Zeal & Perseverance, by Stian Larsen / Andrew Lisle / Colin Webster

A mixture of quiet & raucous . . .

Released November 13, 2019

Stian Larsen : electric guitar
Andrew Lisle : drums
Colin Webster : alto saxophone

Recorded by Giles Barrett at Soup Studios, London on 15th February 2019
Mixed by Giles Barrett
Mastered by Marlon Wolterink
Artwork by Rutger Zuydervelt
Va Fongool Records 2019
VAFCD021

Over Depth, by FRET

File under ‘Techno‘ — I used an album track on last year’s ‘d R o p‘
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MICK HARRIS (SCORN, QUOIT, PAINKILLER) returns after several years of hiatus with ten tracks of blasting landmine bass and interlocking shrapnel rhythms.

I’ve been asked to write a press piece for the dark lord MICK HARRIS.

Where does one even start? Especially for someone with decades of releases over various solo projects, collaborations and pseudonyms, whether it’s doing blast beats in the original NAPALM DEATH to crushing techno brutality as MONRELLA, or savage drum & bass as QUOIT. Then of course there’s the mighty SCORN and his numerous collaborations with fellow luminaries such as JOHN ZORN and BILL LASWELL (in PAINKILLER).

Rather than being tied to genres or scenes, MICK HARRIS is one of those producers who creates a whole sonic world uniquely of his own, in which varying tracks, styles and tempos take form, but yet in which everything sounds unmistakably characteristic of the creator. Needless to say his work has influenced legions of producers like SURGEON, REGIS, ONTAL, VATICAN SHADOW / PRURIENT, FAUSTEN, SHAPEDNOISE et al, and pretty much anyone in the world of powerfully dark, abrasive music you could name-drop. And yet after all this time, it is impressive that HARRIS still stands way above his successors and has never been surpassed in his own production/performance game.

After a hiatus of several years, he is back with a new album under the guise of FRET.

Working at a faster tempo than his SCORN material, the FRET project first surfaced years ago on the DOWNWARDS label, rooting it firmly in the dark, industrial and technoid world, and appeared more recently on Tresor (Kern mix by OBJEKT), maintaining the characteristic colossal bass-heaviness and textural depth.

And now a full album on KARLRECORDS, Berlin.

HARRIS fans will be delighted to know that despite the 130 bpm tempo, the newest FRET still resolutely avoids any straight four-on-the-floor kickdrums; every track lurches, stumbles, staggers and charges forth with beats in beautifully broken asymmetry.

We get 10 tracks of crushing, percussive destroyers, each itself a storm of precision chaos, with colossal low-end frequencies that’ll cause stampedes in the right circumstances. The classic HARRIS sound is there; searing waves of feedback distortion, intricate, interlocking rhythms and cold, abattoir atmospheres, especially track 6 “Stuck in the track at Salford Priors” which sounds like you’re being continuously suspended in the air from multiple explosions all around, each kickdrum throwing you up in the air, the next one going off before you can fall completely back to the ground.

The lazy-minded would probably lump it in with the term “techno”, but the disciplined brutality, blasting landmine bass and interlocking shrapnel rhythms are clearly HARRIS’ own trademark style, sitting somewhere between SCORN and QUOIT.

The tracks appear deceptively chaotic on the surface, yet each is meticulously and masterfully composed with great attention to layering and detail. MICK HARRIS fans rejoice, the dark lord still remains at the top of his game.

(Derek Szeto / Fausten / Combat Recordings)  Released October 13, 2017

Mastered & cut by Rashad Becker, D&M Berlin.

Stalker, by Robert Rich & B. Lustmord

An “oldie-but-goodie” . . .

Robert Rich joins underground sound design legend B. Lustmord for an extended journey inspired by the title and the hypnotic minimalism of Andrei Tarkovsky’s mesmerizing future/fiction film Stalker.

