Threadbare Exotica

From Amsterdam

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20131211-ovalangle

“Shake Rain” by Oval Angle starts like a white-noise whir. Given that there is so much white noise flourishing in experimental music of late, one wouldn’t be surprised, let alone disappointed, if it had continued with its wooly, slightly jittery gait. But then brushy shakers and a fluttery keyboard line, of the sort that Money Mark made famous in his solo outings when away from the Beastie Boys, cut through. It’s a thrilling little ditty, bracing and fully assured. It’s threadbare exotica: lounge pop made with the spirit of Fourth World music, all rudimentary resources put to chill use. It’s a teaser for the full (cassette and download) album *Conversation with a Table*, which has both a 2013 release date and a “coming soon” notice — given that it’s December 11, that makes for a short event horizon. Looking forward to the full thing.

Track originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/jordskredmusic](https://soundcloud.com/jordskredmusic/shake-rain). Oval Angle is Geran Knol of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. More from Knol at [jordskred.com](http://www.jordskred.com/js007) and [geranknol.nl](http://www.geranknol.nl/).

100th Podcast, 20 Field Recordings

Touch Radio celebrates a milestone.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20131210-touch

The Touch Radio series of podcasts, an offshoot of the esteemed Touch Editions label, has reached its momentous 100th episode, and it is marking the occasion with just the sort of low-impact gesture that would be expected of an enterprise that traffics in the everyday. See, much of the Touch output is field recordings: expertly recorded, lovingly sourced, casually framed documents of the sonic quotidian. The 100th episode features a montage, a medley as it were, of recordings from the archives of BJNilsen.

[audio:http://media.xlr8r.com/files/downloads/mp3s/Demona.mp3|titles=”Bottomless Perfume”|artists=BJNilsen]

The sources range from ports to cemetaries, industrial factories to fishmarkets. The full list is as follows: Beachy Head, Eastbourne, England; Karl Marx Tomb, Highgate Cemetery, London, England; Whitstable Bay, Kent, England; CleanCar Berlin, Mitte, Germany; Temple Gas Works, Glasgow, Scotland; Fruitmarket City Hall, Glasgow, Scotland; Port of Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Carlsberg Brewery, Copenhagen, Denmark; Unknown Music School, Naples, Italy; Galleria Umberto, Naples, Italy; Barbed Wire, Todmorden, England; Side Street, Lisbon, Portugal; Tempelhof Airfield, Berlin, Germany; Cave, Durness, Scotland; Fishmarket, Via Tribunali, Naples, Italy; Hatún, Reykjavik, Iceland; the Jacobite Steam Train, Armadale, Scotland; London Olympic Rehearsal, Islington, London, England; Boleskine Cemetery, Scotland; Train Bridge, Nijmegen, Netherlands (MP3). The sensory overload is titled “Bottomless Perfume.”

Track originally posted for free download at [touchradio.org.uk](http://www.touchradio.org.uk/touch_radio_100_bjnilsen.html). More on Nilsen, who also did [the very first Touch Radio podacast](http://www.touchradio.org.uk/touch_radio_1_bjnilsen.html), at [bjnilsen.com](http://www.bjnilsen.com/).

Drum Solos Revisited

A teaser from Machinefabriek's forthcoming album

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20131209-drumsolos

The drum solo has long been synonymous with extravagant posturing, with the worst excesses of rock’n’roll virtuoso exhibitionism. The reputation is unfortunate, but whatever one thinks of drum solos, the forthcoming album of solo drum work by Machinefabriek is something entirely apart from the usual associations. The source audio for Machinefabriek’s album — its bland title, *Drum Solos*, putting to rest concerns of showmanship — is all analog drum equipment, yet as evidenced by a six and a half minute preview track posted to his [soundcloud.com](https://soundcloud.com/machinefabriek/drumsolos) account, it has nothing to do with the crowd-rousing arena epics of yore.

It is, instead, a patient, occasionally irritant-exuding, and all around thoughtfully considered endeavor. The equipment is used more for textural than percussive effect, and the extent to which there is anything akin to a rhythm or a beat is how the gong-like cymbals take the form of slow, undulating sine waves. The music is processed this way and that, at times deeply removed from the original audio, including what appears to be a backwards effect.

