| NEWS | RELEASES | ARTISTS | HISTORY | REVIEWS | PURCHASE | FAQ | CREDITS |
THE WIRE, MARCH 2009
Argentinian sax feedback specialist Capece teams up with Pan sonic's electronics ace Vainio on this impressive collection of sparse, captivating pieces. Much of it comes across as improvised dialogue between the two musicans as each tries to imitate the sonic characteristics of the other, but there's also clarity of line to this material that suggests meticulous compositional discipline. Sometimes the music is pretty ragged - 'Escapes' puts irregular outbursts of sandpaper-rough acoustic and electronic textures against each other, while 'Tolmauvo' is centred around an enervating bass pulse that shudders like a monster truck revving up for action. But there is delicacy here too. On 'Siglio', Capece splits a low feedback signal in two and explores the resulting harmonic beating, while Vainio colours the background with perfectly judged cymbal atmospheres. The Pan sonic man has honed a deeply personal - and immediately identifiable - sound over the last decade and a half, and this duo setting seems to have brought the very best in both him and his partner.
Jim Haynes
VITAL WEEKLY 665
If I'm not mistaken, though I usually am, this is the fourth collaborative work between BJ Nilsen, H. Thorsson and S. Berg Sigmarsson, the latter two known as Stillupsteypa, and by now mostly, or perhaps even solely, known from their collaboration with BJ Nilsen - I never heard much from them. The good news is: this is another great disc. The bad news, if one chooses it to call it so: there is nothing new under the previous suns that were produced by the trio of releases on The Helen Scarsdale Agency: deep drone stuff, based on heavily processed field recordings. There are, perhaps good news again, small differences with the previous release and the most important is that the three boys now allow small bits of melody in their music. Three long pieces of static, drone objects but with small melodic ornaments - not all the time, not on top of events. This is a heavy work of heavy drones. Dark clouds with a small bit of blue light - a pitch black river but with some branches in it - that sort of thing. They once again proof to be the sons of The Hafler Trio, later issue, with floating sound scapes, washing field recordings ashore and some melody. At one point they even painted a cosmic dream on analogue synths, and then they become the grandsons of Ash Ra Temple. This minor changes makes that I think this is a damn fine work once again. Its these changes that make me curious about a fifth release (or sixth) and see where they would eventually lead up to. Right on time for a small switch. Great CD. (FdW)
BRAINWASHED, 10.02.2009
As much as I enjoy the music of KTL, there is a feeling that having heard one album, you have heard them all. This album bucks this trend to some degree; there is a feeling that that parameters that Stephen O'Malley and Peter Rehberg work within are widening. The darkness that permeates KTL's music is blacker than ever but the music has more gravity, pulling the listener in with more force than KTL have shown before.
As a two piece with such specific ways of playing their instruments, it is difficult to expand the sound of the project. While O’Malley mainly sticks to tremolo-picked guitar playing that resembles an arctic wind more than music he is now pulling in some of the staccato playing that he incorporated in Khanate. Rehberg is also expanding the tones he wrests from his electronics resulting in a more charged atmosphere. As a result, IV is less soundtrack-like than the previous KTL albums which works in the album’s favor (only “Eternal Winter” falls into a traditional KTL style).
Without doubt, “Paratrooper” is one of the most crushing pieces of music. The sputtering synthesiser that opens the piece bring to mind Throbbing Gristle’s meaner side and before long O’Malley’s guitar, shards rather than chords, drags the music into even bleaker places. What makes this so much heavier than anything else KTL have put their name to is the presence of Atsuo from Boris. His drumming adds a huge, bestial pulse to the shrieking assault of O’Malley and Rehberg. It is easy to mistake the clamor for Armageddon.
For those willing to spend a little extra on an import version of the album, the Japanese edition on Daymare Records contains a bonus disc of demos (originally released as a very limited edition CD-R last year). The recordings are, by their very nature, rougher than the ones on the finished album. They do not capture the same sense of dread that the Jim O’Rourke production does on the final product (although they still sound pretty sick). These demos and are worth paying the few extra bucks for especially as the collector prices that the original release goes for are far too expensive.
As I discovered with their soundtrack to The Phantom Carriage, their older style works best as an accompaniment to visuals (and this is one thing that is lacking from the earlier releases). Due to the music on IV behaving less like some form of black metal soundscape, it is a lot stronger than the duo’s previous albums. It feels like a standalone album and not like part of a larger picture and because of this, I am already listening to it a lot more than I have listened to KTL’s other work.
John Kealy
»IV« ist die erste Veröffentlichung von Stephen O'Malley und Peter Rehberg, die nicht als Soundtrack für das Theaterstück »Kindertotenlieder« von Gisèle Vienne komponiert wurde. Obwohl alle drei vorhergehenden Partien die künstlerische Reife besitzen, musikalisch auch für sich alleine stehen zu können, wird ausdrücklich darauf hingewiesen, dass es sich bei Teil IV der KTL-Reihe um ein autonomes Werk handelt. Aber inwiefern unterscheidet sich diese Veröffentlichung darüber hinaus von ihren Vorgängern? Wenn auch einige der insgesamt sechs Kompositionen den Klangduktus vorhergehender Experimente aufweisen, machen sich KTL mit dem vierten Teil ihres Projekts auf den Weg in bisher unerforschte Gebiete. Nachdem das Eingangstück »Paraug« sehr stark an die Komposition »Forrestfloor 4« im ersten Teil von KTLs Tetralogie erinnert, meint man Rehberg und O'Malley bei den folgenden Stücken die Anstrengung anzuhören, sich musikalisch nicht erneut zu wiederholen, sondern eine neue musikalische Sprache zu entwickeln. In Anbetracht der inflationären Fusionierung von Metal und experimenteller Musik ist das musikalische Potential dieses vormals faszinierenden Amalgams rapide gesunken. Vor diesem Hintergrund ließe sich »IV« von KTL als ein Art Übergangswerk verstehen, das sich seiner Tradition bewusst und dennoch Althergebrachtes ablegen möchte.
Wie ernst es den Musikern mit diesem Album ist, verdeutlicht bereits die Wahl des Produzenten und die damit einhergehende Reise nach Tokyo. Mit Jim O'Rourke verbindet Peter Rehberg eine langjährige Freundschaft, die mit dem Computertrio Fenn O'Berg bereits musikalische Früchte getragen hat. O'Rourke gibt den Kompositionen von KTL eine befremdlich wirkende spröde Klangästhetik indem er Rehbergs Computersounds präzise aus dem Mix hervortreten lässt. Ebenso mit von der Partie ist Boris-Schlagzeuger Atsuo. Seine minimalistischen Rhythmen prägen die Komposition »Paratrooper«. Ein zwanzigminütiges Epos, das von einem treibenden Synthesizerpuls grundiert und von einem messerscharfen Gitarrenloop vervollständigt wird. Zudem bearbeitet Rehberg seinen Computer wie eine Gitarre. Er amplifiziert ihn über einen Verstärker, moduliert das Ausgangssignal mit Effektgeräten und gibt den digitalen Klängen damit einen analogen Charakter. Ein Verfahren, das den im Rock präsenten analogen Soundfetischismus in Frage stellt - eben ganz unrock, wie Peter Rehberg sagen würde.
Raphael Smarzoch
Perfect for the dead of winter, it's another quietly creepy, digital dronedoom opus from this two-man stupor group, featuring Stephen O'Malley (SUNNO))), Khanate, etc.) and Peter Rehberg (Pita), this time with production assistance from Jim O'Rourke. If you've heard KTL's I, II, or III (which was vinyl-only) you have an idea of what to expect - and are probably already plotting to purchase this. This is their first studio album constructed entirely for their own dark purposes, as opposed to having been commissioned as a soundtrack for live theatrical performance or film, though it certainly still has mysterious, soundtrack-y qualities. The sort that usually causes us, in reviews of KTL (and other dronesters too) to paint word-pictures of what the music evokes in our mind's eye. Subterranean caverns, bottomless pits, fallen angelic choirs, airplanes buzzing over dark forests... but we won't bother this time, you should just listen to this and your own imagination should have no difficulty providing all sorts of esoteric imagery. It may be soothing, it may be scary. Probably scary, it's up to you though. We find a lot of this to be as sinister and grim as Dick Cheney was in his Dr. Strangelove wheelchair at Obama's inauguration!
These six tracks are full of seismic rumble, high end hiss, eerie abstract glitch, sweeping drones, ringing electronics... some more epic and/or active than others. Distorted industrial rhythms shudder through several cuts, notably the disc's longest piece, the 21+ minute "Paratrooper", which features doomic beats by the drummer from Japan's Boris (who also brings his gong for an appearance on the disc's final track). While that's KTL IV at its heaviest, most of this is more like the sound of SUNNO))) sighing and whispering... or, conversely, Pita busting out a guitar to play along to a half-melted Swans record he found in the ashes of a burned-down church.
All of KTL's previous work was commissioned for theatre and film, but this new one is not. KTL stands for Kindertotenlieder and is the ongoing collaboration between Sunn 0)))'s Stephen O'Malley on guitar and Peter Rehberg on computer and synthesizer. On two tracks they receive help from Atsuo on drums (on 'Paratrooper') and gong (on 'Natural Trouble'). KTL is one of those supergroups, the seventies term for well-known people collaborating, but in the case of KTL its probably much more serious. 'IV' was recorded and produced by Jim O'Rourke in Tokyo and once again its one hell of a beast. Wall of sound was never better defined, but having said that, KTL isn't just about noise. Perhaps, come to think of it, not about noise at all. Surely its loud, but unlike so many other noise music this is also about detail. This isn't some muddy sound thrown on tape which is loud but without depth, this is has sonic richness. Lengthy pieces of endless walls of guitar sounds, while Rehberg's computer also sounds like a rocking machine. Not carefully processed sounds, but loud sounds, clicks, drones, hiss and machines humming on end. Very powerful stuff this KTL, even when they pull back in volume, such as in 'Eternal Winter' or the opening of 'Benbbet' or the sheer silence of 'Natural Trouble'. When its all open its mayhem such as in the landmark piece 'Paratrooper'. A refined example for all aspiring noise makers who would want to try their hands at making good noise music. Must be frustrating, because its unlikely it will be as good as this.
FdW
Another mighty KTL opus, but this album feels rather different from the previous three: IV is the first full-length album by Peter Rehberg and Stephen O'Malley to have not been based on commissioned work, and consequently should be a more conventionally 'album-like' affair. To a certain extent that's probably the case, and these six compositions run through a broader range of ideas, all very carefully constructed and finely polished... in a terrifying sort of way. Some of this refinement might have come about thanks to Jim O'Rourke's hand in KTL IV. The renowned polymath takes production credits on the album, meaning that KTL can now list themselves alongside artists as diverse as John Fahey, Wilco, Sonic Youth, Faust, and even Beth Orton, as a proud recipient of the O'Rourke treatment. Opener 'Paraug' suggests there's been no toning down however, getting us underway with a familiarly brutal wall of guitar noise, instantly getting the blood rushing, but next up, 'Paratrooper' takes on a markedly different identity: Atsuo of Japanese metal titans Boris joins the duo on drums for the twenty-one minute epic, which transpires to be quite a departure for KTL, taking on a more overtly rhythmic, industrial tone than has ever previously been evident. The noise-sculpting here would seem to be a nod to some of the influences cited by Rehberg and O'Malley as being integral to the record's overall sound (e.g. Caberet Voltaire, Swans, Fushitsusha, This Heat). 'Benbbet' is another pronounced shift away from the more customary dronesing malevolence we've become used to, taking on a far more subtle trajectory characterised by electronically severed shards of noise - spluttered out arrhythmically, like a faulty, gurgling Pan Sonic record. Rehberg's electronics start to run the show with some scuzzy modulations on 'Eternal Winter', all very much reminiscent of the darker Pita material, before finally Atsuo returns with a gong in tow, on the surprisingly beautiful 'Natural Trouble', a measured and disciplined construction that transcends the doomy paradigms established on prior releases. Immense.
The results of this partnership between Stephen O'Malley and Editions Mego label founder Peter Rehberg were assembled in Tokyo in September 2008 - with Jim O'Rourke as producer - from recordings made earlier in the year. While it shares some of the characteristics of other O'Malley projects, notably the Dark Ambience of Aethenor, KTL sounds both more fractured and more relentlessly driven. Its sound is a kind of sub-Metal, where O'Malley's abstract guitar riffs and feedback tones collide and merge with Rehberg's synth pules and clusters of electronic tics, buzzes and glitches. Where, notionally, there is more room for the music to expand, as on the lenghty 'Paratrooper', O'Malley and Rehberg instead channel it more narrowly into a kind of drilled repetition, like the endless thud and grind of industrial machinery, but filtered through a gauze of subiland electronica. 'Benbbet', another lengthy track, is more exploratory, even tentative, in its intial construction of noise and spaced sound clusters, until it settles into a pattern of ping-ponfing electronics and distorted swathes of guitar.
