Continuumix #4

Continuumix #4
Chinese new music

Total time 45:28

While rummaging through dozens of Chinese blogs and netlabels last June ‘09 (see previous post), I came across many enchanting and exciting sounds in unsuspected combinations. At first merely updating myself with Chinese independent music, I soon realised the quality level had dramatically increased since last time I checked, 2 years ago. With this mix, Continuo welcomes the stalwarts of China’s unique sound art. This is of course a personnal selection and someone else might come up with a totally different choice of favorite tracks, though I doubt one can avoid including such fine artists as Yan Jun, Lin Chi-Wei or Zavka.

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• Li Lifeng ‘Zhen Zheng’, from Sound And The City book+CD, British Council, 2007. “My friends and I correcting the Mandarin pronunciation of Shanghai local girls. It’s fun.”
• Street noise loop from Café Sambal, Chinese actress Gong Li in Beijing for Louis Vuitton Soundwalk
• Wang Changcun, Ice Frog Part I, from Weather Recorder, 2007
• Zavka ‘Yong He’ on Post Concrete, 2008.
• Café Sambal, Gong Li in Beijing for Louis Vuitton Soundwalk
• Excerpt from Kink Gong – Soundscape China CD (jew’s harp)
• Yan Jun ‘Original Soundtrack’, guitar feedback from his MySpace
• Yan Jun ‘Christiana original’, poetry reading
• Unidentified percussion from Kink Gong – Soundscape China CD
• Xiao He ‘After Time’, from Noise Is Free 2008
• Lin Chi-Wei ‘Balloon music’, from China Avant Guard Music Festival 2009.
• [unidentified location recording]
• [unidentified solo saxophone]
• Wang Changcun ‘Watersprout’, from Weather Recorder, 2007
• Yan Jun ‘Sample 1′, from his MySpace.
• Yan Jun ‘Against’, 2000, mp3 from this archive.
• Wang Fan, performnace at Salon 14, Beijing , 2007. See this PDF file for info.

Rummaging the web #7

Noise Is Free 2008 is the ensuing compilation to the Mini Midi Festival 迷你迷笛音乐节, a yearly Beijing music festival organized by Sub Jam label. The 2008 edition included some artists from the German Staubgold label. Featured artists: Wang Fan + 718, Li Tieqiao, Li Zenghui, Fujui Wang, MiguelSantos, Andy Guhl, 10, The Wedding Beast, Xiao He, Hong Qile, TronOrchestra+SAM2+xinix+VacuumCar’Ori+ShiYang+ Yan Jun. The performances ranges from solo saxophone to field recordings, from electronica to collective improvisation.

Wang Changcun is a Shanghai electronic music composer and programmer with 2 CDs out on Sub Rosa. A detailed biography is available here. ‘Weather Recorder’ is available in good quality streaming format on Post Concrete. It’s a collection of electronic vignettes whose simple melodies and naive arrangements delight the listener.

Zafka’s ‘Yong He’ was released in 2008, a tour de force mix of location recordings and electronics, focusing on the Yong He Temple area in Beijing. The use of electronic droning sounds and sound treatment enhances the experience, adding emotional impact to the field recordings strata. It is freely downloadable as Flac or mp3 files from Post Concrete, a major Chinese experimental label for CD as well as free online releases. It was founded by Yao Dajun 姚大钧, whose personal blog is a must see.

Yan Jun’s field recordings for Around Festival, 2009. A collection of environmental recordings and audio detritus. Yan Jun is the prominent avantgarde music figure in today’s Beijing, as a composer, curator, concert organizer, music critic and Chinese new music ambassador (he toured Europe extenisively in 2008-9). More info here.

This page offers sound excerpts of Yan Jun reading from his own poetry, sometimes with electronic accompanyment (on guitar feedback or . . . electrified forks!). Another page archives live performance recordings, whether solo or in various configurations (here). Additionally, Yan Jun contributed an introduction to the recently released Anthology of Chinese Electronic Music released by Sub Rosa [+]. This 3-CD set is curated by Dickson Dee, a well-known Chinese musician.

Filmed at China Avant Guard Music Festival in Beijing, March 2009, this collective performance (a 6mn video on Youtube) led by Lin Chi-Wei is titled ‘Balloon Music’ and is an exhilarating Fluxus happening with colorful balloons and toy instruments to which a team of art students and audience members are taking part. Lin Chi-Wei was born in Taïpei, Taïwan, 1971 – see bio here. Make sure to check Let’s Talk in Babish, his experience in new born blabber talk. He’s currently working on a book titled ‘Sound art in 20th century’ to be published 2009, after he curated an exhibition called ‘100 years of sound art’. Watch this man!

