UUHUU ‘Organ Figures for Flynt’

01 Message Sans Soleil (10:07)
02 Message La Jetée (9:58)

Total time: 20:05
Cassette released by Sound Holes, 2008

UUHUU is one of Berlin artist Marcel Türkovski’s various music projects, that he describes on his MySpace as: ‘an imaginary soundstringfigure solo project’. Turkovski is a sound artist with regular shows in Berlin and abroad. In 2008, he took part to a sound art group exhibition titled ‘Lieber Künstler, erzähle mir!’ in Hidescheim, Germany, also including Joseph Beuys (with his soundwork ‘Ja ja ja ja ja, nee nee nee nee nee’, 1968) and Tacita Dean. Türkovski is a visual artist as well, making concrete poetry drawings. But as he claims to be a ‘parapsychic magnetic tape researcher’, I was understandably curious about the present ‘Organ Figures for Flynt’ cassette. The 2 tracks, ‘Message Sans Soleil’ and ‘Message La Jetée’ (after Chris Marker’s films, the latter uploaded on YouTube), consist of dense, layered accumulations of bell-like sounds. The music is static, thick textures build from metallic resonances, as if collected from bell peals with transients removed (the transients are the attack of sound). This is probably actually made from guitar samples and loops – hence the soundstringfigure tag –, but the result is certainly evocative of, say, Westminser Cathedral bells (check video below). While the minimalism at work here would nicely fit on John Cale’s guitar experiments as released by Table ot the Elements, the reference to [Henry] Flynt escapes me – this is closer to Tony Conrad or John Cale. On a side note, I’ve heard similar bell-sounding guitar on Jim O’Rourke+KK Null’s 1992 ‘New Kind Of Water‘ CD. ‘Organ Figures for Flynt’ is a fascinating release for its gorgeous sonorities, elaborate sound construction and ambitious references from avantgarde or experimental film. Türkovski is a promising sound artist if we are to judge from this tape and the mouth-watering excerpts on his MySpace.

This cassette was released on Scottish CDR and tapes label Sound Holes, run by Daniel Hadden in Glasgow, Scotland. Thanks to Daniel to allow this tape to appear here.

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Westminster Abbey bell ringers:

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!

Jean-Marc Foussat ‘Abattage’

01 Grillage (1:13)
02 Images & Jalousies (9:26)
03 Ruines (4:17)
04 Petit Paysage (1:33)
05 Petit Paysage (0:09)
06 Hontes, Inquiétude & Quevœjotto (2:40)
07 Abattage (13:49)

Total time 33:00
LP released by Pyjama, France, 1983

Jean-Marc Foussat (b.1955) is a French guitar player, VCS synth player, label founder and recording engineer. He played with a band called Mandragore in the 1970s, as wel as collaborating with Jean-François Pauvros, Jac Berrocal, Roger Turner, Raymond Boni and Claude Parle. In the 1980s he worked as a recording engineer for Incus, Hat Hut, Po Torch, Rec Rec, Celluloid, etc. He founded Potlatch Records along Jacques Oger in 1997.  On ‘Abattage’ (1983), he self released his studio experiments under his own Pyjama imprint. The tracks were apparently recorded between 1975 and 1981 and feature extensive use of field recordings from out of the window (see cover), as well as piano, guitar, VCS III synth and found vocals. The main instrument has to be the recording studio, though, with obsessive care in balance, transitions and dynamic, that is: much definition in the very low sounds and lots of details in the loudest sounds. #3 Ruines is a solo piano (played by Jean-François Ballèvre); #4 Petit Paysage is a street cleaner engine recording; #5 Petit Paysage is someone lighting a cigarette; #6 includes people laughing and coughing, electric guitar; and then monumental #7 starts as a jackhammer+piano duo, before morphing into a fierce VCS solo. Noise art of the highest caliber!

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Discography:
1983 Abattage, LP, Pyjama records
1992 Nouvelles, cassette release
2001 Nouvelles, Potlatch CD reissue
2001 Abattage, CD-r reissue

References:
Interview with Foussat in The Sound Projector #12, 2004, UK.
Dominique Grimaud ‘L’underground musical en France’, Le Mot et le Reste publisher, 2008, France

Federico Barabino y Don Campau ‘Zamba’

01 Dejando ser (7:45)
02 Zamba (13:25)
03 Liberando al sonido interno (7:46)

Total time 28:55
CD-r released on Lonely Whistle Music, USA, 2006

Federico Barabino: guitar, environmental sounds
Don Campau: chimes, percussion, tibetan bowl, handmade rainstick, triangle, ocean drum, flywheel, harmonica, moog