This all sounds controlled and harnessed, as though O'Malley and Rehberg have shaped their material into a kind of narrative; the album'S longer passages are interspersed with shorter 'sketches' of guitar/electronic interplay. However, the sound is intentionally never particulary fluid, instead relying on a sense of momentum generated by its non-harmonious parts rubbing abrasively against one another. Here the achievement has been to take fragmentary noise and abstracted Metal guitar elements and direct them in such a way that they make for an extended, coherent, and often viscerally engaging statement
Tom Ridge
BOOMKAT, 23.01.2009
Antipodean maestros of realtime electroacoustics, Antony Pateras and Robin Fox follow-up their 2006 Editions Mego debut, Flux Compendium with an erratic album of gleeful computer noise and manipulated recordings. You may recall Pateras' 2007 solo album Chasms on Sirr for its deft and discerning application of prepared piano and subtly morphed acoustic timbres, but this is a different prospect altogether, combining splattering, Hecker-like high-end synthesis ('Whipped Silk') with spacious dissections of concrete sound (as on the virtuosic, slapstick cut'n'paste of 'You're All Answers'). Sophisticated and avant-garde as the album tends to be, there's no short supply of fun to be had; for all its pristine, technical execution, a track like 'Apollonian Gasket' exudes joy and kinetic energy, while 'Lung Butter Blues' adds an Henri Chopin-style vocal component, loaded with spluttered chaos and a punk-ish sense of confrontation. Brilliant.
Bien qu'il s'agisse de leur troisième album en commun, c'est la première fois que ces pages évoquent le travail studio d'Anthony Pateras et Robin Fox, puisque jusqu'à présent, ce furent uniquement par la voie des concerts que le duo fut ici mentionné. Musicalement, peu de différences avec ces prestations live, les Australiens privilégiant à nouveau cette accumulation de bruitages et apports électroniques propre à créer une musique entre expérimental et noise.
Si en concert, on éprouve parfois quelques difficultés à maintenir l'attention face à une déferlante de sonorités escarpées, la brièveté de ce disque et des morceaux qui le composent (huit titres pour trente-cinq minutes au total) permet au duo de resserrer le propos, d'entrer bille en tête dans chaque morceau et d'en avoir fini avant que l'auditeur n'éprouve un réel sentiment de malaise. Ainsi, un titre comme A Simple Death, avec sa puissance sonore, ses vrombissements allant en crescendo, ses cris traités et ses notes suraigües, ne s'avère pas désagréable car on sait qu'il s'achèvera sans tarder. Il en va de même, plus loin, avec les crachotements électroniques de Lung Butter Blues.
Au milieu de ces glitchs, triturations et larsens, quelques éléments plus organiques parviennent à se frayer un chemin, à l'image des souffles de You're All Answers, comme s'il s'agissait d'établir qu'une présence humaine est bien effective parmi ces apports synthétiques. Il en résulte par conséquent une expérience électro-acoustique intrigante, bien dans l'esprit de ce que l'on pouvait attendre d'Anthony Pateras et Robin Fox. 6/8 François Bousquet
Although something entirely different, something similar can be said of the third Editions Mego release by Anthony Pateras and Robin Fox, who this time operate as a laptop duo, and leave their usual instruments at home. Perhaps some of the sound material they play around here was made during the previous concerts, and they add some ARP 2500 synthesizers sounds which they recorded at the studio of Worm in Rotterdam. Here too it would be too easy to say we are dealing with noise, and yes, this is 'loud' music, but it is, like KTL, by no means one of those pointless exercises in feedback. There are moments of quietness, such as in 'Hyperpole', the following piece after the sheer noise attack of 'Lung Butter Blues' - its the same side of the noise coin. Whereas most noise is generated through improvisation, but more in the sense of not knowing what to do, these skilled improvisers know how to improvise, and this time it is with a set of acoustic and electronic sounds playing from their computers along with synthesizers sounds. The hasty changing sounds doesn't sound like at all like KTL, yet its surely noise too. More improvised, more based in serious avant-garde music, yet loud and forceful, this is another damn fine disc.
Connoisseurs of high speed, more-is-more sensory overload - think Bark!, Furt, Lehn/Schmickler - will find plenty to enjoy on this third outing from Antipodean electronics artists Pateras and Fox, from the shatter and splatter of 'Apollonian Gasket' to the scything squarewave viciousness of 'Whipped Silk' and 'A Simple Death'. But the mangled belches and gargles that characterised the pair's last Editions Mego offering 'Flux Compendium' in 2006 are less in evidence. Instead there's greater interest in superimposed pulse loops, from the opening brief, sly nod back to the funky clickscape of early Mego to the driller-killer eardrum shredding of 'Rupture' and 'Lung Butter Blues'
TSB Medical Emergency Room Report
January 26, 2009
Pan Sonic's Ilpo V. and partner in crime Dirk from Schneider TM return with another Angel-ic recording, their follow up to last year's excellent and epic Kalmukia, which we likened to both KTL and Earth circa Hex. This time around they're not quite so much in that digitaldoomdrone mood... There's still plenty of digital glitch and distortion, and the 20-minute "Mirrorworld" is a loud n' lovely, humming white noise dronewerk, as is the shorter and sparser "Unsymmetric Distance", for instance, but many of the 10 tracks on Hedonism indulge in electronic noise and clatter that's a lot more active and buzzing.
The releases under the banner of Angel so far have all been live recordings - something that I forgot, so 'Hedonism' is the first studio CD by Ilpo Vaisanen and Dirk Dresselhaus, Angel(s) since 1999. Recorded in a studio in Berlin and at Ilpo's cottage in Finland, this album is a continuation of their previous releases. Its far from the work with Pan Sonic or Schneider TM, and operates in the shimmering world where you can see the crossroad sign that says 'industrial', 'ambience', 'atmospheric' and 'noise' (although the smallest road available on this intersection), armed with a handful of effects, recorders (to tape the field), contact microphones, acoustic objects and maybe a synth or guitar - none of this is really clear from the music itself, or the cover, they craft together ten tracks of strong power. Their best release no doubt, because the pieces here are well worked out and make a coherent whole, which couldn't be said of the previous works. Very nice release, though maybe not as surprising if this crossroad in music is visited by you frequently. (FdW)
The making of 'Hedonism' began as long ago as 1999, a collaboration between Dirk Dresselhaus and Ilpo Väisänen. with Hildur Gudnadottir joining forces with the duo midway through, underscoring these soundworks with heavy, black cello.'Hedonism' is divisble into three parts. The opening four tracks recorded in Dresselhaus's Berlin studio, and represent the 'urban' component of the album. The opening moments of the first track 'Holding Loose' are among its most scorching, panning like an electric storm during a city blackout across the speakers practically throwing you from your chair. The subsequent pieces then settle into a moody, post-nuclear smoulder, less eventful but still too hot to touch. The mid-section, opening with 'Dropping The Ego', consists of pieces of musique concrète, but this is concrète wrenched from the soundlabs, abused, hurled down stairwellls and bashed about in the hostile city outdoors.
Von 2004-2007 feilten Dirk Dresselhaus & Ilpo Väisänen an diesen Tracks, die sie anfanglich als knurrige Dröhnminimalisten zeigt, als Piloten alter Propellermaschinen, die sich, à la Saint-Exupérys 'Nachtflug',, einer 'Unknown Dawn' entgegenschrauben. 'Hatch' dagegen, impulsiv durchzuckt von krummen Frequenzen, kritzelt einen stottrigen Zackenkamm. 'Adrenaline Strike' und 'Dropping The Ego' sind rumorende und brummig changierrende Angelegenheiten, angeschoben von pulsierenden Automaten und wummernden Motoren, die einem mit einem giftigen Woosh plötzlich in einer Szenarie aus piepsigen, zirpenden Mikrogeräuschen absetzen. Bei 'Highrise 1' setzt wieder Gewummer ein, während im Hintergrund rumgetanzt und perkussiv rumgescheppert wird. Dieses Schaben und Klopfen rückt bei 'Unsymmetric Distance' in der Vordergrund, den es stechend und kaskadierend, zischend und ratschend auslotet. Danach wird es ruhiger, der Schauplatz wechselt von Berlin in den Norden Finlands, wo aus Fieldrecordings und geschicteten Drones 'Mirrorworld' als Soundscapes sich ausbreitet über volle 20 Min. Die Ruhe hält dabei nicht lange vor, weil sich immer mehr gischtige Brandung auftürmt und stürmische Böen die Landschaft beuteln. 'Hornet' hält zum Abschluss dann noch eine Überreaschung parat, Nachdem Vogelgekrächz und ein grollend atmendes Ichweißnichtwas nahezu verstummen, kommt eine Hornisse angekurvt und - die Krähe warnt vergebens... Doch statt eines Stichs donnert ein Düsenjäger über einen hinweg. dass die Wände wackeln. Die Vaterlandsverteidigung. Na Bravo.
S'il est un projet qui a subi, ces dernières années, une évolution majeure, c'est bien Angel, le duo composé du Finlandais Ilpo Väisänen (Pan sonic) et du Berlinois Dirk Dresselhaus (Schneider TM), en particulier depuis i'incorporation de la violoncelliste Hildur Gudnadottir. Un parcours qui se révèle pleinement á l'écoute d'Hedonism, premier enregistré par le duo entre 1999 et 2004 mais demeuré inédit jusqu'alors. On y découvre un Angel plus sombre et brutal que ce auquel on était habitué, tout en machines crispées et distordues ('Holding Loose', 'Adrenaline Strike'). en particulier sur la première moitié de l'album. enregistrée à Berlin dans les premiers temps, avant que le duo n'entame un travail électro-acoustique plus orginal (et également plus proche de ce qu'il devait finalement choisir de développer par la suite), es n'use, sur deux titres, de tout un éventail de field recordings captés en Finlande près de chez Väisänen. Finalement servi par son hétérogénéité, 'Hedonism' fait bien plus que fixer les sources et les points d'accroche d'Angel: il ouvre égalment des voies médianes, dont on ignore si elles resteront comme telles ou finiront par être explorées à leur tour.
As Mego had been shifting towards the power-electronic and blackened noise end of the spectrum, this one is something of a surprise for us. The Olde English blackletter script which adorns the cover belies the agitated silence found within. Ibitsu is the work of Shunichiro Okada, whose debut for Editions Mego follows in the hushed footsteps of Robert Ashley's Automatic Writing or perhaps even Nurse With Wound's similarly minded composition A Missing Sense. Okada situates his composition in two distinct levels, a higher frequency ceiling and a lower than low subharmonic base with nothing (and do we mean nothing!) in between. Above there are insect-like vibrations that circle and buzz about the stereo field with occasional brushes with softened white noise; and below are agitated rumblings that sound like somebody trying to push a giant piece of furniture in the apartment upstairs. Even as the album gradually moves from inaudibility to microsound glitchiness, Ibitsu maintains a even-handed control which always favors the 'objectness' of silence. A bit of a warning: this is a mere 25 minutes long.
This 25 minute digital composition is fine tunes in extremis - it has been almost ten years in the making, with its creator having refined it, given up on it, lost it, retrievred it and reworked it over the course of that period. It demands a great deal of the listener - 'This is not a soundtrack to other activity', warn the accompanying notes. It also refused to play on certain speakers such as a pre-2000 stereo system I own, upon which it yielded nothing. A second attempt with the volume turned right up and it reveals itself, barely audible yet furiously inscribed with detail, like the scrabblings of a fly trapped in the ear canal worked up into a matrix of sound. This being Mego, you're expecting at any point a sudden, syringing blast of dental drill-like noise, but no such thing emerges. Instead, this represents, if nothing else, a rigorous exercise in the neglected art of listening.
The label notes astutely observe that this album is "not a soundtrack to other activity." Too right. As with some of the more strictly austere works from artists like Bernhard Guenter and Richard Chartier, Ibitsu's music is easy to miss, situated as it is on the fringes of audibility. This single, twenty-five minute piece predominantly occupies the extremities of the upper frequency range, intermittently rasping at you like a faulty fluorescent light only to take you unawares with a pulse of severe low end - the kind of frequencies that manifest themselves not so much as a sound but rather the feeling that suddenly there's someone standing behind you. Unnerving stuff, but a glorious thing to behold. It's wonderful to hear electronic music of this kind making a bit of a resurgence, and while clearly this near-silent composition won't be to everyone's taste, those of you with an experimental mindset - perhaps looking to give your ears a bit of a workout - will find this album beautiful and beguiling. Recommended.
