rather pure in its composition, the Sihl plunders along slowly, is comparatively shallow and interspersed with a good number of rocks jutting through its surface, small whirlpools and random clumps of tall grass.” That’s musician Jason Kahn describing the two rivers that passed by an old studio of his in Zurich, Switzerland, where he lives. Kahn titled his recent record after the latter, and if the free download at the Sirr Records website (MP3) is any gauge, then the Limmat must truly be a quick-running waterway; the sample Sihl MP3, apparently the album’s fourth track, is a rapid flurry of percussive swells and a jittery line of tapped out chimes. Two additional Sihl cuts, housed at Kahn’s website, are no less energetic. The album’s sixth (MP3), a rising and falling drone, has no specific downbeat, but its underlying waveform and overall intensity are anything but languid. And the album’s eighth (MP3) is similarly upbeat, with a whirring purr above a light patter of metallic sounds. According to Kahn, the primary components of the album are percussion and analog synthesizer. More info at sirr-ecords.com and jasonkahn.net.
Tangents (printless, networks, multitrack)
Quick Links, News and Good Reads: (1) The Hafler Trio is planning a subscription service for limited-edition releases (brainwashed.com). … (2) Grooves magazine is ceasing to be a print publication, the website announced earlier this month, opting to become a subscriber-supported website (groovesmag.com); in related news, the website has launched a podcast, hosted by the magazine’s editor, Sean Portnoy (groovesmag.com/podcast). … (3) W. Brent Latta has some initial thoughts on the musical properties of Microsoft’s newest gaming platform, the Xbox 360 (createdigitalmusic.com). … (4) DJ Krush announced in a note on his website earlier this month that his next album will be a double-disc best-of, featuring remixes, one half instrumental and one half rap, due out in 2006 (mmjp.or.jp/sus/krush). … (5) Zoe Irvine‘s sound art event involved a 24-hour quasi-party line where whenever you called in you heard someone, somewhere around the globe, singing. One inspiration was the “theatrophone” of the late 1800s: “Networks were set up, allowing subscribers to hear live performances in opera houses and theatres, much as an outside broadcast works today” (timesonline.co.uk). … (6) R.I.P, Link Wray (1929-2005), guitarist and speaker-cone splitter (nme.com, nytimes.com, newsobserver.com).
… Select New Releases: (1) The Village Orchestra‘s Et in Arcadia Ego (Highpoint Lowlife); see the November 13 Disquiet.com field notes (link). … (2) Herbaliser with Jean Grae‘s Nah’Mean, Nah’m Saying 12″ (Ninja Tune), with an instrumental cut and a Platinum Pied Pipers remix. … (3) A bunch of Van Der Graaf Generator rereleases, including H to He Who Am the Only One, Pawn Hearts and The Least We Can Do Is Wave to Each Other (Caroline).
… Disquiet Heavy Rotation: (1) Greg Davis and Sebastien Roux‘s Paquet Surprise (Carpark): Don’t let Davis’ well-deserved reputation for folktronic transience, or the lulling sensibility of this album’s opening track, let you be taken off guard. Paquet Surprise, which teams Davis with Roux, a fellow at IRCAM (the legendary experimental-music institution) and a contributor to the 12k record label’s guitronic compilation (E·A·D·G·B·E), is as anxious to irritate as it is to please. For every expanse of placid ease here, there is a sharp call for attention. … (2) Nine Horses‘ Snow Borne Sorrow (Samadhisound): Nine Horses is three men: David Sylvian and Steve Jansen (two thirds of the band Japan, that legendarily graceful pop-fusion act) plus Burnt Friedman, the dub-minded electronic composer.
… Quote of the Week: Autechre‘s Rob Brown talks with the Japan Times: “Everyone’s got a multitrack studio in their bedroom, or in their pocket, these days” (japantimes.co.jp).