For this release, home-taping legend Don Campau [see bio here] teams up with Argentinian guitar genius Federico Barabino [see bio here] in a mail collaboration where classical guitar and field recordings reign supreme. Environmental sounds like water dripping, rain, storm, motorbike, birds and various outdoor activities form the spine of ‘Zamba’, to which various acoustic instruments are discretely added to form a homogeneous blend that definitely owes something to Sound Ecology, i.e. active listening to environmental sounds, let nature make the music, etc (cf Murray Schafer). Not being thrown at you like in pop music, the sounds tend to fill up the available acoustic space of your living room in an unintrusive way. As a consequence, how much you’ll enjoy ‘Zamba’ depends on the way you’ll listen to it. I’d suggest consider it a morning raga – and indeed, there are ragas meant to bring the rain. Guitar playing is luminous and serene, with a tremendous sound quality that enhances the sharpness of Barabino’s technique. Cover is a digital print on lovely handmade paper, courtesy of Don Campau’s own Lonely Whistle Music’s exquisite taste. Thanks to Don for allowing this one to appear on Continuo’s.

Federico Barabino’s blog.
Don Campau dot com.

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Continuumix #3

Continuumix #3 – The vinyl holocaust

An homage to the black record in remembrance of the vinyl holocaust perpetrated by Sony Music Corporation, Japan, 1982-1988. No apologies for deliberate nostalgia and over-sentimentalization to be found herein.

01 Prologue (6:26)
02 Part I (29:50)
03 Part II (39:09)

Total time 76:26

Download the 140Mb zip file via Sendspace, DepositFiles or Megaupload.

/  /  /  /  /   /  /  /  /  /  T R A C K L I S T I N G /  /  /  /  /  /  /  /  /  /

PROLOGUE

• Gianni Safred ‘Last Rain’ from the ‘Futuribile: The Life to Come’ Folkways LP 1980. I’m using a loop from the website’s sound sample.
• Leandros Ntounis ‘Big train passing, New Orleans May 19th, 2008′. Leandros Ntounis is a field recordist from Greece. “At the end of Conti Street to the Woldenberg park, a big train passing to slow with 2 engines and 106 cargo cars.” (from Soundtransit) Unrelated picture.
• CloudTheTank ‘Vinyl Haters Note’, video on YouTube, 2007.

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PART I

• Mudboy ‘Whirl Loops’ from the ‘Hungry Ghosts’ 2008 LP. Mudboy is a young american musician playing modified electric organ and church organ.  I discovered his music in The Sound Projector magazine last year and was encouraged to order a handfull of his releases, which came complete with gorgeous artwork and cryptic annotations.
• Annea Lockwood, sheeps from disc 1, tr.#2, an excerpt from ‘A Sound Map Of The Danube’ 3CD set, Lovely Music, 2008. The project was of course to document water sounds in various points of the river, but I chosed animal sounds because they’re so striking – and as a possible reference to the mighty ‘Chill Out’ mix by KLF.
• Radikal Satan ‘Circa Cinco’ from the 2LP-set ‘Au Froid Qui Fait Rougir’, Les Potagers Nature, Bordeaux, 2008. The most ambitious release to come out of the French underground last year was Radikal Satan’s magnum opus ‘Au Froid Qui Fait Rougir’, a double-LP full of argentinian duende, South American Surrealism and voodo references.

• Ron Kuivila ‘A Keyboard Study’ from his LP ‘Fidelity’, Lovely Music, 1985. Kuivila is a Continuo favorite from his inclusion in Tellus issues. This early LP is a cornucopia of circuit-bending and modified synths. Thanks to Joseph Nechvatal for this one.
• Exorcism of Anneliese Michel (1976), mp3 from blog. Michel was a young German woman whose rather impressive martyrdom is well documented on the web.

• Isao Tomita ‘The Great Gate of Kiev’ from ‘Pictures At An Exhibition’ LP, RCA, 1975. Tomita set Mussorgky’s masterpiece to electronic sounds in this fine LP.
• Christian Marclay ‘The Sounds Of Christmas’, LP on Villa Magica Records, 2008. Funny to see Marclay returning to a Swiss label, 15 years after his legendary duo with Günter Muller on For 4 Ears. And yet another masterpiece from the turntables’ wizard, this time mixing from a collection of Christmas tunes records. More info here. [Click thumbnail for larger picture]