It seems like I miss out on something here: the piece by Ibitsu took about ten years to complete and is a 'digital composition'. Somebody asked me not to refer to 'its the age thing', but I seriously doubt wether my ears are still good enough to pick up on this. A twenty-five minute of speaker rumble, sub sub sub bass and somewhere half way through high high high end sounds. 'An acid drenched take on the spirit of early Trente Oiseaux releases', Mego tells us. Ha, that's what it is. One of things people can talk about for ages in internet discussion groups I gather, and perhaps indeed has the same aural impact as Lopez' 'Warzawa Restaurant', although, when opened in an audio editor, this actually has wave forms to see - not that they are easily heard, but hey there is something there. Exactly the right length and dramatic built up. For various reasons quite an interesting release - it will shake up thought on digital music once again, and that's one of the great strengths of Editions Mego. (FdW)
Gv steht für Gisèle Vienne, die Pariser Choreographin, für deren Produktionen Rehberg mehrfach die Musik machte, für 'Kindertotenieder' (2007), aber auch für 'I Apologize' (2004), 'Une Belle Enfant Blonde' (2005) und 'Jerk' (2008). Von diesen drei mischte Rehberg eine neue Klangbildfolge, die auch ohne den theatralischen Kontext, als reines Hirnkino, für Unruhe im Grey Room sorgen soll. Die Stimme, die man burtale Phantasien muemeln hört, ist die von Viennes Librettisten Dennis Cooper, dem Autor des George Miles-Quintetts, dessen Text auch schon John Zorn zu 'Weird Little Boy' (1985) reizte. Rehberg macht keine 'Music For Films', er macht Musik als Film. die den Klangraum dramatisiert mit industrialer Harshness ('ML6'), aber ebenso mit düster hingetupftem Pathos, das kaskadierend überquillt und zischen zu pulsieren beginnt als harmonisch stehende Welle ('Slow Investigation'). Noch errgender ist, 'Black Holes' mit seiner schnellen, zunehmend melodischen Schamanenrhythmik in einer sturgepeitschten Brandung aus Drones, der Groove reißt anrupt ab, Cooper ruft Geister in die schwarzen Löcher seiner Ödipusaugen. Er liest so schnell er kann einen von fuck & shit triefenden Brief eines Arschlochs namens 'Ich' ('ML3'), bevor zuckende Beast den mäandernden Groove von 'Boxes & Angels' stottern, der einem melodiösen feinen Dröhnen Platz macht, das wiederum von giftigem Zischeln überrauscht wird und auch der zuckende Beat kehrt wieder. 'Final Jerk' schließlich bettet vordergründiges Gerappel, Gepfeife und Geschrei in das dunkle Summen eines Basschores, das in hektischem Automatenlärm untergeht. Das ist startker stoff.
Inventeur du glitch, à travers son identité de Pita, l'Autrichien Peter Rehberg s'est peu à peu éloigné des sonorités concassées qu'il avait fait apparaître un peu partout, pout exploer, en duo avec Stephen O'Malley de Sunn O))) sous l'indentité de KTL ou sous son non propre, des perspectives moins barbelées. Depuis déjà sept ans, il entretient égalment une collaboraation suivie avec la chorégraphe parisienne Gisèle Vienne, pour laquelle il signe un ensemble de bandes-son dont sont extraits les titres présentés ici. Théâtrales, évidemment, les pièces rassemblées par Peter Rehberg jouent sans doute, plus que de coutume, de la répétition et du mouvement, tout en laissant s'insinuer des climats sourds, des évolutions lentes et plombées. Lézardés de tristesse, les titres issus d'Une Belle Enfant Blonde côtoient souvent le dark-ambient, alors que ceux provenant d'I Apologize sont plus durs, plus narratifs, au point parfois de servir de simple toile de fond à des spoken words, le seul titre extrait de Jerk s'avérant finalement bien plus proche d'une lamentation à goût de cendre virant à la noise qu'à un jerk. Et si l'on se plaît à rêver de l'ampleur que pouvaient prendre ces titres dans un contexte scénique, il n'est pas interdit, loin de là, de s'extasier devant la maestria de Peter Rehberg qui, même dépourvu de l'appui des comédiens et danseuers, parvient à évoquer des images riches et persistantes
Extreme ambient music. Depuis quelques années, les nouvelles discographiques de Peter "Pita" Rehberg nous viennent presque exclusivement via son travail pour la chorégraphe Gisèle Vienne. Après les bandes-sons pour DACM (avec Tujiko Noriko) et la spectacle 'Kindertotenlieder' (avec Stephen O'Malley de SunnO), il compile ici quelques compositions vénéneuses réalisées pour la planches, mais qui se déploieront sans difficulté dans l'obscurité d'un apartement. Agglomérées en ascensions wagnériennes, les textures supliciantes de ce pilier imperturbable de l'extreme computer music se voient comme amadouées par l'univers lyrique de Vienne, et s'étalent dans une sorte d'ambient music des profondeurs, saumâtre et passionnante.
What can I say about Editions Mego boss Peter Rehberg that hasn't been said already (possibly by me...) -- well I may as well recap a little; he records under the Pita moniker and was responsible for some of the most genre defining releases of the last ten years with albums that became cornerstones of electronic noise music. In recent years his efforts have been re-focused somewhat to take in work under the KTL moniker (together with Sunn O)))'s Stephen O'Malley), so it is surprising to see this CD emerge from the Emego stable. Released under his own name rather than the Pita moniker, this finds Rehberg take a slight change of direction; I would still call it "extreme computer music" but the sounds have been tempered slightly, probably as these pieces are collaborations with the Paris based puppeteer and choreographer Gisèle Vienne. Written for Vienne's theatrical productions, we hear Rehberg framing his work around something very visual and this somewhat mutes his penchant for aggressive db levels, giving rise to some haunting and almost early-electronic/Radiophonic Workshop sounding pieces. Of course the blackened mood is still very much on show, helped along beautifully by the words of Dennis Cooper who lies his sadistic lines over Rehberg's aural bed of nails chancing upon the album's most horrifyingly effective moments. Spanning four years of recording, it amazes me just how well these pieces work as an album as it was never the intention for them to be heard in this way, but in spite of this it is probably my favorite work from Rehberg for some time, just pipping his killer No-Fun 12" from last year. Let's hope there's even more material on the way -- grim and extreme... just the way I like it. [JT]
Peter Rehberg's relationship with Parisian choreographer and puppeteer Gisele Vienne began with the 2001 DACM release Showroomdummies and has continued right up to the mighty Kindertotenlieder (KTL) project with Stephen O'Malley. This album looks back over the past four years of Rehberg's collaboration with Vienne, though omits the KTL output - presumably because it's since developed a life of its own. When listening to soundtrack music (something this album is likely to be classified as) it's always difficult working out what you're missing in the absence of the visual performance element. Importantly, Rehberg's compositions function superbly as standalone works, taking on wildly divergent forms and structures across the selection presented here: while the opener, 'Murder Version' plants us comfortably within the electroacoustic DSP-frenzy of Pita's recent solo output, you'll encounter far more ambitious and subtle recordings such as the hauntingly beautiful 'Slow Investigation', which unfolds like a 21st century remix of some lost, early tape music. Those of you expecting some harsh, digital noise exercises will be pleased to hear the venomous distortion of 'Black Holes' and the cacophonous spoken word piece 'MI6', but as with Rehberg's most successful enterprises, nothing here is clear-cut, and within a single track he's able to make something very beautiful from what might otherwise be viewed as ostensibly quite ugly. 'Boxes & Angels' is based around a repeating, strobing synth riff, morphed, modulated and shattered across an extended period - it's the kind of strategy we've heard before on Pita's Get Out or the FennO'Berg releases. Waves of noise flood in alongside trance-inducing, quasi-orchestral chord sequences, resulting in something that's at once ear-bending and unnervingky emotive. It's an exceptional piece, and like so much of the music here, just couldn't have been made by anyone else. Highly recommended.
Compared to the powerful concision of Peter Rehberg’s earlier albums as Pita, Work for GV 2004–2008 should be nothing more than a compilation. How else are we supposed to understand a record that combines bits of soundtracks from three different stage productions? The eight tracks here were culled from the music Rehberg contributed to choregrapher Gisèle Vienne’s stage productions I Apologize, Une Belle Enfant Blonde and Jerk. The fact that Work for GV holds together as a unified statement illuminates, more than anything, the depth of Rehberg’s craft.
This new release from electronic music pioneer and Editions Mego boss Peter Rehberg collects the music he wrote for French choreographer Gisèle Vienne between 2004 and 2008. Given the music is taken from three different productions, I Apologize, Une Belle Enfant Blonde and Jerk, and written over a period of four years, the album is remarkable for the coherence of its aesthetic–one that takes in melodic synth excursions, hi-tech sound design and harsh noise.
Over the last years, electronic music pioneer Peter Rehberg (a.k.a. Pita) has frequently worked with puppeteer and choreographer Gisele Vienne. While the most prominent body of work resulting from this synesthetic partnership, Rehberg's and Stephen O'Malley's "Kindertotenlieder" project KTL, has created a significant following of its own, this album collects Rehberg's solo contribution to Vienne's absurd anti-bourgeois puppetry.
Es waren und es sind beeindruckende Stücke, die Peter Rehberg in den vergangenen Jahren für die Bühnenstücke von Gisèle Vienne geschrieben und aufgenommen hat. Schon die reinen Audio-Spuren vermitteln viel an Stimmung und Ausdruck. Rehberg ist mit diesen Werken genau am Punkt angelangt, wenn scheinbar abstrakte Stücke für geübte und ungeübte Ohren offensichtlich Narrative enthalten. Narrative, die wie die Musik nicht unbedingt festgelegten Strukturen folgen oder Bekanntes festigen, sondern die assoziativ Vorschläge machen und leiten. Und ja, damit ist Rehberg einem möglichen Seinesgrund, Hauptmotiv und Augenmerk von Miusik an sich ziemlich nahe. Das hier hat etwas Überwältigendes, Schönes, wie es nur Musik haben kann. 9/10
Peter Rehberg's sucker punch electronics provide suitable shock treatment to his recent soundtrack work.
Fragende Gesichter hat Industrialpionier und Percussionist Z'EV in der Vergangenheit nicht selten hiterlassen. Seine Klangkonstruktionen verweigerm sich jeglicher Struktur, bauen auf eine Atmosphäre, die beklemmend, eruptiv bis bedrohlich auf den Hörer einwirkt und ihn mitnimmt. Auch die Zusammenarbeit mit Experimentalmusiker PITA (Peter Rehberg) führt den roten Faden im Œuvre Z'EV's fort. Unterlegt mit dunkeln synthetischen Ambientflächen ziehen Z'EV's Percussions wie Gepsenster um Mitternacht durch einen einzigen, 36-minütigen Track, der zwar unterteilt ist, aber als Ganzes gesehen werden muss. Gewachsen aus einem monatlichen Austausch ihrer Musikdateien handelt es sich bei 'Colchester' um eine nachbearbeitete Lievaufnahme, die, laut aufgedreht, vor allem verstört. Ein paar ratlose Gesichter wird es auch diesmal geben.
Given the current flurry of cross-fertilisation between the far extremities of noise, Industrial, Doom, drone and electronica, finding z'ev and Pita (aka Mego's Peter Rehberg) working together on this turbulent document has a near inevitable logic to it. A single, steadily mutating piece just under 36 minutes long, 'Colchester' is never as apocalyptically mordant as either Pita's ongoing collaboration with SunnO)))'s Stephen O'Malley as KTL, or 'Magistral', z'ev's own face-off with O'Malley.
Für die besonderen Momente in Leben: 36 Minuten Live-Musik. Ein Stück. Elektronik und Percussion. Post-Industrialismen, Neo-Tribales und ein entpanntes Kunstverständnis verlieren sich in Klingern des Schlagwerks über fast imaginäre Metalgitter, dahinter ein digitaler Wespenschwarm unaufhaltsam aufstiegt, um sich irgendwo hinter der Schneellwallung im eigenen Surren zu verlieren. Kreislauf, verstehst du? Derlei (Anti-) Trance-Musik entfaltet sich natürlich am besten, wenn sie, wie hier, nur ihres Klanges wegen ensteht, das Erzeugen desselben also das Ritual selbst ist. Keine ideologien, abenkenden Intentionen oder anderes Rumgehabe, nur die Musik. Sich in Rage spielen. Alle Zeit auflösen. Einfach machen. Schöpfer sein. Fertig.
Eine sehr überzeugende Kollaboration ist die zwischen Industrial-Pionier z'ev und Peter Rehberg alias Pita, dem Gesicht hinter dem österreichischen Experimentalmusik-Label Mego. Gerade diese beiden Musiker sind praktisch permanent in zahllose Zusammenarbeiten verstrickt, und es hat sich ausgezahlt, dass sie davon ausgerechnet dieser seit 2004 so viel Zeit zur Entfaltung geschenkt haben (u.a. wurden die Stücke bereits auf der Bühne erprobt).
One of a half-dozen full-lengths to be released by New York noise artist Prurient this year, Arrowhead can be considered in either of two contexts depending upon your familiarity with the one-man-band's sizable discography or with noise music at large. If you're interested in Prurient, Arrowhead is a revealing transitional retrospective, intense but with precedent. If you're not, it's a shocking, singular piece of hair-raising noise. Either way, it's yet another essential piece in Prurient's metastasized catalog and one of the year's most obliterative and exhilarating releases.
Fandom for power electronics and noise calls for a difficult aesthetic defence to the outside music world. Some artists create vast slabs of low end that provoke bodily displacement more direct that any punk rock. Others flood the entire spectrum of sound with shifting sheets of noise that obliterate all internal electricity. Prurient (aka Dominic Fernow) lives in the stratosphere of frequencies on Arrowhead, provoking often not much more than provocation itself. Over the three tracks named for the enclosures and contents of the chest Fernow unleashes a hearing test gone wrong. “Sternum” is pitched presumably to approximate the sound of a tool stubbornly piercing bone, complete with little flecks of noise dropping away from time to time. “Ribcage” somehow discovers an even higher tone that’s still sickeningly perceptible (and probably fatal to dogs) and careens on a panning feedback rampage. Finally, the coda “Lungs” presents muted distortion of the same feedback, suggesting damage to the airways and also your hearing from enduring the previous half-hour.
