Carlos Giffoni - Evidence

It's still possible in this age of social networking, music blogging and near ubiquitous internet access for good records to get lost in the usual weekly deluge of new releases. After carrying out some digital housekeeping last week, I came across this two track offering from No Fun Productions boss Carlos Giffoni sitting on my hard drive and was surprised that it was even there. I have a much played copy of his last full length offering, Severence from 2010 (which is fantastic incidentally) but couldn't for the life of me remember picking this one up. I duly added it into my iTunes library and hit play…

First track 'Evidence' starts with a beautiful, mournful piano line (courtesy of Laurel Halo as it turns out). For a moment I thought I'd playlisted the wrong track, then came the vocal which made me certain this wasn't the right track - an accented monotone voice delivers the lines "It would be so easy, to fall in love with you / But we can't talk to each other any more no, we just can't talk to other any more". This is rapidly followed by an aggressive 303 squiggle and a single 4/4 kick-drum as the voice intones the brief lyric a few more times. Once established, the track plays out against a muted synth line, also the work of Laurel Halo before reprising it's opening piano motif. It's a simple track with just a few components but it works so damn well. This basic precept is repeated on 'Desire in the Summer' but builds itself around a grainy pulse and adds a few, sparse electro drum rolls before descending into a vat of gradually decaying echo.

This release is nothing short of incredible and as far away from Giffoni's signature experiments in noise and abstract laptop manipulation as is humanly possible. I can only hope that he has a few more tracks like these tucked away for an album sometime soon, until then, I suspect these will get some heavy rotation.

12" vinyl and digital download versions are available via Boomkat.

Time Attendant - Tournaments

Paul Snowdon is an artist from Deptford, London who creates beautiful abstract paintings depicting various geometric, cubist forms. He has a blog site which contains images of some of his work which you should go and look at as soon as you have finished reading this article. On his blog, he makes the following statement;

"Heraldic abstract geometric colour deception"

Actually, this isn't so much a statement as one of his "six steps of painting". His final step is determined as follows;

"Cubism Vortism Constructivism Futurism Modernism"

Looking at his work whilst considering these two lines, his words make perfect sense. 

Paul Snowdon is also a musician and the man behind Time Attendant. He has associations with such luminaries as Pye Corner Audio, Moon Wiring Club and Jonny Mugwump whose Exotic Pylon Records has just issued the Tournaments EP.

The four tracks that make up this release contain portions of the following elements in varying degrees;

Rattling electronics and the gurgling wheeze of vintage synthesizers / Tone bursts, tape hiss and other disintegrating audio artefacts / Decaying drones and pulses daubed onto fractured rhythms / Spluttering reverberations bleeding from mouldering tape stock.

If any of the above descriptors mean anything to you, or you have recently enjoyed Nick Edward's Plekzationz album then this EP should be playing in your home/head right now.

Tournaments is available on 12" vinyl (with a bonus track) and digital download via Exotic Pylon Records. Once you've obtained this, you'll also want to check out the Time Attendant Bandcamp page for two earlier releases which are equally indispensable.

Silent Servant - Negative Fascination

The last time we heard anything from John (Juan) Mendez it was with Camella Lobo as part of Tropic of Cancer on a three track EP called Permissions of Love issued via Italy's Mannequin label last month. Prior to this, Mendez released several more singles and EPs as part of this duo in addition to a couple of  twelves as Silent Servant on the now decommissioned Sandwell District imprint. It's hard to believe that this is the first full length solo release that Mendez has worked on since his debut back in 2006 and so my expectations were unusually high after grabbing a copy of the disc.

Noise supremo Dominick Fernow's Hospital Productions seems an odd choice of label to issue this album but, given his recent work under the Vatican Shadow moniker there is some kind of skewed logic behind it I guess. I had spent some time listening to the previous Silent Servant releases as well as Sandwell District's Feed-Forward album in preparation for my initial session with this LP but I needn't have bothered - the approach taken here is from a different set of reference points entirely.