Tangents (4’33”, Konono, Dylan)
Quick Links and News: (1) Perhaps inevitably, a podcast of silence, for John Cage‘s MP3 player (silentpodcast.com). … (2) Among Time magazine’s list of the best inventions of 2005: the Turtle Dance, a little plastic toy that, among other things, bleeps out a bit of Mozart and, more of interest, “can remember and mimic a rhythmic pattern of up to 15 clicks” (time.com). … (3) The exhibit “Visual Music,” shown this year at the MOCA in L.A. and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., and curated by Kerry Brougher, Judith Zilczer, Jeremy Strick and Ari Wiseman, was recognized as “Best Exhibition of Time Based Art” in this year’s awards from the U.S. chapter of the International Association of Art Critics (calendarlive.com). … (4) Homemade musical instruments, including a “dollar-store echo/reverb,” variations on the kalimba and more (ehhs.cmich.edu/~dhavlena), (5) instructions on how to make automated instruments, like a player piano (logosfoundation.org), and (6) a forum for instrument makers (mimf.com), with an area for experimental instruments (all three via makezine.com). … (7) Electronica origami: make one of two paper model Moog synthesizers for your favorite action figure (PDF1, PDF2; via musicthing.blogspot.com). … (8) Google has gone live with Google Base, but don’t try to create a database of netlabels; the word “netlabel” registers as misspelled (base.google.com). … (9) Re-watching The Last Waltz, Martin Scorcese‘s 1978 documentary/concert film about the Band, on DVD, you can’t help but notice how much Garth Hudson looks like Arvo Part, especially thanks to his proggy keyboard solos toward the end.
… Good Reads: (1) A Times of London report on a Brian Eno performance in Beijing, China, composed for 16 CD players with a park frequented by tai chi practitioners in mind: “Everybody makes music for younger people, but I wanted to make music for old people” (timesonline.co.uk): “Fu Yangsheng, a gatekeeper for the nearby Divine Kitchen, where the imperial instruments of sacrifice were stored, was entranced. He squatted out in the chilly late autumn sun to listen. ‘Is this music? I don’t understand it, but it sounds really nice,’ he said.” … (2) Douglas Wolk writing in the New York Times today on the Sublime Frequencies record label, headed by Sun City Girls‘ Alan Bishop and filmmaker Hisham Mayet: “They specialize in content and techniques that would make old-school academic ethnomusicologists run screaming: radio collages, pop tunes from street vendors’ cassettes, and anthologies that are explicitly products of their compilers’ subjective experience” (nytimes.com). … (3) Earlier this week, Will Hermes writing in the NYT about junk-tronic band Konono No. 1, led by Mawangu Mingiedi, and the effort by musician Vincent Kenis to locate and record them: “To capture the sound vividly, Mr. Kenis recorded three tracks for each instrument — one miked off the group’s sound system, one from the Fender amplifiers that Mr. Kenis brought along, and one directly from the instrument — and blended them” (nytimes.com; thanks for the tip, Rob). … (4) Lengthy conversation with Russell Mills (who designed the covers to such albums as Brian Eno‘s Apollo, David Sylvian‘s Gone to Earth and Nine Inch Nails‘ The Downward Spiral, not to mention the jackets to books by David Toop) about his art, his music, and his sound art at allaboutjazz.com.
… Select New Releases: A few releases of note this coming week: From 4AD, (1) a Cocteau Twins box (Lullabies to Violaine: Singles and Extended Plays 1982-1996), reportedly a complete set of singles and EPs from the 4AD and Mercury/Capitol years, and (2) 1980 Forward, a various-artists set on the occasion of the label’s 25th (25th!) anniversary. … (3) Interpol‘s Interpol Remix (Matador) contains four remixes, one by each member of the band. … (4) Instrumental rock band Tristeza‘s A Colores (Better Looking). … More release info at brainwashed.com and icemagazine.com.
… Disquiet Heavy Rotation: (1) Malpractice collects 20 chunks of often formless noise as a kind of primer for Fflint, the CD-R label that has championed its own brand of outsider sound art since the late 1990s. The contents range from rhythmically enticing cues to contorted vocals, from inchoate drones to barely retouched field recordings, from raw feedback to just plain goofy hypnotic weirdness. … (2) The latest Meat Beat Manifesto record, At the Center (Thirsty Ear), finds Jack Dangers — who, for all intents and purposes, is MBM, despite various close collaborators over the years — feeding live jazz instrumentals into his dub-honed, industrial-weaned, sticker-emblazoned mixing board. … (3) My two battery-operated Buddha Machines, by the group FM3, usually playing two different tracks (more info in the November 14 Disquiet Downstream entry).
… Score Keeper: (1) Michael Nyman is attached to Therese Raquin, to be directed by Charlie Stratton. … (2) Angelo Badalamenti is on for Life of Pi (to be directed by Amelie‘s Jean-Pierre Jeunet) and David Lynch‘s upcoming Inland Empire (via imdb.com).
… Quote of the Week: “Miles Davis would be accused of something similar,” writes Bob Dylan on the subject of going electric in his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One, “when he made the album Bitches Brew, a piece of music that didn’t follow the rules of modern jazz, which had been on the verge of breaking into the popular marketplace, until Miles’s record came along and killed its chances.” He continues: “Miles was put down by the jazz community. I couldn’t imagine Miles being too upset.”