People will try to sell you Arrowhead as an extreme noise record -- and of course, they would be right. That is what Prurient has been doing for many long years now. And yet, Arrowhead is a somewhat lighter release for Prurient, the key word here being "somewhat." The opening piece "Sternum" consists of a sensitive lamentation of floor tom and mumbling vocals, over a high-pitched whine. That whine is punishing at high volume, but turn that knob down a few notches and the piece becomes almost ambient and entrancing. Since it fills almost half of the album's half-hour duration, it sets this opus on an unusual track. "Ribcage" comes closer to what you'd expect from Prurient: harsh noise split between occasional low rumbles and persistent high screeching, with distorted screams and shouts added. "Lungs" provides a short postlude (four minutes), with a pummeling overdriven beat track dissolving into harsh noise. Again, these tracks are not as in-your-face as usual, which may be due to Editions Mego's tendency to master the music in a way that allows the details to show. Without actually marking a new direction, Arrowhead does open up Prurient's music to a spatial dimension hitherto unsuspected. It should still satisfy noise fans, but amateurs of sound art will also find it welcoming.
Ultimately, "noise music" is as tricky a genre tag as the much-debated "indie rock." Critics and fans use "noise" at least as broadly as "indie," and in some ways the generalization has an even greater leveling effect on the music it describes, considering that "noise" can be traced back to avant-garde classical music -- in particular the musique concrète developed by Pierre Schaeffer in the late '40s and '50s. Stretched to its limit, though, the term encompasses all music that focuses on texture to the exclusion of traditional music markers: harmony, rhythm and melody. An umbrella term like "noise," however, can only begin to point us in the direction that Prurient's Arrowhead takes its listeners.
“To enter a painful space conducting highend feedback and ever-relentless coarse vocal screams” and you’re some way to defining ‘Arrowhead’ and its ferocity. This latest arrival from Prurient (AKA Dominic Fernow) took four years to reach our ears, and in doing so seems to have refined a clearer, more explosive sound. The devastating feedback manipulations are minimal landscapes of piercing notes, which waver mirage-like at some impending distance. Unless you own an expensive pair of headphones or live miles from anywhere I suggest you approach playing this record with caution. It is loud high-pitched and travels unbelievable distances, (much to my neighbour’s annoyance).
Most people’s reaction to the shrill feedback of a microphone would be to stop it. Prurient, a.k.a. Dominick Fernow, isn’t like most people. Instead, he has taken that startling sound, one we all instinctually recoil from, and built a lexicon out of it, a symbolic mirror of how the conscious shrinks from what the sub-conscious throws at it. Live and on record, Fernow gets to this threshold quickly and puts listeners in an uncomfortable position, pushing them to query the core of his music from the very first moment, forcing an answer to the question, “Do I want to continue to listen to this? If I do, why?”
It's not unusual to see people clinging to the walls during the frequency insanity part of Prurient sets, holding on to stop themselves from falling over die to the barrage of high-end hammering on the inner-ear. It's these sounds that make up the majority of this 2004-2005 archive release, making this one of Prurient's most visceral and physical recordings yet. There three painfully high-pitched slabs are uncomfortable listens in both senses of the word, violent tones that shake the brain close to its throbbing threshold (headphones not advised). Shotgun pelleted with loose percussion and roars from the tied-up and wrapped in plastic victim in the next apartment, all three cuts scream through the gag of long-suffered internalised violence. 'Rib Cage' is the most hands-on self-destruction piece here, metal on metal through skin and tissue, and ugly ramification of inward-loathing. Arrowhead is self-flagellation minus the eroticism or penance - no wonder Prurient left it brooding in the vault.
If ever I wanted music to encapsulate raw pain and anguish in such agonising detail and with such empathy, then this has to be it. Arrowhead is familiar Prurient/Dominick Fernow territory of emotions stripped bare and the ugly underside of the human condition, all delineated through his use of tortured circuits and fried electronics.
'Höre mit Schmerzen', forderten die Neubauten vor Urzeiten auf. Während sie selber längst in kuschelige Lager übergewechselt sind, gib'ts auch 2008 noch einige unerschrockene Schmetzliebhaber, für die die gewaltsmae Ohrenpenetration an erster Stelle steht. An vorderster Front dabei ist der New Yorker Dominick Fernow. Auf 'Arrowhead' gibt's zwei lange Tracks zu hören, die das klassische Power Electronics Setting (sprich. durchgehendes extrem hohes Pfeifen ohne nenneswerte Variationen) mit unkontrolliertem Bearbeiten eines Drumkits und Cut&Go Verstatzstücke aus der japanischen Lärmschule kreuzt. Für eher sanfte Gemüter gibt's als Dreingabe ein knapp fünf minütiges Rhythmusmonster zwishcen LoFi-Grindcore und Digitalnoise.
Recorded contempraneously with sides like 'Black Vase', Dominick Fernow aka Pruirent's 'Arrowhead' has taken almost four years to see the light of day. This dates it to a period of upheaval in or, more correctly, refinement of the Prurient aesthetic, as 'Black Vase' in particular was monomaniacal in its unrelenting focus on high-end dynamics and body-slamming percussion. Unyielding in its intent, 'Arrowhead' is similary instructive: it exemplifies the fierce intelligence that goes into Fernow's noise. This is artfully bracing listening.
Hmm! Lecker Lärm! Jemand vom Label hörte 'Arrowhead' im Flugzeug und bemerkte, dass 2 Reihen vor ihm jemand ein Pfeifen der Klimaanlage monierte. Doch dafür kann weder Airbus oder Boeing, der Verursacher der hochfrequenten Srörungen heißt Dominick Fernow aka Prurient. Die 3 tracks dieser herrlichen (und am besten wirklich laut, dann aber wahrscheinlich nur alleine zu hörenden) CD flirren und sirren, die beats gehen in diesem Gewitter fast unter und die irgendwo darunter verschütteten vocals kann man bestenfalls erahnen. Weil schiere Gewalt hier aber keineswegs das alleinige Ausdruckmittel bleibt, ist dies seit längerem endlich mal wieder eine interessante Platte aus dem sonst so ausgelutschten Genre 'Power Electronics'. +++++
'Arrowhead' ist das bislang radikalste Werk des New Yorker Noise-Musikers Dominik Fernow. Stellen seine aktuellen Arbeiten eine Auseinandersetzung mit der Fusion von Noise und melodischen Elementen dar - mysteriöse Synthesizer-Harmonien, die in dichte Lärmwolken eingearbeitet werden und in ihrer Machart an die unheiligen Experimente des Black Metals erinnern - so handelt es sich bei »Arrowhead« um drei ältere, vor vier Jahren entstandene Kompositionen. Bezeichnend ist hierbei die Sparsamkeit in der Wahl des musikalischen Materials.
Noise music has reached the point when all frequencies are well used, from near to complete silent pieces to extreme clouds of white noise. Dominick Fernow is dealing with this range of frequencies for over a decade, creating a postcards-from-hell-one-man show. Amazingly, this guy is getting precise and interesting from one release to another, and he`s already got over 100 releases so far, for his solo work and many other collaborations (with Kevin Drumm, Wolf Eyes and John Wiese to mention a few). Mostly releasing his stuff under his own NYC label "Hospital Productions" this release delivered by the Austrian label E-Mego. The album opens with very high, painful and loose frequency, a total anti-thesis for the mediative droning you get this days, so you find your self trying to dive into the music and concentrate, but with prurient it never easy. Random drumming and far-reached moaning comes from the back of the speakers. This track has no solution, you get all lost, just one second before a blast of power electronics attacks for another 14 minutes. Feeling lost is the core of this release, this is not uplifting noise. This is desperate crying. The last track though is a perfect closer for this work-body, leaned on repetitive tribal drumming swimming in a pool of glittering noise that slowly taking over every inch of space, until you cannot breathe anymore. This unique moments when noise albums gets emotional and physical at the same time are rare to find, and "Arrowhead" is one of them.
In alter Tradition der Power Electronics ist Dominick Fernow ein Attentäter auf den guten Geschmack. Die musikalische Gestik, die Fernow in seiner Arbeit unter dem Namen Prurient an den Tag legt, mag man dabei zu Teilen als veraltet, manchmal sogar als lachhaft empfinden. Trotzdem landet er hin und wieder einen punktgenauen Treffer, wie in »Sternum«, dem Opener seiner neuen LP »Arrowhead« (EditionsMego): Unheimlich reduziert lässt er da einen schrillenden Klang ertönen, variiert ihn bar jeder Struktur und verzerrt ihn hörbar nur in besonderen Momenten. Die Frequenz ist erwartungsgemäß enervierend, doch Fernow macht keinerlei Anstalten, diesen fein ausgearbeiteten Standard durch ein weiteres Element auf die Spitze zu treiben: Immer wieder lässt er schließlich nach einiger Zeit vereinzelte Trommelschläge von einem konventionellen Drumkit ertönen. Eine nachvollziehbare Folge mag sich dabei natürlich nicht erschließen, und so erwartet man bei entsprechender Lautstärke den kommenden Schlag mit einem zweiseitigen Spannungsgefühl: Zum einen zwar ist das unvermittelte Auftauchen der Trommeln unangenehm, zum anderen aber ist jeder Schlag auch eine kurze, regelrecht wohltuende Erlösung von dem schmerzenden Pfeifen, das den musikalischen Grundstock bildet.
La légende - bien joli nom pour une simple feuille de presse - prétend qu'un passager d'un vol Milan-Vienne s'est un jour plaint de sifflements aigus dans le système de climatisation de l'avion. L'anecdote est tout à fait plausible, tant les sons produits par le New-Yorkais Prurient - né Dominick Fernow et boss du label Hospital Productions - soumettent à une extrême tension le système auditif de toute personne normalement constituée. Dit crûment, on pourrait penser que l'écoute à volume simplement normal des douze minutes de "Sternum" constitue une épreuve aux frontières de l'insoutenable, et pourtant. Certes, ces mots pourraient passer pour une épouvantable critique négative, ils ne font que traduire l'incroyable - les mots manquent en pareilles circonstances - fascination que nous avons éprouvée à l'écoute de ces sonorités suraiguës, aux limites de l'(in)audible, qui transpercent les percussions brutales et les cris de torture en arrière-plan. A peine moins démesurées, les quatorze minutes de "Ribcage" font penser à une aciérie en folie et les quatre minutes du final "Lungs" évoquent le bruit d'un réacteur capté à trente centimètres. Quant à toi, ami lecteur attentif d'Octopus, habitué que tu es à la radicalité du label Editions Mego, tu ne perds rien pour entendre.
The second installment of Russell Haswell’s Live Salvage project refuses to be a lot of things. Musically, it refuses to settle easily into one approach. It disintegrates the limits between styles with impunity, tearing down what was left of the walls between classic studio computer music and modern-day noise. In fact, Haswell comes close to refusing anything even remotely musical, mostly rejecting even the extreme, pain-pushing high frequencies and volume spikes of his pervious work, as well as the occasional symmetries and stark order of much computer music. Battered references to savage metal and bleak drone surface, but don’t hold. Repetition, timbre, rhythm – all these get shredded and replaced by texture, masses, architecture. These aren’t compositions; they’re mammoth, roaring, organic automatons who have lost their code, subterranean in habitat, relentless by nature and harrowing in character.
Adepte de l'improvisation scénique. qui fait que chaque concert est différent du précédent selom l'ambiance du lieu, les réactions du public et l'humeur de l'artiste, l'Anglais Russell Haswell n'a d'autre moyen pour rendre compte de son travail que publier des albums live retraçant son parcours. Comme il l'a fait en 2001 avec une première série d'extraits, il récidive donc aujourd'hui avec le double LP 'Second Live Salvage' regroupant des lives datant de 2000 à 2008, et captés, entre autres, á Paris, Brighton, Francfort ou Kita Kyushu. Mur de bruit opaque et impénétrable ou influences concrètes, i'œuvre d'Haswell s'y révèöe polychrome, même si une certaine agressivité métallique domine toujours. Tourjours extrêmement détaillé, le processus d'Haswell, qui marie synthèse granulaire, reconstruction en temps réel, et outlils hérités des expériences de Xenakls ou du GRM, atteste que, bien au-delà de la simple éruption sonore qui caractérise souvent la noise, la musique, telle qu'elle est pratiquée par Russell Haswell, tient finalement auatant de l'êtude que de la pulsion. Un témoignage indispensable d'une musique éphémère.
Massive limited edition double LP, sold out at source, that documents some insanely heavy live actions from Russell Haswell, with improvised performances drawn from 2000 through 2005. This one bundles shows from Valencia, Stockholm, Frankfurt, Brighton, Paris and Japan. Haswell uses computer, software and a pro-DJ-mixer to generate ferocious shape-shifting monoliths of tone-threat that are as terrifyingly a-musical as early Conrad Schnitzler or Faust at their most Industrial. There's an epic, avant-classical edge to his conceptions that kinda parallels Philip Best's breakthroughs on the last Consumer Electronics album, coupled with a feel for lurid, organic shape-shifting that could almost be Japanese, a hunch that the final 'bonus' track with T. Mikawa from Incapacitants/Hijokaidan only confirms. A fantastic 'noise' record, one of the best of the year, and highly recommended.