Lead track 'Process (Introduction') is as much about texture as it is rhythm. Synth drones are layered above minimal arpeggios and a voice intones wordlessly in a foreign tongue against ricocheting percussive elements. 'Moral Divide (Endless)' starts off sounding like a muscular take on something from Throbbing Gristle's Twenty Jazz Funk Greats before adding a drifting flute sample to it's trebly beat-box chassis. But it's on 'Temptation & Desire' that Mendez lets his love for post-punk aesthetics run riot by using a blunted drum track and bass guitar rumble as it's backbone whilst more disembodied voices flicker and billow. During the penultimate track 'A Path Eternal', Mendez pulls the beats completely and uses another heavily manipulated voice which is set against a spectral, almost ambient drift. 

After a few spins, there's no mistaking that this is a Silent Servant album but over the course of thirty six minutes, Juan Mendez constantly redesigns his signature sound whilst retaining the basic elements that have made his previous work such compulsive listening.  

Negative Fascination is available as in limited edition vinyl, CD and as a digital download via Boomkat.

Nick Edwards (Ekoplekz) - Plekzationz

Back in the early 1990s, Nick Edwards began writing a blog called Gutterbreakz on which he offered up his opinions on the music which had shaped his life and the new releases that informed his current listening habits. He wrote enthusiastically about what he loved and why, he had no agenda and covered everything from obscure library music LPs to the sounds of the emerging underground. What was special about his writing was that he did it with the passion and conviction of a man who was obsessed with music for music's sake, not as some name-dropping hipster with a vinyl fetish.

I had the pleasure of discovering Ekoplekz after picking up a copy of last year's immense Memowrecks collection which was issued via Mordant Music. It contained thirty three tracks of tape saturated electronic experimentation and was an absolutely gripping listen despite it's almost two hour running time. Since then, there have been several more EPs, a few collaborations and an almighty live/studio double tape set which was released in April 2012.

From the first moment I heard Memowrecks, I was completely hooked. His reference points were upfront and explicit - Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire immediately came to the fore - but his tracks were also informed by early radiophonics and post-punk experimentation as well as dub dynamics. This was an album which easily transcended it's influences whilst retaining that raw, unstable edge inherent in so many nascent sonic offshoots.

Plekzationz is the first release to bear Edward's given name since 1994, his debut being a cassette called Controlled by Voltage Vol. 1 on Volatile Records. The reasoning behind this eighteen year gap is not apparent, nor is it clear if the Ekoplekz moniker has now been retired. There has been some conjecture that this may be an attempt to make a 'serious' statement, even pointing to the cover portrait as some kind of proof. I don't accept this rationale however, a large majority of musicians in this field routinely work under a variety of nom de plumes so why should Edwards be any different? Also, the cover painting isn't an example of simple figurative portraiture designed to cast it's subject in a flattering, media-friendly light. It clearly takes it's cues from Francis Bacon's distorted grotesqueries and creates something which is as unsettling as it is beautiful.

But, this is all empty speculation by people who should be listening to the album instead of searching for meanings behind its presentation. There are no answers to these questions, all we really have is the music and that should be quite enough to be honest.

The first major change I noted is that the album only contains four tracks rather than the more concise pieces which make up the Ekoplekz releases, each of these weighing in at around the quarter hour mark. Secondly, the overall sound of the album is quite breathtaking. After installing some new audio kit in our listening area over the weekend, it came as a bit of a shock that this would prove to be such a great test record for the equipment. Gone is the resolutely lo-fi cassette tape murk and hiss of old, this has been replaced by crystal clarity and a widescreen stereo soundstage. Edwards is obviously using the same vintage machines and broken effects as before but his production values have soared. This is a fantastic sounding record.