Released November 21, 1995

Post_, by Ábris Gryllus

Human behaviour is understood as a sum of actions manifesting over time, defined for the most part by one’s attitudes, motivations, mental and physical state. Using language and metacommunication we connect with others and react to certain situations. The concept of posthumanism describes an ambitious, idealist entity that is constantly pushing the boundaries of its physical and mental capabilities. It is about always reevaluating one’s opportunities. The pattern drawn by their reactions unveils the representation of the vision of the “human after human”.

Although he has put out a number of albums in the past ten years, Post_ is the first release by Budapest based artist Ábris Gryllus released under his real name. It marks a new, welcome direction where his highly conceptual compositions focus in on experimental electronics.

Released November 20, 2017

Music by Ábris Gryllus
2017

Object by Áron Kútvölgyi-Szabó
Photo by Réka Hegyháti
Design by Dániel Jani

4′ 33 / Four Thirty Three

4’33 | Field Recordings/Phonography/Experimental Ambient/Noise/Ambient | 63:19

“. . . one of the most poured-over mixes I’ve engineered in awhile . . . “
(updated from March’s Bandcamp post, which has also been updated)

I recently came across an obscure album collective of covers & interpretations of of John Cage’s 4’33 (a composition on the nuances of silence).

Some were screechy (didn’t use) & some so quiet I had to stack several compositions together to get any meaningful audio onto the tracks. Thus, the project started out with 92 minutes of aural data & was whittled down, with the layering, to just over sixty-three minutes.

However . . . sixty-three minutes of granular, caustic glitch & experimentation is probably enuf!
;- D


Download via Bandcamp

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Play via Mixcloud

00 Asmus Tietchens – L10RC (excerpt)
01 Fabio Perletta – – Nucleazione/7’33” (excerpted pieces)
02 eme celis – tfw u tryna 4’33 by the window but u live right next 2 a cement plant
03 Unknownuser – 4’33 + Bedfordnoise – Reality Partially Intertwining With
04 Atmospheric Disturbances – Water & Light + Girl Animusica – Cassette in Space
05 How the Night Came – HHF9+6J
06 Laudanum Quilt – 51
07 Jettenbach – Friday Morning + Laibach – STUMM433
08 Willem Sannen – Framework Afield/749 (excerpt)
08 Blackt00th – Performance Condenser + Laibach – STUMM433 (reversed)
10 Fuantei – The relentless passage of time & the acceptance of the transitory nature of things
11 Fencepost – Rain + Neo-Cymex – 4’33” (2 in 1)
12 Darling – Summer Waifu Mix + Roses Landing – Cassette Dictaphone Cover
13 Expose Your Eyes – Quiet Please
14 Atmospheric Disturbances – Soil and Cedar
15 Niacinamide – 4’33 (John Cage Cover)
16 4:33 Remix:
…..Dani Heggie/Death Tape Super Bass/Atmospheric Disturbances &
…..Vacant Possession
17 R0 [nought] – Machine Room
18 Pink Floyd – Welcome to the Machine (outtro)

Material Forces, by Gray Acres

Gray Acres are brothers Michael and Andrew Tasselmyer, whose debut album was released last year on Sound In Silence. The project began in 2017 as another creative avenue for these two artists, who are already established as Hotel Neon as well as working on other collaborations and solo ventures. Andrew records under his own name as well as working with Tobias Hellkvist as Mordançage whereas Mike records under the alias Transient Sounds.

The brothers are originally from Baltimore in USA and whilst Mike still lives there, Andrew moved a hundred miles or so away to neighboring city Philadelphia. Their work is initially created independently by building ideas, loops and recordings and these are realized into full tracks once they get together in person.

Material Forces became the name of the follow-up to last year’s eponymous unveiling, a dense but physical drift session which is as tactile as it is lulling. They did not initially have a clear vision on what this record would eventually become and much of it was performed live, with limited post-production. A key element is some field recordings taken in Asia, which provided the influence for the concept as they were all selected specifically for their powerful, intense characteristics. Rushing water, thunder claps, rock, earth and other heavy materials helped inspire the title ‘Material Forces’ as these field recordings become a focal point in which the power of the natural world collide with softer, processed guitar and synth drones to mimic the undeniable beauty that is left behind by nature as it shifts and evolves. 

