There’s yet to be a Matador of netlabels, a Sub Pop, a Factory, a Def Jam — a place that, for some period of time, dependably, with a mix of pop magic and monocular focus, produces must-hear recordings one after another after another. There are, however, several key online collectives, loosely associated and often geographically dispersed groups of musicians who between them produce material that, while varied, has some sense of a core, shared ideal, and that keeps you coming back to see what’s new. Kracfive.com, home to the occasional “Iron Chef of Music” contests, is such a collective, thanks to contributions by folks like Colongib, Ipagos and Kettel, people who manage to sound playful and folksy, irreverent and craft-oriented, all at once, musicians unafraid of a melody, but uncommitted to songs. Kettle produced the latest entry in the site’s “MP3 Rotor” download section. The pastoral “Poire Test” (MP3) is little more than a bird chip above a low and slow mix of glitchy percussion and beading synthesis, but combined those elements are as peaceful as a Saturday afternoon when your bills are paid, your email inbox is empty and you’ve managed to forget all your cares, at least for the track’s three and a half minutes. Spring arrived a little early this year, thanks to “Poire Test.” More on Kettel (aka Reimer Eising) at kracfive.com/kettel.
De-Calibrated Techno MP3
Online electronic-music EPs are generally all-or-nothing affairs: sets recorded on the same equipment, at the same time, with the same raw materials, processed on the same software by the same person. Occasionally one of the tracks will rise above, but more often than not they all work together as parts of a whole. Jerzz‘s three-cut Fear EP is an exception. It’s the debut album for the fourth and latest sublabel of the Netherlands-based ear-recordings.nl netlabel. “What Happens,” Fear’s lead track, is where it’s happening. The first minute two-steps through the harsh no man’s land that stretches out between industrial music, with its affection for decay, and drum’n’bass, with its emphasis on automated rhythm. Then, at almost exactly the minute and a half point, it pauses; when it returns, is has gotten bleaker, darker and utterly de-calibrated, the rhythm falling apart and struggling, for the remaining six minutes, to find itself. “What Happens” is a must-download. “When the World” is a solid B-side, to employ an anachronism, but it doesn’t have the messy strangeness of “What Happens.” And “Goes Down” should be avoided; the mix is all off, especially where its coy and overly loud vocal snippets are concerned. “What Happens” is the keeper, for sure. Very promising. Get the MP3 directly, or visit the album’s ear-recordings.nl page. (A variety of file-compression densities and formats are available on the album’s archive.org mirror page.)
Verdant Ambient Album
Bedroom musicians honing ambient textile music on their sticker-emblazoned laptops often listen back to the masterpieces of Brian Eno and wonder how, exactly, especially during those distant pre-PowerBook times, he achieved the levels of aural thoroughness and opacity, clarity and haze, texture and gloss that are the hallmarks of his work. They comfort themselves with the thought that perhaps the alchemical secret is just a matter of the surface noise from the tape on which it was all archaically recorded. Those same musicians won’t find much comfort in a new album by one of their contemporaries, Lomov, aka Axel Bergk. Holzwege, just out on the Autoplate netlabel, as of January 18, 2005, produces a realm of sound as dense as the philosophical Heidegger fable from which it reportedly takes its name. The full recording, eight tracks total, over one hour from end to end, has the sway and pulse of beat-oriented music, but those beats are steady and dispersed enough to be rendered close to invisible, mere ripples in the fabric, itself a lush pile built of tattered layers. Lomov virtually slows the metronome to the point that the music becomes an unmapped, verdant space unto itself, broken on rare occasion by splints of illumination. Really stunning stuff. Download the album from its autoplate.org page, complete with cover art. More on Lomov at lomov.gmxhome.de, and take time to check out the lovely, tree-lined video linked to from his site’s “snd” page.
Elegant MP3, Generative Bonus
The design of New York-based composer Kenneth Kirschner‘s eponymous website couldn’t be more elegant. It simply presents a horizontal, chronological chart of his work, subdivided into increments of between two and five years. On the far left is a piece dated July 18, 1989. Currently the rightmost point along this line is dated November 18, 2004. In between are about 50 other downloadable recordings, and a couple of surprises. The November 18 entry (download MP3) is five minutes of light sound that fades in and out, music that appears and disappears with the regularity of a flattened sine wave but that, while it’s audible, engages with the tonal richness of considered composition. What is heard consists almost entirely of held notes, with their own detailed texture and ever-shifting envelope: gossamer on first impression, sawblade in retrospect. On the first, even the fifth, listen, those intermittent silences are disorienting. Has the piece ended, has it even begun, is something of import occurring amid the inevitable background noise? Hearing the cycle of sound and no-sound pass, one is tempted to visualize the unfolding piece across a strip not unlike the website’s timeline.
As for those surprises: Also deserving a listen is a unique piece, dated August 26 of last year, that is only available as an audio stream. This isn’t due to some sudden tightfistedness on Kirschner’s part. The work is computer-generated, in the standard multimedia format Flash (programming by Craig Swann of crash!media). Its exact mechanics are unclear, but once you hit the play button in the center of your web browser, a series of musical elements proceeds in random manner: moments reminiscent of the November 18 piece, spare piano chords that recall, by no coincidence, John Cage’s chance-informed works. Kirschner mentions that it will play forever, and it definitely benefits from an extended listen. (Another indeterminate/streaming entry is also online, dated about a month prior: July 29.) Adding to the computer’s temporary aura as a performer unto itself, when you hit the stop button the piece takes a short while to end. Explains Kirschner: “the piece will finish all of the currently playing segments and then stop.” He adds, “to stop playback immediately, simply close or leave the web page.” But why spoil a good denouement? Spend some time at kennethkirschner.com.
Live Loscil MP3s
So, is Loscil a minimal melodicist or a melodic minimalist? Is the contrast just a matter of vice-versa wordplay, or is there something distinct about someone who keeps melodies threadbare, almost monotone, with an emphasis on repetition, and someone else who employs the tools of minimalism (texture, stasis) but infuses them with a sensibility that’s a stone’s throw from a proper song? It’s no coincidence, for example, that Michael Stipe, of the rock band R.E.M., has listed work by Estonian composer Arvo Part (Tabula Rasa) among his favorites; Stipe falls easily into the former category, while Part occupies the latter. The construction of such a continuum came to mind while listening to four free MP3s by Loscil (aka Scott Morgan, of Vancouver, BC) posted on kranky.net, the website of Kranky Records, which has released three albums by him: First Narrows (2004), Submers (2002) and Triple Point (2001). The cuts, for which there’s little in the way of explanatory text, were taken from a set that Loscil did on Canada’s CBC Radio. They are low-key electronic affairs, more loungey than abstract, with a touch of traditional instrumentation: the layers of elegant guitar that mark “Umbra,” the Chet Atkins-simple line that adorns “Emma,” the mix of stroked six-string and what seems to be electric piano under which “Sickbay” churns along, and “First Narrows,” with the most lonesome guitar part of them all. Check them out on Kranky’s news page, at kranky.net/new.html. And visit Loscil’s website at loscil.com. (There’s a page on CBC’s website, here, with a mention of the session, dated July 6, 2004, plus a pair of photos of Morgan with two other musicians, which explains the tracks’ depth, but there’s not much additional information, and the page’s link to a stream of the performance isn’t functioning.)