First track 'Chance Meets Causality Uptown' bounces a succession of reverberating high frequency tones and pulses around the mix underpinned by a loose bass guitar line which is gradually replaced by caustic drones. 'No Escape From '79' is an apt choice of title as it plots a course through similar dystopian electronic territories charted by Messrs Kirk and Mallinder thirty-odd years ago. After taking a short diversion through a series of loops, the track's coda briefly returns to another rhythm carved from primitive devices and sparse guitar lines. 'Inside The Analog Continuum' is a twisted excursion into lysergic dub effects whilst 'A Pedant's Progress' dispenses with all notions of rhythm and presents itself as a freeform sonic tangle.

This album is without doubt the finest thing that bears Nick Edward's name to date, and with a back catalogue containing such a large amount of high quality material that's some feat. It's a revelatory listen in terms of it's spectral production and the extended track times which clearly suit the nature of these four pieces, allowing them to fully develop in a way that we're unused to. Whichever moniker he chooses to release his music under, this should rightly cement Mr Edward's name amongst the luminaries of electronic music where it rightfully belongs.

Plekzationz is available over at the Editions Mego site as either a double vinyl set, CD or digital download. 

PHORK - Discrepancies

You'd think that finding information about new music in these ultra-connected times would be simplicity itself, especially now most of us have a decent web browser on our smartphones and constant internet connectivity. Occasionally though, a band decides to choose a moniker that wilfully skews our search results to the point which they almost become anonymous - a rare feat in 2012.

After running a few searches in preparation for this piece, I discovered the following available definitions;

PHORK - a flexible, open source PHP 5 framework.

PHORK - a specially constructed piece of cutlery which bends when exposed to body temperature.

PHORK - a branch of physical activity or social practice.

All of these are correct in their own particular context of course, but they are also incorrect. PHORK is actually an acronym for People's Higher Order of Royal Kinship.

The man behind all this search engine confusion is Neal Reinalda who is one of the founder members of an art gallery and studio called Open Space which is located in the Remington neighbourhood of Baltimore City. Discrepancies is his second release this year as PHORK and his first on the always wonderful NNA Tapes.

The tape starts with a mournful drone which floats languidly across a bed of static and various found sounds; rainfall, creaking wood, overheard conversations, a subway train pulling out of it's station - all held together by a single kick drum. It's simple but beautifully effective and sets a high benchmark for the next forty minutes. 

There are many more highlights; 'III' is a twitchy, phased and flanged skeletal dub techno joint during which a recording of a heated series of exchanges is woven into it's digital fabric whilst 'IV' uses a sparse electro rhythm track and gradually pushes the beats together into overlapping percussive eddies.

The press release dubs this tape a "surrealist techno collage" which is a pretty good place to begin it's descriptors. To my ears though, these eight tracks are as much about what isn't there as what obviously is, the myriad embedded details and judicious use of field recordings simply beg for endless replay. Neal Reinalda has created something fantastic here, a set of tracks which are not only deeply experimental but also eminently accessible. 

Copies of the C50 cassette can be obtained directly from the NNA Tapes website, digital downloads are widely available too.

Ekoplekz / Wanda Group - Split Cassette

Growing up in the 1970s and 80s, cassettes were as much a part of my musical DNA as vinyl. They were viewed by our purist elders as a sonically inferior reduction of reel to reel technology and by the record labels as nothing short of a threat to their livelihood. To us they represented the gateway to an endless source of new albums which few of us could afford to buy and a tool to express ourselves via the mixtape format.

Over the past few years, vinyl has made a significant comeback but more surprisingly, so has the humble cassette. There are now a few rather excellent labels specialising in releases on this gloriously outdated medium - NNA Tapes being one of our favourite purveyors of ferric delights.

Further Records was established a few years ago in the US by Mark Cul and his partner to issue limited run cassettes, each with handmade inserts. They now have a Bandcamp page selling digital versions of these tapes for those folks without the requisite playback hardware.

This latest release features a side each from so much noise favourite Nick Edwards as Ekoplekz and the rather intriguingly named Wanda Group, an alias of Louis Johnstone, the man behind the brilliantly deranged Dem Hunger.