Released October 5, 2019

Written and produced by Andrew and Michael Tasselmyer
Mastered by Ian Hawgood
Artwork by Andrew Tasselmyer
Packaging design by Harry Towell

Music From A Sinking World, by Music For Sleep

Seven symphonies for heartbreaking, melancholy loops..
The “Music From A Sinking World” album project is in its entirety the recovery of some tape loops (recorded between March and October 2020), erected on orchestral fragments, static interruptions and blurry depths.

Releases January 19, 2021
Cat.#: MFS-016
Music by Andrea Porcu
Recorded in Sardinia (Italy)
Original photography by Nata Madilyan
Copyright © 2021 ROHS! RECORDS, All Rights Reserved

Improvisations and Edits, Tokyo 26​.​09​.​2001, by Computer Soup & Jan Jelinek

Faitiche is happy to be releasing the album Improvisations And Edits, Tokyo 26.09.2001 on vinyl for the first time. For the original 2002 CD on Soup-Disk and Sub Rosa (Audiosphere), Jan Jelinek and the Japanese trio Computer Soup (Satoru Hori – trumpet, Osamu Okubo – toys & electronics, Kei Ikeda – toys & electronics) presented eight tracks all recorded one afternoon in the trio’s living room in Tokyo. They are excerpts from a joint group improvisation that subsequently underwent rudimentary editing, on which Jelinek and Computer Soup worked separately.

Jelinek met the three musicians at his first concert in Japan in 2001, at Tokyo’s Yellow club, where Computer Soup performed as the support act. Delighted by their free improvisation on pocket-sized electronic toys, trumpet and oscillators, he arranged to meet Hori, Okubo and Ikeda a few days later for a session at their apartment. The resulting three-hour recording, made on their living room floor, formed the basis for Improvisations and Edits. A few days later, Jelinek returned to Berlin. Over the following months, they separately chose passages from the recording that were then edited and assembled into an album.

Formed in Tokyo in 1996 as a quintet (including Shusaku Hariya and Daisuke Oishi), Computer Soup began by performing with acoustic instruments on the streets of Shibuya. Ikeda und Okubo soon switched instruments, and from then on the group’s minimalistic but densely woven sound was defined by electronic toys, oscillators and Satoru Hori’s trumpet. Their first album was released in 1997 on the Japanese label Soup Disk. Eight further releases followed.

Small Silence

A very interesting & relaxing site . . .

https://www.smallsilence.org/

p a r a l l e l

p a r a l l e l | ambient/electronica/experimental | 77:28

Parallel vector derivatives and breach recontextualization merged with scarred hyper-productivity & bi-linear sonic access forms the aural basis for this new mix collective (featuring 2 from Neuro…No Neuro’s new album ‘Object Models‘).

But . . . never mind all that edjamacational rigamarole . . . please enjoy the simple pleasure of listening via your favorite pair of ear-buds!

01 Jon Mueller – Black Glass
02 Michael Peters & Fabio Anile – Secret Forest
03 Music for Sleep – A Kindly Exit
04 The Inventors Of Aircraft – No Returns
05 Neuro…No Nero – Calcified
06 arbee – Moutons Sur le Lac
07 Clarice Jensen – Sleep
08 O Yuki Conjugate – Estuary
09 Neuro…No Nero – All The Missing Words
10 Cinchel – A Defining Pattern
11 Encym – Tender
12 Strië – Man With the Thick Glasses
13 Alessandro Adriani – Make Words Split & Crack (edit)
14 Stefano Giampietro – Inertia (edit)
15 Scorn – SA70 (w/ Trondheim-Gävle intro)

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Listen via Mixcloud

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