Here’s Machinefabriek on the project:

>Driven by my love for solo albums by drummers and percussionists like Jon Mueller, Wil Guthrie, Nick Hennies and Burkhard Beins, I’ve made Drum Solos. It’s my take on a solo drum record, despite the fact that I lack the talent to hit a steady beat or a play a drum roll. Instead, I used the sounds of a drum kit as a sounce for further processing.
>
>I booked a rehearsel room with a drum kit, and recorded as much sounds as I could in one afternoon. Hitting, bowing, stroking, whatever ways I could find to create sounds, I recorded. And these soundfiles were chopped and screwed til it sounded like what you hear on the album.
>
>Each track focusses on one part of the drum kit. I like to think that purposefully employed limitations like that make me more creative, and my work more focussed. It’s part of the aim to make my music as minimalistic and ‘pure’ (whatever that may be) as possible. In this case it resulted in a short but varried and at times meditative album that might not have any virtuoso drum acrobatics on it, but shows its quality on a more subtle level.

Track originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/machinefabriek](https://soundcloud.com/machinefabriek/drumsolos). Machinefabriek is Rutger Zuydervelt of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. More from him at [machinefabriek.nu](http://machinefabriek.nu).

Music from What Ails You

Composing in response to injury, by Alison Doyle

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20131208-adoyle

Alison Doyle has not posted a new track to her SoundCloud account in nine months. The last one was less than a minute in length, a field recording of the sound of the Arts Music Building at Cornish College. What is heard is someone’s piano practice, routine stuff, from a distance. The music, the performance, is but a portion of the overall audio, however — the remainder is wind noise and bird song and a significant amount of otherwise everyday ambience. The second most recent Doyle track is also nine months old, and it tells a specific story, in firm contrast to the field recording, which is willfully and expressly quotidian. This other piece, “Bloodwork,” is a slow, steady, explorative piano piece. It takes its time, rarely moving beyond its rudimentary, and yet thoroughly engaging, melodic line.

The rhythm is the thing here. If it sounds like martial music, solemn in its own way, that seems fitting as Doyle wrote at the time that it came out of her experience of damaging one of the core parts of her toolset: her left hand:

>Mostly improvised, this piece was written one week after stabbing a knife through my hand. My apologies for the seriously flawed mastering and wonky recording; a work in progress and so thankful I didn’t permanently damage my hand.

As such, the work brings to mind other musicians’ response to injury, such as Brian Eno’s sick bed revelation, as he recounted in his liner notes to his *Discreet Music* album in 1975, which laid the groundwork for his ideas about ambient music, as well as Nils Frahm’s 2012 album *Screws*, which took its title from the items in his hand after he damaged it. Frahm, like Doyle, is a pianist. The Disquiet Junto, shortly after the release of *Screws*, [did a collection of reworkings of his recording](https://disquiet.com/2013/01/17/disquiet0055-twoscrews/), essentially adding our collective fingers in the temporary absence of his out-of-commission one. It is difficult to listen to the Arts Music Building field recording after listening to Doyle’s “Bloodwork” and not imagine her sitting there, patiently waiting — well, perhaps not patiently — to heal enough to get back at it.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/alliedee](https://soundcloud.com/alliedee/bloodwork).

Modular Jazz

By way of Thailand

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20131207-mudlogger

The musician who goes by mudlogger, aka Ubon Ratchathani of Thailand, has been uploading modular synthesizer experiments. Among them is this piece, “OrLo,” which he describes as “modular jazz.” No doubt it gets that description because the white noise percussion suggests a robotic trap set, and the intransigent pneumatic piping sounds like a European free jazz saxophone solo. Or perhaps it’s some source material surfacing through heavy manipulation.

Track originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/mudlogger](https://soundcloud.com/mudlogger/rumd). More from mudlogger at [twitter.com/bitchhands](https://twitter.com/bitchhands).

You can get a glimpse of (and short listen to) his modular setup in this Vine video:

Video located at [Vine video](https://vine.co/v/hxi2ei3tpQn).