Musicworks #30 ‘Sound Constructions’

01 Gordon Monahan ‘Introduces The Issue’ (:05)
02 Logos Duo ‘Pneumafoon’ (2:13)
03 Moniek Darge ‘Timeframes’ (1:56)
04 Godfried-Willem Raes+John Oswald ‘Cracklebox’ (1:23)
05 Paul Panhuysen+Johan Goedhart ‘Snareninstallaties’ (6:22)
06 Leif Brush ‘Music from Trees, Icefloes and Other Natural Phenomena’ (7:00)
07 Richard Raymond ‘Introducing the Aeolian Harp’ (:33)
08 Richard Raymond, Leif Brush, John Oughton, Thaddeus Holownia ‘Aeolian Harps + Windribbon mix’ (18:47)

Total time 38:10
Cassette+journal published 1985, Toronto, Canada

As usual for this Canadian series of journal+cassette, Musicworks #30 is focusing on specific aspects of sound art, namely instrument builders and music interacting with the environment, according to the teachings of R. Murray Schafer. The issue, appropriately titled Sound Constructions, was curated by Gordon Monahan and engineered by John Oswald in his own Mystery Tape Laboratory. Included in the articles and tape are composers already featured on this blog (Leif Brush, Moniek Darge and Godfried-Willem Raes), so that I feel pretty much at home with this release. On a personal note, I’d gladly put myself under the tutelage of Murray Schafer rather than John Cage’s. The story of Musicworks was detailed in a previous post on Musicworks #29.

Musicworks #30’s b side is dominated by a massive aeolian harps mash up with a few ‘windribbon’ inputs courtesy of Leif Brush. Enchanting, out of this world sounds flowing endlessly around the speakers. Contributors to this mammoth droning piece include Richard Raymond and Thaddeus Holownia. The latter collaborated with Gordon Monahan building the extraordinary Long Aeolian Piano (see here) first installed on the Holownia farm in New Brunswick, 1984 where Holownia lived with wife Gay Hansen, Biology teacher at the Mount Allison University, Sackville, N.B. Long Aeolian Piano was recorded on the B side of the self released ‘Speaker Swinging’ LP, 1987. Leif Brush is featured on this tape with an overview of his self built, solar- or wind-powered instruments with interspersed comments by the composer. Wonderful musique concrete sounds thanks to close miking and careful electronic treatments.

The Logos Duo (Moniek Darge and Godfried-Willem Raes) present their Pneumafoon sound sculptures, pictured on the front cover above, self build instruments powered by inflatable cushions. The 6 pages interview with Logos is included in the donwload file. Raes and John Oswald present Cracklebox, a pocket-sized analog synth designed by Michel Waisvisz, both composers toying around and commenting on the device’s possibilities. Generally speaking, there’s a lot of fun going on the A side, an usual feature in avantgarde music. Dutch sound artist Paul Panhuysen (b.1934) is famous for his long string installations, a variety of which is presented here by sound excerpts. In 1981, Panhuysen founded Het Apollohuis in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, arguably the first venue for sound art in Europe, which closed its doors in 2000.

Donwload from here or here.

Previously on Continuo’s:
- Musicworks #26 >
- Musicworks #28 >
- Musicworks #29 >
- Musicworks #37 >
- Moniek Darge >
- Godfried-Willem Raes >
- Leif Brush >

Coalmine 5 ‘Døden Drømmer Livet’

01 Døden Drømmer Livet (4:53)
02 Ismaela (2:08)
03 Eurasisk Slått (4:01)
04 Bushido (3:13)
05 Tynn Luft (5:19)
06 Scratching Train To Hell (2:33)
07 Ave Maria (2:09)
08 Sampo Suru (3:59)
09 Cold Mind (2:21)
10 Hermetisk Pingvin (1:35)
11 Gjeter Med Spaltet Tunge (2:00)
12 Blyantspisserens Sorg (3:19)
13 Der Og Da (4:30)
14 The Determinal Sky (2:30)
15 Jeg Vet Hvor… Landet La (1:17)

Total time 45:30
Cassette reissue on Tragic Figure, Portugal, TF 004, 1988?-90?