This release follows up on Haswell's release eight years ago of the first Live Salvage album, which compiled live recordings made between 1997 and 2000. Since then, Haswell has released collaborative works with Merzbow (on Warp's Satanstornade) and Florian Hecker - the Gilbert to his George, the Eric (or indeed Burt) to his Ernie. Fortunately, Haswell has also been playing live extensively, amassing a new cache of live recordings to throw our way. At this stage, it would probably be worth pointing out to those of you who have not yet guessed it, that Russell Haswell is a noise musician, one who straddles both the cerebral noise world of the eMego camp and the more brutish, DIY, Japanese-inspired aesthetic. The range of terrifying timbres on show during Second Live Salvage is headspinning: there are recordings that sound like a swarm of giant bees let loose in a cathedral, others that resemble the sound of a dentist's drill as heard through the vibrations in your own jawbone, and of course, plenty of moments in which you feel compelled to check that you are in fact listening to a record and not, instead, being run over by a train. There are plenty of noise artists out there who know how to play with the extremities of sound, but it takes someone as talented as Haswell to make it a truly transcendent experience. While so many musicians just throw feedback and distortion in your face, this one makes noise sound like an entity unto itself - not a by-product of some aggressive signal processing or merely something that's too loud - this doesn't sound like music that's the product of distortion pedals and so forth: Russell Haswell gives birth to noise, as if it was never anything other than noise. It's absolute, tyrannical and annihilatingly powerful. Unbelievably good - a massive recommendation.
Reclaimed live reordings take computer music out of its academic ghetto and subject it to gale force extremes. By Nick Cain You can understand why Russell Haswell uses the term salvage, with its connotations of risk and danger. 'Second Live Salvage' comprises of recordings of live performances dating from 2000 to 2007, which Haswell defines as salvage recordings because he didn't record them himself. Like those collected on 'Live Salvage 1997->2000', his 2001 solo debut, they were all made by audience members, then either given to or tracked down by Haswell. He undertook 'premastering salvage' work on them, with the aim of bringing closer to his memories of the event and the acoustics of the venue in which it took place. Given the distinctly variable quality of the recordings in their released state, recovery would be the more accurate term.
FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! - Das ist das Geilste an purem Noise, was mir seit langem untergekommen ist! Genau so und nicht anders muß es klingen, wenn man kompromisslos und ohne Rücksicht auf Verluste frei loslärmt! Es knarzt, dröhnt, quietscht und bollert aus allen Rohren und die Boxen werden in Brand geschossen. Menschen flüchten panisch ins Freie und halten sich dann trotz geschlossenen Türen noch die Ohren zu. Zufällig vorbeikommende Lebewesen schauen verwirrt zum Himmel hinauf, weil sie denken gleich beginnt die Apokalypse. - Nur ein paar ganz Verrückte stehen vor der Bühne, zucken wie in Trance, die Fäuste in die die Luft gestreckt und schreien gegen dieses Inferno bis zur Bewusstlosigkeit an. Willkommen im Noise-Nirvana! (10/10)
Obwohl Russell Haswell stets dem Elektronishcen verbunden bleibt, produziert er doch eine Musik, die sich ästhetisch nicht nur am naheliegenden Noise-Sound aus Japan und Europa, sondern zudem an der Fäuste ballenden Art extremer Rock-Spielarten speist. Die Compilation 'Second Live Salvage' präsentiert Haswell in mehreren sehr unterschiedlichen Episoden seinen Erschütterungswut, die er zuweilen mit so viel rostiger Substanz überlädt, dass er sine eigenes Equipment einer wahren Belastungsprobe unterzieht. Interessant ist, dass die vorliegenden Aufnahmen erst in Nachhinein und oftmals gar aus zweiter Hand zusammengetragen wurden: Im Mastering-Prozess hat Haswell versucht, aus dem Gedächtnis die Atmosphäre des jeweiligen Auftritts zu rekonstruieren. Das Ergebnis schließlich hat was von einem ruppigen, liebevollen Bootleg, wird aber leider nur zu Promozwecken ganz angemessen im anachronistischen Tape-Format herausgegeben. Die offizielle Variante erscheint auf Vinyl.
This milestone of early laptop music, "made by Pita 1998/99 using an Apple Powerbook 1400cs/133" is an integral part of music history, but also in the history of productive means. Austrian Peter Rehberg, a.k.a. Pita, has collaborated with what seems like a "Who's Who" of underground avantgarde music, namely Jim O'Rourke, Christian Fennesz, Kevin Drumm, Stephen O'Malley, and Florian Hecker etc. This album, though, is what Rehberg's reputation and status rest upon (together with its predecessor, "Seven tons for free"), and – unlike some Aphex Twin, Atari Teenage Riot or Kid 606 albums – it hasn't aged much. Maybe that's because his tracks are industrial, harsh, machine-like, without ever (I think) using beats and aiming at urban dancefloors. If "Get Out" conjures any imagery, it is indeed an imagery of production, not one of reception: This is music that defies social space.
Was so schön loslärmt, flacht gegen Ende immer weiter in die Belanglosigkeit an und verkommt zu einer komplette verkopften und abstrakten Computernerd-Arbeit. Mir ist es eigentlich egal, wie Noise, Industrial oder ähnliche atonale Geräuschmusik produziert wird, aber über die Jahre bekommt man ein Ohr dafür, ob es sich um 'Live-Action' hadelt, will heißen: Viele Pedale, Selbstgebautes oder Knöpfverdrehen bis über den Anschlag hinaus, oder ob da jemend stundenlang vor einem Bildschirm sitzt, seine Ideen programmiert und bis in die Unendlichkeit ausarbeitet. Peter Rehberg scheint der letztgenannten Spezies anzugehören und macht seine Arbeit sehr gut, keine Frage und Track 3, der durchgehend nur nummerierten und damit namenlosen Stücke, ist eindeutig sein Meisterwerk. Danach war einfach die Luft raus und die klanglichen Möglichkeiten seines Apple Powerbooks erschöpft. Was der Herr sich da aus nur einem Sample aus Céline Dions 'Titantic'-Heuler 'My Heart Will Go On' zusammenbaut, ist flirrender, fieser und de-programierter Digital-Noise der Extraklasse. Danach kommt, wie schon erwähnt, recht wenig Neues und die üblichen Zerr- und Störgeräusche werden immer weiter minimalisiert, reduziert und seziert. Da fehlt einfach hörbar der 'Spaßfaktor' und das spielerische, naive Element, das solcher Musik dann auch den Lebensfunken einhaucht. (8/10)
Mego was on of the unique labels for experimental electronics during the 90's. During the last year the label was closed and re-opened by Peter Rehberg as Editions-Mego, taking care of the back catalog of the former label and releasing major body works for the creme de la creme of nowadays electronica artists. Still, the main catalog leans on Rehberg (and Fennesz) works. This release is a re-issue for the 1999 masterpiece "Get Out" by Reherg himself, under his Pita moniker. Back then, no one could ignored the amazing step of puting aside the samplers, guitars and the analog equipment in favor of (just) a laptop. Nowadays, people get cynical for the "cold" and "i'm actually checking my emails" live laptop performances, but we tend to forget that in the end, the output is all that matters, specially when documentized. "Get Out" is a breaking point for this process, combining all the right influences from Controlled Bleeding, Throbbing Gristle, Nurse With Wound and Mika Vainio, compressed together into a versatile fuzzy, crunchy and ear-splitting noise motivated by minimal harmonics and clicks-and-cuts craziness. The rough changes between the tracks isolate the supposed-to-be cleanness of the computer work and create hypnotic journey around new-era electronic compositions. The nice thing about it is that almost ten years after, it still sounds fresh and exciting. Next to Fennes'z "Endless Summer" this is a true pioneering art-work.
A timely reissue of Peter Rehberg's orginal digi-noise project created using Apple Powerbook in 1998/1999 while on the road following his prize winning Seven Tons For Free debut. His recent excursion into drone with KTL may have brought him to a new audience, but Pita is Rehberg's work stripped to the core. Just a man and his laptop, moments of rare beauty emerge from his digital manipulations, but for the most part Get Out is a full on assault on the senses withs its walls of ear-splitting noise.
Dopo essere stato fuori catalogo per oltre cinque anni, ecco tornare alla ribalta un grande album del catalogo Mego, per l'occasione rimasterizzato, impacchettato in una lussuoso digipack e arricchito con tre tracce extra. Come ormai noto, dietro il moniker di Pita si cela Peter Rehberg, eccezionale compositore oltre che fondatore della grande label austriaca: in 'Get Out' il compositore elettronico mette in riga i grandi della 'glitch generation', gli autarchici rumoristi ed i maestri del minimalismo da laptop, elevando questa prova ai livelli dell 'Heroin' di Mathieu ed Ehlers. I bonus estrati da un 12" realizzato con Kevin Drumm, folli come nelle migliori apsettative, chiudono il cerchio di un disco memorabile ed extraterrestre. 9/10
Re-issue aktion from KTL's Peter Rehberg, 'Get Out' (Pita's second LP), was originally realised as the nineties began to curl up and die. Lauded at the time of its release, and since popular within and without electronic music circles, 'Get Out' has been described as the electronic equivalent of Jimi Hendrix's 'Are You Experienced'. Out of print for over 5-years now, this edition comes in a purple 6-panel digipack. Challenging yet intrinsically serene, Pita is the maxi-priest of minimalism, and 'Get Out' is as good a place to start as any!
A welcome reissue from one of the originators of mind-bending computer music. Peter Rehberg's 1999 release seems to have been influential in the sphere of modern electronic composition. Especially with regards to the use of the laptop as a creation and performance tool. Despite the occasional ear-scraping bursts of digital noise, this doesn't come close to the harsher end of the Mego spectrum. Certainly doesn't use software as a device for sonic violence or wanton aggression. It also hasn't dated one iota....
Collega (pds), die in rustiger tijden de schijfjes van Pita en zijn labelgenoten in handen krijgt om er fijne recensies over te schrijven, kampte deze keer met tijdsgebrek. Sinds we naar het landelijke Kortrijk verhuisden (na vijfentwintig jaar Gent) wonen we bij elkaar om de hoek en pds gaf me de kans om een paar woorden vuil te maken aan de heruitgave van 'Get Out', een cd die oorspronkelijk in 1999 verscheen. 'Get Out' van Pita (aka Peter Rehberg) is inmiddels uitgegroeid tot een klassieker in het genre. Gebruik makend van een Apple Powerbook 1400cs/133 componeerde Pita een aantal stukken. Op deze heruitgave staan de negen oorspronkelijke stukken, weliswaar volledig geremasterd, aangevuld met de drie stukken die eerder verschenen op de split twelve inch uit 2000 (BOXmedia) met Kevin Drumm. Rehberg zou zichzelf niet zijn natuurlijk als die drie stukken netjes achter de stukken van 'Get Out' zouden komen te staan. Twee ervan wel, eentje heeft hij gewoon tussen de andere titelloze stukken gegooid. Niet dat het, voor onze oren toch, veel verschil maakt. Echte songs staan er op dit plaatje toch niet. De nummers spelen met toonhoogte en flarden melodie en lopen eigenlijk allemaal gewoon in elkaar over. 'Get Out', de tweede cd die Pita uitbracht (na het debuut 'Seven Tons For Free') is eigenlijk het eerste belangrijke album met laptopmuziek dat uitkwam. De plaat was al jaren niet meer te verkrijgen, maar daar is nu dus verandering in gekomen. Essentiële piepmuziek waar lange slapers aan ontsnappen. Onze huisgenoten krijgen namelijk de kriebels van dit soort intrigerende albums en wij zijn hier de vroege vogel.
'Get Out' von Pita ist ein kleines Meisterwerk der elektronischen Musik. Eine erweiterte Neuauflage ruft uns seine Faszination wieder ins Gedächtnis
Peter Rehberg: in Wien ansässiger Komponist elektronischer Musik, neben Christian Fennesz vielleicht der international bekannteste dort; Mitbetreiber von Mego, 'one of the most important and influential electronic music labels of the last decade' (Edwin Pouncey, The Wire), dass nun nach seinem Ende von 2005 unter dem Namen editionsMego das vorzügliche Repertoire wieder veröffentlicht. Die neueste Kostbarkeit ist das inzwischen zum Klassiker avancierte Album 'Get Out' von Pita selbst. Schon bei der Veröffentlichung 1999 war dieses eine Offenbarung; eine Zerreißprobe zwischen den ausgereizten Polen von An- und Entspannung. 'Get Out' beginnt mit einer Aneinanderreihung von Tonhöhen, welche die Aufnahmefähigkeit des Gehörs auf die Probe stellen und einen Hund artig apportieren lassen. Wer diese drei Minuten Störfunk übersteht, dem wird einerseits Einlass gewährt in die akustische Welt von Pita, der sieht sich andererseits allerdings auch mit den elementaren Fragen der Tonkunst konfrontiert: Was ist eigentlich Musik? Inwiefern verändert die elektronische Manipulation von Klängen die Hörgewohnheiten? Geräusche, Noten, Töne werden in ihre kleinsten, selbständigen Teile zerlegt, ohne vordergründig logischen Zusammenhang, ohne unbedingte innere Kohärenz. Die Klänge sind vom Ort ihres Entstehens entbunden. 'Get Out' ist so ein Aufbegehren gegen jegliche Autorität. Die Kompositionen von Peter Rehberg bleiben immateriell. Die neun Tracks wollen uns anfassen, ohne zu berühren. Es ist, als wolle Pita beweisen, dass die elektronische Musik nun in der Lage sei, unser bisheriges Verständni
THE WIRE, JANUARY 2009
Pateras and Fox make impressive use of a wide range of analogue and digital equipment, inclduing vintage analogue synths, reel-to-reel tape recorders and the inevitable laptop. Bur despite the predominantly high information level, one senses that, five years on from their debut release 'Congulate', the duo are more prepared to take their time and let their material follow its nose instead of bludgeoning it into smithereens. The closing 'Hyperbole' builds impressively through nearly eight minutes with a composerly feel for pacing and dynamics, and its forlorn fadeout leaves the listener clam and curious instead of gasping for breath.
