Sign In Sign-Up

Welcome!

Close

Would you like to make this site your homepage? It's fast and easy...

Yes, Please make this my home page!

No Thanks

  Don't show this to me again.

Close

Yep, that's right. This domesticated critter probably went to somewhere in India, armed with a portable recorder and fastidiously documented the audio environment. Once back on dry land with it's multi-tracking device it layered extracts from these recordings and ran them through a deluge of effects, creating a flood of sound, occasionally hacked up by simple percussion and drum loops. The end result is probably comparable to Muzzelman Gauze, although I haven't heard any work by Mr Jones for a while. I played 'Ram Nam etc' a couple of times and must say that I was quite convinced ...the merciless layering of sounds really did sound like a city in India. Almost a six foot pile of transistor radios, each tuned to a different station and playing at the same time. A very creative CD... (vital weekly)

"So we hear a mixture of different original sounds like voices, singings, music, tabla-drummings, flutes, bicycle-bells, gongs, birds, train-noises, etc. which were then de- & re-constructed afterwards. Sometimes the voices are coming from everywhere, sometimes there are rhythms underneath, sometimes the atmosphere is very meditative, and you may feel the spirit of India "in the air". The concept reminded me on some of Francisco Lopez' works, although I:WOUND uses more effects to modify the original sources (without destroying the special mood). Or think of RAPOON on LSD. The titles of the tracks (like "city of Shiva", "city of Kali") point on several holy places in India, where the sound-recordings were made. So this is a kind of real ethno-experimentalism. A very interesting work anyway." (drone rec)

i:wound is a sound artists who works with site recordings and manipulations, and these disks cover a broad time and style range. Ram comes in a folded card sleeve with a pin through (rather like Morte aux vaches) and a collage of pictures of India, reflecting the nature of the music which was recorded on a journey in 1996/97, released in 1998. It opens with a track, 'City of Shiva' that takes the time to develop its moods" there are three parts, the first interweaves crowd recordings with drums and singing of various styles, then we shift into a still centre with river and bird sounds, resonant gongs and quiet voices before the drums and singing of the big finale. The 'City of Kali' is more kaleidoscopic with many short events ­ talking looped and processed, big drums and percussion, crowds chanting or in the market, building up a rumble that loops to the end. The first half of 'Home of the jagannath' loops phrases and a D'n'B-ish rhythm that come and go with female chanting, to switch to a deep tonal pulsing and distant washing sounds. Another unstable soundscpe in '-radio beijing interlude-' which starts with a slowed gong and mullah call over a slow beat, before singing crowds with various instruments, rapid chatter and bells, then a snatch of popsong, looped chant, horns drums and bells, a song and tin percussion, crowd, fast tabla horns, mumbles and coughs ­ unstable but sequenced and edited to maintain your interest. Finally 'The torch of naxalbari' where voices are fragmented and layered, and a poem is almost inaudibly intoned ­ a quite spooky melodic sound broken into by a rising gothic noise, after which dense looped sites complete the track ­ supermarket, working rhythms, crowds singing lightly modulated. (ampersand etc.)

Shifting away from India, the Prison Blood 3" cd-r (complete with metal grid insert) is 'a manifestation of my psychologist work in a prison psychiatry' and is composed from sounds including a testimonyŠ, the stolen prison tapes, the us radio broadcast of an execution and footage from a deportation'. While there are dark aspects to the other disks, this takes it to a further level. The first 30 seconds is silent, then a child sings (with crackling noises) and a voice intones '30 hertz'. A German speaking, intense and somewhat disturbed, and a warm sine wave becomes more apparent (40 htz is announced, then 50): this buzzing becomes intrusive and disconcerting as the piece continues. There are noises around the speaker ­ almost like a basketball bouncing ­ who is edited but not a German speaker, I am not sure of the subject and cutting. A female voice, possibly from a radio, takes over, again in German, I think, but the sine-music is becoming an audio-barrier to understanding. A male voice returns, then at 9 minutes, the recording the execution in 1984 of Ivan Stanley starts: the witnesses enter, then the governor (we hear the events in the background, and hear the radio reporter, edited down a little, talking to Colonel Low and Mickey), the condemned enters, is strapped in, formalities ensue, straps are attached, eventually the electricity is turned on. The descriptions are quite cold and disturbing ­ the sine wave has risen to an almost imperceptible level and form a soft buzzing so we can hear it all, accompanied by a strange distant banging echo. After a shortened 5 minutes doctors enter the chamber to confirm death, and the body is removed. Briefly a ringing takes over and shouting from the deportation about 'human rights'. Silence. A dark and confronting piece ends. (ampersand etc.)