Personnel:
Zetlitz: voc, voice, perc, pipes, kbds, tapes
Anacleto: bs, bouzouki, kbds, voc, pipes, perc, tapes, gtr, clarinet
Felix Filius: voice, voc, kbds, gtr, pipes, perc, bs, bouzouki etc
Ato: voice, voc, gtr, perc, pipes
Sten Thure: drums, perc, gtr, bs, voc, pipes etc
Mentalnerve The Young: bs, gtr, voc, voice, pipes, perc, kbds, balalaika etc
Mentalnerve The Very Young: gtr, mandolin, perc, voc, balalaika, bouzouki, kbds, vacuum cleaner

Norwegian band Coalmine 5 was formed in the mid-1980s, first as a duo, then as a loose collective of 5 or more participants. This cassette was their first release, with tracks recorded from 1986-88 and first published in May 1988 by The Crawling Chaos label (ref. SHiT 016), in Aust-Agder fylke, Norway – my copy is the Portuguese reissue. Crawling Chaos was founded by Dave Jørgensen and Robert Ommundsen and was the label of legendary folk-psychedelic band Famlende Forsøk (info here, here and LP here). Coalmine 5 play surrealist, psychedelic-inspired folk music with Norwegian lyrics and a wide array of diverse instruments including flutes, bouzouki and jew’s harp. A few tracks are regular songs, the rest is grotesque chorales, obscure chanting and collective madness. Track#14 ‘The Determinal Sky’ is a cabaret number and, generally speaking, the music is rather theatrical thanks to many vocalists contributing in all kinds of styles (declamatory, grotesque, hushed or obscure). Typically, Coalmine 5 composed music to a theater performance of Alfred Jarry’s King Ubu. Whether the lyrics are folk traditionals or surrealist poetry, I can’t tell, but the music itself is a mix of both. The cassette title apparently means ‘Death Dreams Life’: a trip from death to life through dreams in the surrealist tradition.

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Radical Glass Music #2

01 Frédéric Nogray ‘Nekli – #01′ (18:09)
02 Zach Wallace ‘Glass Armonica – #2′ (19:05)
03 Michel Redolfi & Thomas Bloch ‘Ptyx’ (9:46)
04 Angus Maclaurin ‘Drunken Nightmare’ (11:30)
05 Annea Lockwood ‘Mini Mobile’ (2:13)

Total time 60:43
See also Radical Glass Music #1.

• Frédéric Nogray ‘Nelki #01′ (18:09)
  A track from Nogray’s 2008 ‘Nelki’ CD on Prêle Records. This is music made entirely on crystal singing bowls, played with a wooden stick I assume. Nogray makes full use of the glasses purity of tone in this extremely restrained track. He could almost be using a sine wave oscillator for that matter. Another striking aspect is the floating quality of glass sounds: they are not grounded, they float. I think the Vermeer painting above has something of these pure colors and  suspended time.

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• Zach Wallace ‘Glass Armonica – #2′ (19:05)
  Wallace is a member of Sun Circle duo with Greg Davis. This track comes from a glass armonica CD released by Root Strata in 2009. Wallace apparently build his own version of the glass harmonica whose sound is quite unique, with properties close to a hurdy-gurdy, say – expect more grating sounds than your average Mozart. Some info here and here.

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• Michel Redolfi & Thomas Bloch ‘Ptyx’ (9:46)
  From a live recording in a Lille swimming pool, France, 2004. Bloch plays Cristal Baschet and glass harmonica, while Redolfi takes care of sound treatment and spatial effects. As this comes from a YouTube video, the stereo effects are unfortunately lost. See this article for more info.

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• Angus Maclaurin ‘Drunken Nightmare’ (11:30)
  The ‘Glass Music’ CD by US composer Maclaurin was recorded on tuned glasses, with occasional sampler and vocals and released on the Bubblecore label, 2000.  Maclaurin is interested by the poetry and mystery of glass sounds, building short, atmospheric tracks with unusual density for glass music. He’s also using rerecording, sound treatments and effects in a rather un-dogmatic way for glass music standards that is.

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• Annea Lockwood ‘Mini Mobile’ (2:13)
  An excerpt from Lockwood’s landmark ‘Glass World’ LP released on Tangent Records, 1970. The LP is a collection of very short tracks from ephemeral glass sound sculptures including glass rods, sheets or bottles.

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Ashtray Navigations ‘Tapwater Locomotive’

1. Tapwater Locomotive side A:
   Rough Mixes and Preworkings (20:39)
2. Tapwater Locomotive side B:
   Deluxe (18:35)

Total time 39:14
Cassette released by Smokers Gifts, SG #6, UK, 2008

Phil Todd: guitar
Phil Legard (#02): drums?
Melanie Delaney (#02): reeds and tapes?