Dan Warburton
eMEGO 093
Angel: Hedonism CD
Patient pronounced dead at scene with head wound resembling prism. Patient to be known as John Doe throughout report. Doe was listening to Angel -Hedonism at time of death; possible cause of death? Hedonism created by sound lab technicians Dirk Dresselhaus and Ilpo Väsiänen over five years ago. First album together.
-Nayt Keane
AQUARIUS RECORDS UPDATE. 26.01.2009
The broken rhythms, grinding textures, and piercing pulses of tracks like "Holding Loose" and "Dropping The Ego" contrast with the more contemplative nature-sounds field recordings heard in the mix towards the end of the album, for a much more varied listen than Kalmukia.
VITAL WEEKLY 654
THE WIRE, DECEMBER 2008
The final two tracks were recorded at Väisänen's cottage in Karttula in northern Finland and represent the rural wing of the album. That said the faint samples of insects, fisheating mosquitos and birds stand no chance against the rising liquid metal wall of electronics which drowns them out. 'Hornet' appears to represent hazy, bucolic quiet but the air of tension it preserves is justified as, at its conclusion. it is strafed by the roar of low flying jet aircraft. Despite the bias in favour of the black and the noise and the metal, this is a powerful collection, crying out to be 'installed' in either country or city.
David Stubbs
BAD ALCHEMY, 11/08
D-SIDE, 11/08
Jean-François Micard
DeMEGO 005
ibitsu: foolproof betters fools bettering foolproof... CD
THE WIRE, JANUARY 2009
David Stubbs
BOOMKAT, 24.11.2008
VITAL WEEKLY 652, 11.11.2008
eMEGO 092
Peter Rehberg: Work For GV 2004-2008 CD
D-SIDE, 10/08
Jean-François Micard
TRAX, 10/08
OL 9/10
OTHER MUSIC UPDATE, 13.11.2008
BOOMKAT NEWSLETTER, 06.11.2008
DUSTED, 03.11.2008
The use of synthesizers on Works would suggest a new direction for Rehberg. That’s not the case, though. Instead, it represents a refinement. The digital glint and finely tuned storm of shrapnel might not be so prominent, but the irreducible logic with which Rehberg constructs his pieces is still present. What’s changed is that he’s distended his vocabulary of jagged chord fragments, stuttering rhythms and knife-edge static, turning it into woozy, indeterminate shapes that are nearly (but not quite) unmoored. “Slow Investigation” is 13 minutes of heavy, stretched-out mass, put through relentless mutation, and pocked with tonal debris. It’s immersive stuff, utterly captivating, and very unstable.
However, there are more than sonic aesthetics to be examined. The content of Vienne’s work is, to say the least, morbid. Jerk takes as its subject matter the murder spree committed by Dean Corll in 1970s Texas. On “ML3,” Dennis Cooper relates a story of extreme domestic violence. Without going into details, it’s deeply unsettling, more disturbing than any of the sonics on the album, and makes one question why you’re listening to it. Cooper’s other texts here (the perverse relationship described on “ML6” and the bleak imagery on “Black Holes”) are just as disheartening, if not as harsh. Not having seen Vienne’s works, I can only imagine, based on photos and descriptions, their effect. Based around the (non)interaction of music, text, movement and puppetry, they seem to depict a world where nothing is safe, not even one’s body, and especially not one’s relationships.
Rehberg, and by extension Editions Mego, specializes in this discontent. It is present throughout his catalog as a barely concealed menace, a sense of violence lurking everywhere. Even the flickering theme of “Boxes & Angels,” seemingly lifted from some early-’90s acid-house track, can’t escape the desolation. For 11 minutes, it perseveres as Rehberg filters it again and again, compressing it and decompressing it, each pass violating it just a little bit more. It’s a subtle violation, but a violation nonetheless.
A society with this kind of subtext is not a healthy one, and art that would ignore it could be seen as dishonest. The works of Vienne and the music of Peter Rehberg, then, are very honest, and are not meant to entertain us; they are meant to challenge us. If you walk away unmoved, or undisturbed, then something is not right with you.
Matthew Wuethrich
IMPOSE, 29/10/2008
Several of the tracks feature extracts from Dennis Cooper’s libretti, read by the writer himself. Divorced from their contexts, the passages are subsumed by the music–rendered abstract, Cooper’s deadpan enunciations an instrumental foil to the HD of Rehberg’s sound design. Yet they also root the music in the real world and impose material significance on it. The incendiary, distorted drone that erupts from the narration on “ML6″ becomes the expression of the violence of Cooper’s text, its whoosh and grind an extension of the fragmented tale of treachery.
The highlights of the record though are without doubt textless pieces. The awkward, measured synth melody of “Slow Investigation,” with its microtonal shifts somehow joining the dots between Vangelis and Harry Partch, breaking into processed harpsichord and abstract glitch crackle then floating a cloud of melancholic chords over the top, gilded with high-frequency shimmer. Or the sinister intricacies of “Murder Version,” which mixes gongs, bells and lo-end rumble with whistling and mechanical ticking, embedding you in the mechanism of a giant clock. The highlight of highlights is “Boxes Of Angels,” which sweeps a dappled, air-combed pad of heartbreaking harmony through filter vortices, wrapping itself around you like a warm wind and bearing you to the heavens.
The material on this record is more than capable of standing on its own two feet, without Vienne’s productions to prop it up. It is testament not only to the aesthetic unity of Peter Rehberg’s music, but that of his label Editions Mego, which has gone from releasing glitch electronica in its early days, through to the heavy drone of KTL (Rehberg’s duo with Stephen O’Malley) and recent noise releases by Kevin Drumm and Prurient. Work For GV 2000-2004 is tantamount to a demonstration of the consistency of these disparate sounds with each other.
Nick Richardson
FOXYDIGITALIS, 29/10/2008
The short introductory piece on here, "Murder Vision" is a version of a track previously released by Jonathan Capdevielle and Catherine Robbe-Grillet, and it is intended as a tribute to Alain Robbe-Grillet's film "Glissements Progressifs Du Plaisir". And indeed: This release shares one major weakness with the work of the French nouveau realiste, whose literary work I greatly admire. While criticizing bourgeois culture, both Robbe-Grillet and Rehberg/Vienne risk falling prey to their own subject matter: Vienne's puppetry and Rehberg's (subdued) electronic noise are operating within the same cultural framework that they try to unmask.
Back to the music, which is atmospheric and suggestive enough for home listening. This cd presents a selection of Rehberg's work for Vienne's "I Apologize" (2004), "Une Belle Enfant Blonde" (2005), and "Jerk" (2008). It doesn't come as a surprise that the tracks are mostly cinematic. Narrative elements exist, but are only sparsely put to use. Together, the eight tracks cover a wide array of atmospheres: The pieces for "Une Belle Enfant Blonde", including the 13-minute "Slow Investigation", bathe in forlorn synth meanderings, whereas Rehberg's work for "I Apologize" is much more harsh, and in the case of "ML6" bears more than a passing resemblance to his signature track "#3" of his own "Get Out" album. "Black Holes", another track for Vienne's 2004 project, is a sombre meditation of guilt and angst, based on an insisting percussive pattern that is not characteristic of Rehberg at all.
It's fascinating to realize how electronic music, puppetry, literature, theatre and dance come together in the projects documented here. But no matter how well some of these tracks work, one wishes to experience the real thing, the original theatrical production. This should have been a DVD. 7/10
Jan-Arne Sohns
THE GAP, 10/08
Martin Mühl
THE WIRE, OCTOBER 2008
Since Peter Rehberg relaunched Mego as Editions Mego in late 2005, the label's focus has incrementally shifted from the multiple variants of laptop electronica which brought it justifiable renown in the late 90s and early noughties, towards the frequently overlapping spheres of noise, Industrial, Doom Metal and improvised electronics. Mego is indelibly associated with Fennesz, General Magic and Farmers Manual. Editions Mego favours Kevin Drumm & Daniel Menche, Prurient and KTL
With this rebranding has come a detectable if less obvious shift in Rehberg's solo recordings, most of which are released under the moniker Pita. A cursory comparison between the crystaline textures of his 1996 debut 'Seven Tons For Free' and the murky, recondite sonics of the most recent Pita release, 2007's 'A Bas La Culture Marchande!', tracks Rehberg's evolution. Where the music of Fennesz, his nominal contemporary, has plainly atrophied with time - witness the depthless confections of 'Venice' and his woefully banal collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto - Rehberg has sharpened his focus, discarding the date-stamped glitches associated with his earlier solo material. As the ferocious barrages of his '(One) Snow Mud Rain' duo with Marcus Schmickler make clear, Rehberg has amplified the complexity of his music, whilst freely varying it's density and retaining its inherent volatility.
Rehberg's collaborations further make this case. Six or seven years ago he was working in a glitch-heavy duo with Ramon Bauer and a laptop trio with Fennesz and Jim O'Rourke. These days he collaborates with Stephen O'Malley of SunnO))) in KTL, and has just released a duo with Z'EV.
There's also his soundtrack work, most it commissioned by French choreographer and pupeteer Gisèle Vienne: there's some distance between the leaden narcotic assault of KTL (a duo originally convened to soundtrack Vienne's 'Kindertotenlieder') and the soundtracks Rehberg recorded as DACM for her dance pieces 'Showroom Dummies' and 'Stéréotypie'.
Since 2004, Rehberg has used his own name for his soundtrack work and for group collaborations - 2005's 'Fremdkörper', produced for a work by choreographer Chris Haring, and a couple of one-off group reocordings in the electroacoustic Improv vein. 'Works For GV 2004-2008' compiles material he generated for three Gisèle Vienne productions: 'I Apologize' (2004), 'Une Belle Enfant Blonde' (2005) and 'Jerk' (2008). Rehberg's most diverse and surprising album, it documents him developing the vernacular of the Pita 'Get Out/Get Down/Get Off' trilogy, forcing it to cope with new surroundings and to bend to the dictates of different artforms, shedding unnecessary or outmoded sounds along the way. The range of registers that results illustrates both the elasticity of Rehberg's vocabulary and his ability to adapt it to a broad range of contexts.
Like Vienne's 'Kindertotenlieder', each of the three productions employ texts written by Dennis Cooper, whose novels' numb, fractured narratives relocate the concerns of Georges Bataille and Jena Genet to a suburban American dystopia populated by irreparably damaged, thrill-seeking teens, affectlessly abusing substances and each other. Cooper recites his texts on three of the four 'I Apologize' tracks in a monotone blanched of emotion, his deadpan delivery clashing with the exrtemity of the texts, generating a jangling tension which Rehberg subtly grooms. 'ML6' is a horrific murder narrative which Rehberg follows with a crushingly intense yet intricately detailed noise barrage, as though trying to expunge malevolent thoughts. On 'Black Holes' he meshes rebounding percussive loops with swarms of high pitches, dropping in a startlingly propulsive rhythm before cutting to a spectral Cooper mediation.
Rehberg's discreet hum on 'ML3' foregrounds Cooper's text, a manipulative junkie hustler's neurotic spiel whose self-nullifying conclusion is met with a sucker-punch detonation. The mood shifts abruptly with the fourth, 'Angels And Boxes', the album's biggest ear-opener. Near-anthems have sporadically infiltrated Rehberg's albums - recall 'Get Out's third track and 'Get Off's 'Like Watching Shit On A Shelf' - but neither approaches this. a syncopated phase pattern worked into a throbbing rhythmic anti-mantra which bleeds delayed gratification and half-remembered Techno euphoria.
'Une Belle Enfant Blonde', an exploration of 'the relationship between natural and artificial bodies and the idea of disturbing strangeness' (the cover artwork depicts macabre half-human mannequins, decorously avoiding the listeners gaze), is represented by two signature Pita snippets - the bristling electronic surfaces of 'Murder Version' and the ethereal drone of 'Pia' - seperated by another surprise, 14 atypically dreamy minutes of 'Slow Investigation', which nervily doodles morose synthesizer chords, swaddling them in a fog of reverb before worrying blurred melodic loops and high-pitched chimes into a swooning, limpid drift whose lack of edge is itself unsettling. The sole excerpt from 'Jerk', which uses puppetry to tell the story of Dean Coril, a serial killer who murdered more than 20 boys in Texas in the early 70s, is five minutes of 'Final Jerk', which repurposes 'Get Down's 'Acid Udon', shrouding its squalling theme with an eerie perquel.
The linkage offers a discreet reminder that Rehberg's recent solo work develops the language of his earlier solo recordings in a logical and consistent fashion. 'Works For GV 2004-2008' could easily have been a disparate grab-bag of unrelated recordings. That it coheres so strongly is testament to the depth and flexibility of Rehberg's vocabulary and the unerring precision with he applies it, as well as his refusal to allow his music to stagnate. It cements Rehberg's posistion as one of the most perceptive and mercurial sound artists at work today.