... is a two part release revolving around a series of performances with the theme of "urban discourse, surveillance, public space". The first of the tracks being the soundtrack to a performance as part of this season. The track Prima Res being the shorter of the two at 11 minutes - is constructed as a collage of samples taken from a train station in Bremen. The sound of an open space, perhaps a light rain, and occasional bumps and clatters. Trains sounds can be heard, affected into hollow echoes and dull clumping. The whole bass layer remains the constant, present through the silence and the bustle of rush hour's voices. Prima Res is a witness, populated by a multitude of voices, a single child's cries, and the footsteps of some night watchman. The second track is longer and was recorded live during the installation. Another Temporary Autonomous Zone working on the idea of a city and how the nature of cities is a melting point for cultures and identities. This piece starts similarly with an atmospheric tone, slight levels of drone going through that, mounting with a vibrating bass edge. Through this constancy we have glitches and the rise of voices - clear and in our focus. Voices layer, their different tones and intents contrasting each other. Metals clash in a background percussion while the bass rises and falls in waves. ATAZ is more constructed, the sounds layering with voices and the suggestion of instrumentation with a regular drum beat and manipulated electric glitches. But nothing stays constant as voices and beats shift - steer sounds, propaganda, TV. In the end this is a 40 minute journey through the Autonomous Zone with as much detail as you would expect to hear going from one side to the other. As a CD-R I guess CCC can be easily reproduced after the first run has sold out. But that first run consists of 70 unique editions - each described as photo and object covers. I don't know how much variety that entails - but the copy I have has a photo of a sand pit rigid in a square frame, the other side a snapshot of a bag of sand. With the actual bag of sand attached over this image. With the whole inside a plastic sleeve the bag of sand is free to shift offering a tactile, textural dimension to this release. Which I suppose may be relatively simple but is definitely effective and conjures a certain fascination with me. (remote induction)

A whole bunch of lo-fi CDRs, both in packaging and in music. 'The Libyan Tapes' and 'Wormsinside' are packed without info (save on the CDR itself) in piece of cloth (or Libyan and Indian origin). i: wound has been around the scene of German underground music for a long time, releasing his music in small editions on CDR and sometimes on vinyl. For 'Worminside' and 'The Libyan Tapes' he relies heavily on location sounds, maybe in Libya or Bomaby's red light district. Adding electronics of a rather lo-fi kind, i: wound creates on both these discs a dense layered sound of speaking voices, music and environment humm. Altogether an alien form of soundscaping, me thinks, that tells you not much upon hearing them of the locations involved. The release '--' deals with news broadcasts of September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It's one lengthy stream of spoken voices, in which one occassionally recognizes George Bush. But listening to this, there is no angst, agony, alienation and any sense of the mayhem of that day. If you listen without really taking care of the words, it's sounds like someone recording the dial of the radio, looking for a nice radio broadcast. The most interesting, because maybe the most frightening, is the 'Prisonblood', which is basically a collage of spoken words (testimony of violence) and a broadcast of an execution, in combination with a testtone record, which Hz tones drive you crazy. But one keeps on listening because the spoken word part is interesting. Like I said, all a very lo-fi affair but all are essential underground... (FdW-vital)

All of these releases smell like politics, ideas, freedom and ideology. The shortest CD is a fifteen minute affair of Tibetan Nuns singing in prison. Maybe nice, maybe not, but for sure relevant stuff if you do care about this sort of thing. I:Wound present a CDR with partly live recordings and part studio recordings. I:Wound progressed from his previous ambient ethno industrial sound tapestries towards a more plundered beat style, lifting his material from drum & bass areas and cuts up voices. Quite dark stuff, but nicely executed. In the same areas we find an I:Wound CDR that has the sound of an installation in Bremen, Germany and a live concert. The latter is like the 'Eighty Percent' release, and seems to dwell even more on DJ material. The sound installation part is even better: a dark, intense piece of electronica, mixed with outdoor sounds. Curious to know what the rest of the installation was about. The 10" has Memoire Nomade on one side. Doomy punky rock, with a dash of Joy Division darkness. Tian An'Men, with I:Wound as a member, also look back with sadness when Factory Records, dark clothes and ditto dark music were hip. Not my thing. (vital)

These tapes kept lying around, but by no means I am not interested in them. Elsewhere you find words about Y Ton G and some weeks ago we reviewed the Noise Factory CDrs. As an off-shoot to those events, Y Ton G and I:Wound held a concert in 1998 which is available as a cassette. The "rusty" element is here present again. You can almost feel the old metal cans and chains, rusty from years in rain. The locationsite is unknown to me, but with the birds call, I would assume it's outside (unless the birds arrived on magnetic tape). This music forms a nice flow, relaxing and taking it's time to shape.(FdW-vital)

There is an interesting concept behind Noise Factory: an annual workshop in which 16 musicians take part during 10 days. In five small studio's they work on new pieces together, some of which end up on a CD. The cover says 'the best tracks'. Let's see. NF Entrance harks around arpegiated synth and a tinkling piano thing, being filled with weird sounds. In some tracks the boys (it seems no girls involved) seem more then on the first edition, to explore the sampler, like in 'Maintain' or 'So Oder So'. And were it does, there is less improv and more music involved. Take a track called 'Triphop': carefully bult from a sampled rhythm with in sync along - not the next 12" for Mo Wax, but vaguely grasps the idea of tiphop as a sort of mind expanding music (and hey did someone bring a Rapoon CD or bring his own tabla?). Overall I must say this Noise Factory has indeed good tracks and in general comes off better then the first one. Although I admit at the same time, I liked the cover artwork of the first one better...(FdW-vital)
 
 

Noise Factory is an ongoing affair. The idea is very nice: a group of musicians who know eachother (sometimes just vaguely) lock themselves up in a farm house and start working on music. No TV, no newspaper, just eachother. I just received the issues from the 1997 and 1998 edition. It's mainly Germans present here. I recognize names as I:Wound, YTonG or Para Noise Terminal. But there are more involved. Every year around 8-11 people. In various combinations they start improvising on all sorts of instruments (mainly synths and effects), acoustic objects and even an odd guitar. The experiments are quite alright, with of course the occasional hit or more, but in general is less noisy then one would expect. There is on the other hand no particular stand out piece. It remains a bit on a flat surface. Keeping in mind that these are the results of just a few days of getting to know eachother, it's certainly not a bad job they've done.(FdW-vital)