Nick Edwards turns in an incredible twenty minute A side titled 'Dead Escalator Suite' which cycles through all manner of dubbed out ephemera coated in his trademark submerged sonic patina. At around the halfway mark, reverb takes hold of the track displacing everything but it's trace elements before plunging headlong into a twisted coda of malfunctioning radiophonics.

The B side is no less absorbing, Louis Johnstone delivers a smudged and bruised smear of sound shot through with field recordings, vinyl crackle and a concatenated series of exercises in microtonal electronic manipulations. It's a beautifully refined take on his previous, more rhythmic output as Dem Hunger. 

The cassette has long since sold out as it was originally issued in a run of only one hundred units, a digital download is however available from the Further Records Bandcamp page.

The Eccentronic Research Council - 1612 Underture

Exactly four hundred years ago to the day, eight women and two men were executed by hanging at Gallows Hill in Lancashire, England. They had been accused of the murders of ten people by the use of witchcraft in a trial lasting only two days. It would become one of the best documented cases of it's kind but also the most disastrous, prejudiced and oft mythologised miscarriages of justice in the history of the pre-industrialised North. I won't expand upon the story in any more detail here as there are plenty of informative online resources and well researched books available which can provide a far more authoritative account of the events leading up to this tragedy.

Dean Honer of Sheffield groups I Monster / All Seeing I and Adrian Flanagan, a Salfordian and member of electro-pranksters Kings Have Long Arms have created a concept album commemorating the so-called Pendle Witches. The true stroke of genius here though is the casting of actress Maxine Peake who provides the narrative throughout the record, her beautiful Lancastrian burr is a fantastic counterpoint to the vintage analogue electronics and firmly places the recording within it's specific geography.

Released via Finders Keepers (who else?) on their Bird sub-label, the album is described on their website as "one part political commentary and feminist manifesto and two parts theatrical fakeloric sound poem". Sonically, this is an album that sits well amongst the likes of Belbury Poly, Moon Wiring Club and Pye Corner Audio in it's conjuring of the ghosts of the past through it's antiquated machines - the past inside the present. Or, as it is more eloquently stated on the ERC Soundcloud page; "Post 1612 Ghosts on Pre 1977 analogue Synthesisers". 

The journey starts with 'Autobahn 666' (the first in a series of four travelogues) as our intrepid travellers set off on a pilgrimage to Pendle Hill from Salford via the devil's road, the A666 "like Terry and June in a battered old Hillman Minx". The second travelogue proudly proclaims "This is the North, the fantastical North. Home of proud, hard grafting bastards".

And this is what makes the album such a pleasure to listen to, the narrative is both incredibly poignant and yet brimming with dark humour. On 'Her Kind' Peake recites three verses in which the late American poet Anne Sexton identifies with the misunderstood women in society against a battery of eerie sounds and screams, the final verse ending with "A woman like that is not ashamed to die. I have been her kind." It's a powerful track that owes as much to the narrator's vehement delivery as it does to the significance of the original poem.

As the story's protagonists reach Pendle and are ushered into the gift shop, Peake snorts "How do we market the loss and hanging of women like us? With coasters and tea towels". On 'Trial By Jiggery Pokery', Peake asks "how can one defend oneself against rhetorical slights of hand when the law, if it's to be infallible must be manifestly evident. It is not manifestly evident that Saint Peter appeared to the Pope or that man can walk on water but it is taken unquestionably as infallible". The last travelogue recounts a visit to the grave of Alice Nutter, "the educated, the wealthiest, the luckiest of them all - The Pendle Witch with a grave". 

The album closes out with a searing condemnation of the injustices which occurred four hundred years ago, yet are still apparent today as Peake channels the spirit of Owd Demdike on 'Ghost Of Old Lizzy Southerns Returns'; "Curse the ancient law books you still use today and Boots the chemist for stealing all my potions. Bark of tree and twelve crushed red ants, it's the London look. Curse the endless persecution of 'our kind', there's nothing more wicked than a watching, but turned blind eye."