Nick Cain
DeMEGO 004
Z'EV vs PITA: Colchester CD
Torsten Schäfer
THE WIRE, SEPTEMBER 2008
The fiendish multi-instrumentalist density of 'Spirit Transform Me', z'ev's kabbalistic envisionings with Oren Ambarchi for Tzadik, is also eschewed for a 'straight' duet between laptop and percussive armoury. 'Colchester' is the product of several months' worth of fileswapping and a series of dates in Vienna and around the UK. As such it has the looseness of something fundamentally live and extemporaneous, but with the complexity of dialogue you find in a long-running conversation between familiar friends.
It's some ten minutes before z'ev make his presence distinclty felt. 'Colchester' begins with off kilter foghorning that's quickly filtered into a more elaborate kind of atmospheric wrongness. Frequencies loom up like watery leviathans, before gongs and plate metal textures thicken the sound. Both Pita and z'ev set up and play on a kind of middle ground: gongs and junk instruments, struck with mallets, can stretched from the sharp retort of 'percussion' into a dense timbral blur, and Pita manipulates sounds into a consonant metallic drone.
Dynamically, 'Colchester' unfolds like a roiling, eddying weather system; a trope which may be a little worn in relation to this kind of noise, but one z'ev has resorted to himself , in scorning reference to a journalist who'd called his work violent: "He's probably someone who cowers during a thunderstorm."
Sam Davies
PNG, August 2008
André
SPEX, AUGUST 2008
Rehberg kommt gerade recht frisch aus der Zusammenarbeit mit Stephen O'Malley, mit dem er das Projekt »Kindertotenlieder« (kurz: KTL) von Schriftsteller Dennis Cooper instrumentierte. Während KTL jedoch musikalisch hinter den hohen Erwartungen immer ein wenig zurückblieben, gelingt Pita mit »Colchester« (EditionsMego) nun ein Album, das man stilistisch ebenfalls als ðdüsterÐ beschreiben könnte, wenn man sich denn mit solch kurz gegriffenen Attributen zufrieden geben möchte. Was das vorliegende Material vorantreibt, ist das nach wie vor vollkommen außergewöhnliche Geschick von z'ev, fast alleine mit den Mitteln der Percussion eine bedrohliche Stimmung zu schaffen, deren Kern sich bei aller Deutlichkeit nur sehr schwer greifen lassen will. Auf die Spitze getrieben wird dieser Effekt auf der vorliegenden Aufnahme durch die Tatsache, dass es in der Wahrnehmung schwierig ist, den scheppernden bis rumpelnden Einsatz der Becken und sonstigen Instrumente vom klanglichen Drumherum zu trennen. Diese oftmals diffuse elektronische Ummantelung scheint sich zudem zu einem großen Teil aus Hall zu produzieren, was der Musik eine äußerlich dumpfe, geradezu gespenstische Fülle verleiht.
Den beiden Urgesteinen gelingt es zudem, diesen einnehmenden Charakter durchzusetzen, ohne jemals überhaupt auf die wirklich aufbrausenden Eigenschaften von Noise zurückzugreifen, die jeder von beiden nach Belieben hätte abrufen können. »Colchester« bleibt jederzeit einem behäbigen Tempo verhaftet, das letztendlich eine ungemeine Kraft entfaltet. Hier liegt die zweifellos vorhandene Brutalität dieser Aufnahme begründet: in der ätzenden Monotonie der dargebotenen Stimmung, in der gleichbleibenden, verlockenden Kargheit der musikalischen Motive. Nach 36 Minuten ist der Spuk vorüber, und z'ev vs. Pita hinterlassen das große Fragezeichen, das augenscheinlich unfokussierte Musik dieser Sorte so inspirierend machen kann: Was war das? Wo kommt das her? Und warum klingt etwas, das sich gerade in der unmittelbaren Erfahrung so schwierig einordnen lässt, überhaupt so attraktiv? Angemessenerweise endet »Colchester« vollkommen abrupt.
Kai Ginke
eMEGO 091
Prurient: Arrowhead CD
Originally recorded in 2004, Arrowhead consists of three squelch-and-sustain tracks built by high-pitched microphone feedback, challenged only by spasms of drumming and the mutilated screams of Prurient mastermind Dominick Fernow. He infamously employed a similar approach-- a thin, powerful shriek of feedback that slowly warps and expands until it blooms into a boundless abyss-- on "Roman Shower", the brazen first track from his 2005 Load Records debut, Black Vase. Though exceptions abound, much of Fernow's recent output has been more "song"-oriented, meaning only that the settings have generally been shorter and less of a standstill (see the excellent Pleasure Ground or the second side of Adam Tied to a Stone).
In that historical setting, Arrowhead-- recorded the same year and in the same city as "Roman Shower"-- links many of the facets of Prurient's sound. In the first two tracks, Fernow gradually intensifies sinister, relentless rays until, like "Roman Shower", they become pained, bloody wastelands. The third and shortest track lunges forward, slowly becoming caked in static and sliced by feedback similar to that heard during the first 27 minutes. All the sounds smear, wiping across the speakers like a grimy, gory mess. Imagine Daniel Menche pushing the Fuck Buttons on speed, for four minutes, and you get the point. Together, these tracks-- "Sternum", "Ribcage", and "Lungs"-- show us where Prurient had been in 2004 and where he was delightfully going.
If this release serves as an introduction to Prurient, it'll be a trial by fire, but one well worth the burns. Sure, you'll find noise "bigger" than this, but you'll find little that's so dramatic and masterful. Listen for the control Fernow wields over his electronics as he grapples with the tone, letting it slide into chaos only to bring it back under his hand. There's a violent, lacerating ebb-and-flow to this work that's as nauseating as it is enrapturing.
Both in his Manhattan record store, Hospital Productions, and through his record label of the same name, Fernow peddles the most extreme black metal, a genre that-- at its best-- delivers an idea without apology and with exhaustion. Prurient sounds little like black metal here (with its drowned vocals and saturated, tidal murk, Cocaine Death-- another excellent 2008 release from Fernow-- does; and he's in a black metal band, Ash Pool), but Arrowhead functions in much the same way: Its stylized, specific, and unflinching sound roars with a singular menace, at once terrifying and captivating. These performances sound like the sorts of pieces that happen when every ounce of trouble the performer has gets sweated, bled, and screamed into the cutting room floor. Re-reading that sentence, I'm afraid I've made Prurient's searing power-electronics sound, well, emo. And I suppose, in the end, it is. But for 31 minutes, Arrowhead should keep you too fixated (or, as it were, repulsed) to care.
Grayson Currin
EXCLAIM, 06.11.2008
Eric Hill
ALL MUSIC GUIDE, 26.09.2008
François Couture
PREFIX MAG, 03.09.2008
Made up of three tracks and clocking in at just over a half hour, Arrowhead is, much like Prurient's other releases, an ultra-concentrated blast of high-frequency feedback, gurgling screams and ominous percussion. The fact that the album is released on Peter Rehberg's Vienna-based Editions Mego label seems to confirm what many listeners already suspect: that there is something oddly refined and suggestive about Dominick Fernow’s music that sets it slightly apart from the straight-up terror antics of units like Hair Police and Wolf Eyes.
From the first two minutes of piercing mike feedback, Arrowhead sets a measured tone that never goes for all-out, hysterical assault. Fernow's focus is on implication and concentration, leaving behind the graphic lyrical imagery of his clearest influence, the English power-electronics group Whitehouse, but preserving their unyielding hardness and their S&M aesthetic.
Beginning with "Sternum" and progressing through "Ribcage" and "Lungs," the album gradually gains distortion, thickening across the audible spectrum as it progresses. The range of frequencies and textures explored on Arrowhead, and particularly on "Ribcage," draw a link, appropriately enough, with Rehberg's work as Pita, in particular his path-breaking Get Out album, recently reissued Editions Mego. Arrowhead represents a kind of conscious step forward for Fernow: Although it lacks the thematic consistency that Pita flirts with, its focus on process over sheer power comes closer to narrative than he has in the past.This is unusual in a scene that is generally hostile to both rock and avant-garde expectations of progress. Surprising, too, given that the basic tracks were recorded in 2004, when -- thanks to Thurston Moore’s championing Wolf Eyes, Magik Markers, et al. -- extreme music seemed like it might have some slight commercial potential.
Listening to the album, I was struck by how little gestural content it has: Fernow is known for his frenetic, mike-jabbing live performances, but it’s very difficult to attach the sounds from the album to any sort of physical movement. Feedback modulates up and down unexpectedly, sometimes frothing, sometimes not, and the percussion that punctures “Sternum” and “Lungs” constantly subverts its own momentum instead of resolving into a propulsive rhythm. Even Fernow’s howls are buried under a thick patina.
The recording as a whole is crystal-clear -- as far as noise records go -- and the album’s sense of micro-dynamics are often riveting. Coming out on the other side of Arrowhead, I felt as taxed emotionally and physically as if I’d sat through a three-hour-long Tarkovsky movie: Unsettling and unexpectedly ravishing in equal measure, Prurient’s latest is as accomplished an album as his followers have come to expect.
Brandon Bussolini
FOXY DIGITALIS, 03.09.2008
Arrowhead opens with ‘Sternum’, a twelve-minute epic of unnerving feedback over heavily restrained primal percussion. At halfway the track disintegrates with asthmatic vocals that cry out in whooping coughs. There is no where to hide making this is on of the most unforgiving listens you are likely to hear. It sits well on Peter Rehberg’s Editions Mego label, continuing the exploration into the uncomfortable side of noise and experimental electronic music.
Ribcage has a rougher sound, intricately distorted with cut-glass precision. Screaming annihilation adds a secondary level to the direct focus of terrorised noise. Towards the last five minutes clearer and more crystalline sounds are pitched and interwoven with decayed distortion. By the fourteenth minute, one begins to feel agitated, frustrated and hot, as the frequency induces repulsion and anger.
Lungs rounds things of with a wheezy exhalation that gains momentum with a deeper noise pallet reminiscent of KK Null. Harrowing wind blasts through the microphone as if one is travelling at an incredible speed. With all its aggression, the final track arrives as a partial relief from the harrowing noise of the first two. A recommended listen for those able to endure the painful side of noise, but approach with due care if the sound of finger nails against a blackboard make you wince. 7/10
Peter Taylor
DUSTED, 02.09.2008
Musically and symbolically, there is very little subtlety in what Fernow does. The titles are blunt metaphors outlining sudden violence: the Arrowhead of the album title piercing first the “Sternum,” then the “Ribcage” and finally, the “Lungs.” The first consists of a pure feedback tone, its relentless thrust broken only by a tumbling drum kit. On the second, the laser of feedback slices its way through howling, static-choked scuzz. Lost somewhere in the mix is the voice of a man. The visceral stomp of the final track compacts these ideas into a dense four minutes, the tempo accelerated, the feedback and static bound up into a potent bundle, the drums throbbing out a pulse. The contrast between this final blow and the rest of the album suggests some kind of transformation. But from what and into what aren’t clear. No more specific narrative suggests itself.
At 30 minutes, Arrowhead is concise in its aggressiveness, and the high frequencies stay just below the pain threshold (provided that the volume is kept at a modest level). In a live setting, this approach can become close to unbearable. On record, however, it produces a nauseating thrill, the same sickening rush one has in the aftermath of that spinning rotor ride at carnivals where the floor drops out and you stick to the wall. A dull ache in your head, your stomach slightly queasy, the world titled off its equilibrium, and two questions, hanging in the air, remain: “Why did I do that?” and “Would I do it again?” Asking these questions releases hungry ghosts in the psyche – vulnerability, embarrassment, paranoia, fear – emotions that provoke the most introspection.
The in-the-moment experience of Fernow’s music is all physical; the aftershock is almost all intellectual, the specifics of the apparent transformation provided entirely by the listener, who is left standing not so much accused as self-implicated. The assault – and that’s the best word for something that is so aggressive and so calculated – is not outward but inward. “I want to die with you,” Fernow groans at one point (italics mine). Fernow shoving the mic down his throat is not the same as if he’s doing it to the listener, because as listeners we choose to subject ourselves to his gestures – it’s as if we do the shoving to ourselves. So Fernow’s act becomes, perversely, a compassionate one. He understands very well the discomfort his music produces, and he understands the urge to resist that recoil, to stare the pain down and see what it can show.
Matthew Wuethrich
ROCK-A-ROLLA, 09.2008
Scott McKeating
BRAINWASHED, 31.08.2008
This particularly applies to the first track, “Sternum,” a stripped down nerve-shredding 12–minute dive into the night-black depths. Simply composed of squealing and humming electronics (but set at a low volume), sparse percussion and vocals that bleed anguish, it nevertheless touches nerves with its unaffected directness. The simple lyrical refrain of ‘I want to die with you’ does an effective job of exposing the horror of a personal hell of frustration and despair. Inwardly spiralling psychoses and mental phantasms assail from all sides, and whatever sliver of sanity or normality was there is finally eroded away. The deterioration and degradation is palpable. This is emotional despair and a mind at the end of its tether at its absolute rawest. Combined with that insistent insectoid squeal it drills itself right into the brain and sets the teeth on edge.