Side A of this Ashtray Navigations cassette was first released as a CD-R in 2005 in an edition of 30. Reissued here as ‘Tapwater Locomotive Deluxe’ edition with additional material on side B recorded with Phil Legard from Xenis Emputae Travelling Band as well as Melanie Delaney. In the 1990s, Phil Todd ran the Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers label, and now runs Memoirs Of An Aesthete. Smokers Gifts is apparently Melanie Delaney’s own label with releases by Ashtray Navigations and her own Ocelocelot. Side A of the ‘Tapwater Locomotive’ cassette is a guitar+drums duo on heavy psych rock mode with tons of effect pedals on the guitar like in the good old days of Pelt ‘Ayahusco’ or, in the quieter moments, Keiji Haino’s ‘Affection’. The guitar parts are so dense you can almost smell the Marshall amps. Side B is an impenetrable, krautrock tour de force for ambient fuzz guitar and various additional sounds, the latter possibly including a reed instrument sounding like whales singing, while other indecipherable sound effects add density and mystery to the musical bliss. The result is a totally hypnotic, floating music that transports you to other planes of existence. Heavy, man! Thanks to Phil Todd for allowing this to appear here. Copies of this release are still available from Phil himself:
ashtraynavigations[at]hotmail[dot]com

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Hessel Veldman ‘Radio Times’

01 Radio Times I (31:00)
02 Radio Times II (30:55)

Total time 62:00
Cassette released on Exart Cassettes, EA037, The Netherlands, 1990?

With ‘Radio Times’, released ca. 1990, Hessel Veldman possibly wanted to compose a paean to radio and celebrate the decade he spent working with Willem De Ridder on numerous All Chemix Radio plays during innumerable recording sessions, either in his own Ijmuiden, The Netherlands studio, or De Ridder’s own Amsterdam home studio, or even the Radio Rabotnik studios. The ‘Radio Arts guild’ logo from the cover is a possible reference to De Ridder’s Radio Art Foundation. ‘Radio Times’ fits perfectly with other projects from around 1990, namely: Michael Snow’s ‘2 Radio Solos’ and Chris Meloche’s ‘Document 90′, posted earlier on this blog. The 2 sides of this cassette are build on layer upon layer of uninterrupted, processed radio transmissions from around the globe along various percussion, tapes, didjeridoo and female vocals. Veldman is not interested in radio tourism or exoticism, though, and the unrecognizable broadcasts are a mere source material for thick layers of static and electronic interferences where only hints of the original voices and music surfaces intermittently. Whether this was recorded live or painstakingly processed is not known to me, though the FNTC/All Chemix Radio ethos prescribed live recording only. Anyway ‘Radio Times’ can be heard as an impressive farewell to easy listening.

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Various ‘Inventionen II’

01 Takehito Shimazu Zytoplasma (10:55)
02 Boguslaw Schaeffer Maa’ts (9:55)
03 Rolf Enström Fractal (22:22)

Total time 43:12
LP released on Edition RZ, 1985

Take a look at Berlin’s 1984 Inventionen Festival’s program and you realise how consistent the choices of organizer Robert Zank were: NY sound artist Yoshi(masa) Wada; Montreal’s electro-acoustic improvising group Sondes; François Bayle and Bernard Parmegiani from INA-GRM; composers from South America and Sweden. The works on this LP were showcased and sometimes premiered during the Festival’s 2nd edition, hence the ‘Inventionen II’ title. Takehito Shimazu (b.1949) is a Japanese electronic and computer music composer whose works have been well received in Europe. His track ‘Zytoplasma’ is build on a constant electronic drone, growing in pitch and intensity for the first 7 minutes. It will be the basis to a rigid grid of electronic bleeps and buzzes, an evocation of a primary soup growing in intensity and diversity, starting with simple sound cells morphing into more complex sonic organisms (white noise, sort of). Thanks to its fine synthetic sounds, varied textures and un-hurried pace, the piece is a joy to listen to. Boguslaw Schaefer was featured on vol. I already – please refer to previous post for info. Composed at Stockholm’s EMS studios by Swedish Rolf Enström (b.1951), ‘Fractal’ was premiered at Inventionen ‘84. It is an ambitious electroacoustic composition based on processed sounds from classical instruments as well as synth and computer parts. The inspiration apparently comes from processed photos. The music is purely electroacoustic with great care to timbre: sounds are included for their timbral properties, mostly like musical objects under the scrutiny of the composer. To no surprise for an Edition RZ LP, sound quality is very good, appropriately for this kind of music. Is this reason enough not to reissue it on CD? – I wonder.

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