1612 Underture is an incredibly passionate, brilliantly realised album which, in lesser hands could have easily fallen into the 'worthy but dull' category and is more than deserving of your attention. It comes very highly recommended to adventurous listeners, lovers of analogue electronics and scholars of all things hauntological.

Both CD and digital download versions are available over at the Finders Keepers online shop.

Dedicated to the memory of the so-called Pendle Witches who were executed on 20th August 1612; Elizabeth Device, James Device, Alizon Device, Anne Whittle (aka Chattox), Anne Redferne, Jane Bulcock, John Bulcock, Alice Nutter, Katherine Hewitt and Jennet Preston. 

Also dedicated to the memory of the accused; Alice Grey who was eventually acquitted on all charges and Elizabeth Southerns (aka Owd Demdike) who died whilst awaiting trial.

Moon Pool & Dead Band - Human Fly

In a recent piece about a pair of albums by John Elliott's Outer Space Project, I remarked that he had been extremely prolific in releasing music under a variety of different names during the past six years. However, Nate Young who forms one half of Moon Pool & Dead Band makes this work ethic seem positively slothful by comparison. As a member of Michigan noise legends Wolf Eyes alone, his tally of releases goes well into triple figures and keeps on rising through an almost infinite number of splits and side projects.

Moon Pool & Dead Band first appeared on my radar after picking up a cassette called Overspace which was originally sold at a few live shows in 2010. They followed this up with a self released EP called Gossypol and then a self titled LP via Agitated at the end of last year. It's an unlikely pairing to be honest; Nate Young with his impeccable experimental/noise credentials and Dave Shettler, drummer in garage rock outfit The sights, but the biggest surprise for me was the music contained on that first cassette. 

And this new twelve incher on Not Not Fun is no different, Human Fly contains three tracks of wilfully smeared and squashed techno hewn from the classic Detroit template. As on previous releases, each track is a product of live improvisation without overdubs using analogue equipment and bargain basement effects. The fidelity is suitably blunted with tape hiss which makes this set almost impossible to place on a timeline stretching over the past twenty five odd years.

The title track pits a squelchy bassline and acidic bleeps against a chugging drum machine rhythm. At the six minute mark, a twanging guitar line pinched from The Cramps' classic punkabilly track Human Fly appears momentarily before fading out, only to reappear again a few minutes later during the coda. It's a ridiculous touch but it works brilliantly - Poison Ivy would be proud! The remaining two tracks; 'Jagged Orbit' and 'Cyber Rebels' follow slightly lighter but equally skewed trajectories. 

Highly recommended listening for those who like their electronics decidedly old skool and a bit lo-fi.

The 12" Vinyl can be purchased through the Piccadilly Records online shop, the digital download version is widely available although Juno is always a reliable service.

Outer Space - Akashic Record (Events: 1986-1990) / II

John Elliott is a prolific creator and curator of some of the most incredible drone and synthesiser music produced over the last decade. After founding the self confessed "bullshit boring drone band" Emeralds with Mark McGuire and Steve Hauschildt, he helped establish a back catalogue of over forty releases in just four years. He has also put out a variety of releases as Mist, Imaginary Softwoods and Lilypad (amongst others) as well as setting up the excellent Spectrum Spools label with Peter Rehberg in 2011.

Last month saw the release of not one, but two new albums under his Outer Space moniker which has been stated is a "laboratory for electronic investigation" which utilises supplementary contributions from a host of Midwestern musicians and associates. Due to Elliott's prolificacy in producing music outside of Emeralds, these shouldn't be classed as mere 'side project' releases and therefore dismissed as second rate. I can't help but assess each Outer Space album within a wider context and ultimately view it as being a logical extension of the Emeralds back catalogue.