If “Sternum” is pain and anguish, then “Ribcage,” the second track, is about the aftermath, the eventual mental dissolution and destruction: a cacophonic maelstrom of screeching electronics and feedback, interspersed with screams; the swirling chaotic randomness portrays a mind breaking down into incoherent atomisation. This is what it must feel like to descend into the depths of the long night of the soul, or to stand on the threshold between safety on the one side and a bottomless chasm on the other. There comes a point where the track quietens down a degree or two, a place perhaps where that threshold exists, and one almost gets the feeling that all is not quite lost here. Any such illusion is soon shattered, as the track once more breaks out into a storm of noisiness. The only way is down into the illimitable and lightless subterranean depths.
The last track, “Lungs,” is a bit of a departure from the other two pieces, principally because it introduces the notion of rhythm. Rhythm is all the more surprising because of its complete absence anywhere else on here. However, extending what I have said above, I guess it makes a species of sense in its own way. I can imagine, after having plumbed the utmost deeps and having reached a kind of equilibrium, that the mind gets wrapped up in a mental inferno of its own making. Carpeting the primitive tribal rhythm is a thick layer of granular sheeting which is entirely descriptive of the furnace roar. Indeed, a self-created (and self-perpetuated) hellish purgatory.
Noise and power electronics only hold my attention if the artist has an approach that takes him/her off the well-trodden path. Fernow, while using the tools and palette of the genre, manages somehow to at least bend the material to do his bidding, and to attempt to say something new. For the most part I feel he amply succeeds, and listening to this was a welcome change to the Spinal Tap-style ‘turn everything to 11 and record what comes out the other end’ typical of the genre. In the course of writing about Arrowhead I must have heard it about a half-dozen times, and in every instance there was some new subtlety that revealed itself. Prurient is definitely one of the more creative of noise musicians, unwilling to blindly tread the same path as others do. On this example at least Fernow shows what can actually be done with noise, with a little thought and some creativity and talent.
Simon Marshall-Jones
SONIC SEDUCER, 09/08
Sascha Bertoncin
THE WIRE, SEPTEMBER 2008
Fernow wields feefback as weaponary, but he's also well aware that purity and simplicity are the most effective means to psychological disturbance. As 'Sternum' slowly unfurls, piercing feedback scours your eardrum; it's somehow simultaneously bracing and suggestive, Fernow using barely wavering light beams of noise to suggest entire architectural designs, the feedback carving out space witihin the composition. Yet the feedback's claustophobic closeness to the limits of your hearing lends it real, corporeal impact. Where noise sometimes goes nowhere, its apathetic walls of violence aim at 'abrasion for abrasion's sake': the feedback of 'Sternum' is eerie, and combined with Kris Lapke's drums, echoes ritual pacing.
The wrecked screams of the following 'Ribcage' are comparatively gauche at first, but their interaction with instability of distressed and overloading mics and amplifiers ultimately renders them thrilling, as though his throat is fused ot circuitry. Here, Fernow's body is a conduit both for and of electricity - naming 'Arrowhead's three pieces after body parts suggests that's how Fernow would have it too.
Jon Dale
WESTZEIT, 08/08
Karsten Zimalla
SPEX, 23.007.2008
Fernow evoziert einen rohen Minimalismus, indem er ausschließlich Mikrofon-Feedbacks, Perkussionsinstrumente und seine Stimme benutzt. Das Eingangsstück »Sternum« versinnbildlicht dieses klangliche Wagnis und unterzieht den Begriff ðHören mit SchmerzenÐ einer radikalen Revision. Prurients Musik wird zu einem qualvollen Hörerlebnis, hervorgerufen durch einen statischen Feedback-Sound, der von zufälligen rhythmischen Schlägen durchkreuzt wird. Hinzu kommen Fernows Vocals, die mal beklemmend flüstern und im zweiten Stück »Ribcage« in voller Intensität gegen die mittlerweile chaotisch aufbrausenden Feedback-Stürme anschreien - ein unzähmbares Kräftespiel, das der asketischen Klanglichkeit des Openers diametral entgegensteht. Im letzten Teil »Lungs« verschieben sich dann die musikalischen Koordinaten. Die Rhythmik gewinnt - obgleich ihrer metrischen Verunreinigen - eine konstante Form und wird augenblicklich von einer rauschenden Lärmschicht eingedeckt, die alsbald das gesamte Geschehen dominiert und die Platte abrupt beendet.
Interessant ist festzustellen, dass alle drei Stücke auf der archaischen Gewalt der Rückkoppelung basieren, die in jeweils unterschiedlichen klanglichen Ausprägungen erscheint und sowieso ein zentrales Moment in Fernows Œuvre darstellt - sie repräsentiert eine akustische Flagellation.
Raphael Smarzoch
HAIR ENTERTAINMENT, 15.07.2008
SPEX, AUGUST 2008
Kai Ginke
OCTOPUS, 13.07.2008
Fabrice Vanoverberg
eMEGO 013
Russell Haswell: Second Live Salvage 2x12" vinyl
As a recording, it refuses fidelity and settles for a rawer, more honest approach. But not necessarily honest in the sense of let all the warts show – honest in that Haswell acknowledges these pieces as past, exposing them to the degradation and mutation inherent in memory and history. The six live performances here are also entirely improvised, but Haswell himself hasn’t let the past be, making their audio verité surface an illusion.
Any nod to meaning outside of the physical nature of the sounds is also denied. Each piece is identified only with overly specific running times, the year of recording, venue name and city (“16:02.84, 2002, Schirn Künsthalle, Frankfurt”). To highlight the visceral nature of this music, Haswell has taken music produced digitally and released it in analogue form only – the official album is vinyl only, while the promo copy is a cassette.
But refusal is not the heart of the project. Second Live Salvage refuses so much that the question of what it’s for becomes inevitable, and forces a transformation on the music that is as palpable as it is powerful: from live recording to a priori composition; from digitally generated performance to analogue object; from unmarked sonic sculpture to a flood of liquid metaphor.
Attention to the album’s seeming indifference to fidelity and any usual notion of sound quality reveals its most provocative layer. Music is ugly, it says, And technology lies. Upon realizing this, all the issues mentioned previously fall away, and the record becomes a conflagration of metaphors: of the evolution of computer technology from an esoteric science to a populist tool, of the loss of communication when information becomes a glut, of society in collapse.
Even the crowd noise takes on new meaning. This is, remember, a salvage of times past, not a document of what happened. In Kita Kyushu, the meager applause at the end is laughable, and turns acidly ironic. In Brighton, the audience chatter competes with Haswell’s roar, another stream of information to try and assimilate. We hear one man yell: “My ears are bleeding. I love it!” For him the experience was physical, for us it’s something other. If not intellectual, then at least cerebral, something that, even as it denies reality, forces us to let the real world in, with its vast imperfection and messiness. Ultimately, Second Live Salvage becomes art that contains what composer Iannis Xenakis said all good art does: “truth immediate, rare, enormous, and perfect.”
Matthew Wuethrich
D-SIDE, 07/08
Jean-François Micard
VOLANIC TONGUE NEWS, 28/06/2008
BOOMKAT NEWSLETTER 27/06/2008
THE WIRE, JULY 2008
Haswell insists that, rather being a deliberate conceptual strategy, his notion of salvage arises out of more prosaic realities - he didn't have the proper recording eqiupment at the time, or was too busy preparing and performing the music to arrange for it to be recorded professionally. Nonetheless, by ceding authorial control in this way, Haswell gives the album a conceptual context, addressing it by default to issues of representation: his salvages become subjective thirdhand reconstructions of imperfect secondhand representations. His emphasis on the method of production is by default a form of process music.
Haswell's focus on process is echoed in his use of technology. As he explains in his liner notes, all the recordings 'document my attempt at filling space with something physical and intense using Computer Music softwares as my only tool'. Haswell is very particular about what he does and doesn't classify as computer music software. He favours GENDYN stochastic software pioneered by Iannis Xenakis, which he uses alongside specialised, academically developed programs, eschewing mass market applications. His liner notes list software used to create each track, and by doing so highlight the contrast which underpins the album - between the sophistication of the tehcnology Haswell used during the performances, and the compromised quality of the recordings which represent them.
Haswell uses the software as a tool for real-time improvisation, and both his solo albums illustrate his finely calibrated noise sensibility. 'Second Live Salvage', however, focuese more exclusively on the kinds of sound relationships one associates with the vocabulary of computer music and its attendant idioms. '10:53.82, 2002, Färgfabriken, Stockholm' is an exercise in oscillation of tones, multiplied and amplified to gale force levels. '08:12.14, 2000, Engine Rooms, Brighton' illustrate Haswell's trademark rapid shredding and recombination of sounds, producing probing swarms which abrade each other in erratic, pulsing rhythms.
The textures which reult are finely serrated, seething with granular detail and pockmarked with flurries of pitch manipulation. '05:08.62, 2006, Point Éphémère, Paris' even ends with spiralling, solarised frequency, the closest Haswell has ever come to good old fashioned ring modualtion. The album concludes with a suitably oversaturated collaboration with Incapacitants' Toshiji Mikawa, but 'Live Salvage's debt to Japanese noise has mostly worked off. Where 'Live Salvage' documented gigs in small, packed venues, its successor's performances took place in larger, emptier spaces. Consequently the sound is thinner and more fibrous, concentrated within a narrower dynanmic bandwidth, with less mid-range density.
Interviewed in The Wire 285, Haswell explained that his music is in part a search for extremities of sound, motivated by the deisre to provide its listeners wiht new exepriences. '16:02.84, 2002, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt' gets closest to realising this goal, kneading jagged fragments into oppresive stuttering percussive patterns, an impressively unpleasant barrage. But to frame the music in this context locks the interpretative experience is a closed loop, as well as obsuring Haswell's abilty as an improvisor. He is undoubtedly aware of the pitfalls of such a mindset, though his liner notes he does describe a couple of tracks as 'chaotic-noise-generation', which is true, in a strictly literal sense. But if 'Second Live Salvage' is to be thought of as noise, then its a dissenting variant, one which allies Haswell with the mercurial, restless spirits lurking at the genre's fringes: Kevin Drumm, Joe Colley, Lasse Marhaug, John Wiese.
The album is more accurately considered alongside two of 2007's most potent (and overlooked) recordings, Marcus Schmickler's 'Altars Of Science' and his collaboration with Peter Rehberg as R/S, '(One) Snow Mud Rain'. Like 'Second Live Salvage' both endevavour to transplant computer music from its culturally stratified academic ghetto into a new, less stable context. Equally strong parallels can be drawn with volatile experiments which light up computer music's early period of development: James Tenney's early 60s digital synthesis software compositions, mid-60s to early 70s Pietro Grossi works like 'Collage' and 'Computer Music', and Gottfried Michael Koenig's 'Klangfiguren II' and his abrasively brilliant late 60s 'Funktionen' works. Haswell shares with them an idealistic yet singleminded sense of exploration and an unfettered determination to explore the limits of computer software, as well as a penchant for using software to produce raw sound.
In Haswell's case the sound quality is at least partially due to the comprimised nature of the recordings he is working with. Because their fidelity fails to fully convey the level of detail and information Haswell is working with, 'Second Live Salvage' can only yield clues to his real abilities. He's currently working on a large scale studio construction, which should offer a more accurate representation. Regardless, viewed as a document of a process rather than a polished, finished product, 'Second Live Salvage' is an impressive piece of work.
OX, JUNE 2008
Carsten Vollmer
SPEX, JUNE 2008
Kai Ginkel
eMEGO 029
Pita: Get Out CD
It's great to be reminded how pioneering musical efforts always come with a programmatic element, particularly if they dosn't only reformulate musical codes but employ new technology as well, potentially changing the way we look at technology. That's why the production of the album is called "Initial file management" in the booklet, which also includes liner notes by David Keenan.
In true machine music manner, the tracks are all untitled. While a lot of the tracks here sound like sketches or parts of a laptop diary to me, the eleven-minute epic track # 3 toys with our conceptions of the sublime and is worth the price of admission alone. This anthem is pure computerized romanticism: After 90 seconds of shimmering synth sunshine, malicious distortion tears all harmony apart, only to turn out to be, well, some sort of hookline that won't go away for the next ten minutes and is so brutally beautiful that it has to be heard to be believed. With its dramatic build-up and the gradual decomposition of layers towards the end, "#3" single-handedly spelled out the formula of epic tracks that artists like Machinefabriek, Nadja, Ben Frost and others rely so heavily on. Add KTL to that list, Rehberg's own collaboration with SunnO)))'s Stephen O'Malley.
"Get Out" has been out of print for more than five years. It has been remastered for this rerelease, which also includes three tracks from the Pita / Kevin Drumm 2000 split ep. Quite uneven as an album, but a must-have of sorts. 7/10
Jan-Arne Sohns
OX, 08/08
HAIR ENTERTAINMENT, 15.07.2008
ROCK A ROLLA, MAY 2008
John S.
ROCKERILLE, APRIL 2008
Michele Casella
TRACKMARX, 14.04,.2008
Jean Encoule
FAILME. 17.05.2008
'3' is the track that you'll remember this album for: the jarring introduction of uplifting, almost euphoric strings that slowly descend into overdriven distortion still sounds great. '6' is gigabit data passing through an echo chamber, '9' takes harsh source material and moulds it into hypnotic drone. The three extra new tracks which previously appeared over a split release with Kevin Drumm extend the scope of the original work with distinctive, thematic excursions: feminine glitch ('ce3'), unreliable connections ('pe2') and distressed radio frequencies ('tr1')
Sheikh Ahmed
GONZO CIRCUS, 02.06.2008
GOON, 27.05.2008