The first album to be released was Akashic Record (Events: 1986-1990) which was issued by Elliott's own Spectrum Spools label and was described as an investigation into "synthesizer experimentation and it's esoteric relations". This statement of intent is fully realised from the first track onwards; 'Ellipse' begins with a series of metallic drones which are overtaken by sequencer and synth phasing before dissolving into an elongated coda of electronic abstraction. This approach is modified and expanded over the following two tracks before the album closes with a pair of incredible live recordings. Elliot's measured use of arpeggios throughout this album makes it, for me at least, his most explicit reference to the material that Tangerine Dream were releasing around the mid 1970s. 

The Second album, fittingly titled II was issued by UK independent Blast First Petite just a few weeks after Akashic Record. Here we are presented with two ambient miniatures (I & II) and more of those beautiful arpeggios (vanishing Act) which reminded me of 'Marboubra Bay' from Edgar Froese's majestic 1975 solo LP Epsilon in Malaysian Pale. In addition to these, '3332' is seven minutes of thudding, proto-acid synthesiser dynamics whilst the final track, 'Liquid Systems Functions' manages to recall Cluster, Autechre and Tod Dockstader during it's running time.

It's been two years since Emeralds released their last album - Does It Look Like I'm Here? Hopefully there will be new material on the horizon at some point soon but until then, this pair of albums are every bit as satisfying as their creator's main band.

For links to purchase Akashic Record (Events: 1986-1990) on limited edition coloured vinyl or as a digital download, head over to the Spectrum Spools website. Similarly, II can be purchased as either vinyl or download directly from Blast First Petite.

Thought Broadcast - Thought Broadcast

There have been many scientific studies undertaken over the years to determine what effect music has on humans, both mentally and physiologically. It would seem that the general consensus of opinion is that happiness is the most common feeling to be derived from listing to music, especially given it's ability to stimulate the release of neurochemicals such as serotonin and dopamine. I'm not about to disagree with this research but I'd also like to add another effect that I take pleasure in experiencing when playing a record for the first time - confusion. Some of the most confusing, strange and downright "difficult" albums I've initially encountered have gone on to become absolute favourites over time and I suspect that this will become one of them.

I've had this album on my hard drive for quite a few weeks now and only recently had the chance to add it to my iTunes library. A few moments after sitting down to listen for the first time, I had to check that I'd sourced the correct playlist as I was sure I had inadvertantly selected a collection of tape recordings from circa 1979.

As far as I can tell, Thought Broadcast is led by New York artist Ravi Binning. There may be other people involved in the project but that information isn't readily available, partly due to the fact that the band's name is also a commonly reported symptom of schizophrenia and therefore hard to pin down relevant search engine results.

This self titled album consists of twelve tracks fashioned from monotone synth bleeps, minimal beat box rhythms and a variety of additional atonal sounds generated by other analogue machines. Binning's voice appears on most tracks, his vocals scrambled and rendered all but unintelligible through sheets of cassette tape hiss and smudged ferric murk. To say that this set is lo-fi would be a massive understatement but I think it's sonic limitations merely add to the overall effect. Think new wave/no wave minimal electronics or pre-punk/post-punk experimentation. It's hard not to deny the antecedents here; Throbbing Gristle and early Cabaret Voltaire being the main sources of influence. Coincidently, when adding this album to my iTunes library I noticed that it sat directly above the first entry in my Throbbing Gristle back catalogue, segueing perfectly into their Second Annual Report album.

With Thought Broadcast, Ravi Binning has created an album of oblique, submerged, aphotic brilliance that perfectly recalls a specific point in music history and ends up sounding like one of it's lost classics. There are quite a few people out there at the moment using this timeframe as a source of reference but no-one has yet managed to sound so focussed or accomplished as this.

There are a few copies remaining from a limited run of heavyweight vinyl in a silkscreened sleeve via the Olde English Spelling Bee online shop. A digital download version is also available through Boomkat and Juno.