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PART II

• André Jolivet ‘3 Poèmes pour Ondes Martenot et Piano’, 2LP, Disques Adès, 1980. Jeanne Loriod is playing the Ondes Martenot (with her sister Yvonne on piano) on this Jolivet sonata from the 1950s. Note spectacular use of low keys to produce striking bass sounds. Jeanne was arguably the Jimi Hendrix of Ondes Martenot.
• Max Jacob ‘Gloire, Cambriolage ou Révolution’, read by Alain Cuny, 7” on Disques Adès, late 1960s. Famous French actor reads this Max Jacob prose poem from ‘Le Cornet à dé’. [Click thumbnail for larger picture]

• Dick Tracy ‘Tokyo-Ga’ soundtrack to Wim Wenders’ film of the same name, LP on Disques Du Soleil et de l’Acier, 1985. Dick Tracy was a trio of musicians led by Laurent Petitgand, the composer of numerous Wenders’ soundtracks. See The Thing On The Doorstep for more DT LPs.
• Siegfried Kessler (1935-2007) ‘Looking Out’ from ‘Corps et âme’ LP, In and Out label, 1981. Piano solo music recorded live in Angoulême Theater, 1981. A member of trio Perception during the 1970s, French pianist Kessler also played with Magma’s Yoshko Seffer. On this enchanting gamelan music track, he’s recorded live at the piano through a ring modulator, elaborating on John Cage’s Sonatas And Interludes. [Click thumbnail for larger picture]

• Vitamin B12 ‘Pet Pup’ from ‘Heads Vol 8 – Wrong Notes’, self released LP, 2007?. Vitamin B12 (real name Alasdair Willis) is the Mark Pawson of vintage vinyl sampling. He uses his huge LP collection to build semi-abstract, elaborate mixes from cheap electronic sounds, library music gimmicks or even  jam sessions with his own free jazz quartet (Willis plays saxophone). He is presented here with a series of percussion sounds from library music LPs, some electronics and violin.
• Association Internationale des Souffleurs ‘De l’air’, live performance, Galerie CDEx, Montréal, Canada, April 2008. Striking recording from a students happening at Québec university art gallery, the UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal). Radiolist doesn’t provide further details, but the event obviously included fireworks and shouts from numerous people. They know how to have fun at the Université! [Unrelated picture - Click thumbnail for larger picture]

• Junior Homrich & Brian Gascoigne ‘Eagle Break’ from ‘The Emerald Forest’ soundtrack, Varèse Sarabande LP, 1985. Brazilian Junior Homrich is on percussion (clay pots, body percussion) and Gascoigne on synths.

• Quintron ‘Frogs’ from ‘The Frog Tape’ LP, Skin Graft Records, 2005.  New Orleans, Louisiana organist Quintron uses one of his modified electric organs to raise a poignant frog songs soundscape, a gorgeous yet artificial evocation of Louisiana’s swamplands and bullfrogs.

Noise-Maker’s Fifes ‘The Cruelty of Black Humour’

01 Cruelty Has A Human Heart (29:09)
02 Black Humour And The Ideology Of The Absurd (28:43)

Total time 57:52
Cassette released on OBUH Records, Poland, 1994

‘The Cruelty of Black Humour’ is a joint release between Noise-Maker’s Fifes‘ own NMT label and polish label Obuh records. The band is reduced to the core duo of Geert Feytons and Timo Van Luyk for two slabs of rather intense, claustrophobic soundscapes. The music would adequately fit in Wagner’s forge scenes from Siegfried where the blacksmith Mime is forging a new blade for Siegfried amid thunderous orchestral blasts a go-go. But these recordings where actually intended as incidental music to a film inspired by Lautréamont’s Chants De Maldoror, hence the monstrous sounds and grating, industrial interjections. As usual with these individuals, not a single synthesizer is used, but rather a mix of scraped or bowed metal objects resonating to build up thick layers of noise thanks to generous use of effect pedals. There is nonetheless a surreal, hypnotic quality in these tracks, what with its obsessive loop effects and undefinable sound sources.

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C-Schulz ‘Jahre Später’

01 Trapperfieber (4:32)
02 Ufer #1 (5:16)
03 Molloch (3:48)
04 Toru (5:31)
05 Wir Beide Sind Verwandt (6:33)
06 Ufer #2 (4:47)
07 Sita (5:05)
08 Portier Der Nacht (3:54)

Total time 39:26
Cassette released on Entenpfuhl, EMM 006, 1989

This is C-Schulz’s first cassette release in a 100 copies edition on the Köln experimental label Entenpfuhl. The label was founded by C-Schulz, Frank Dommert, Marcus Schmickler and Georg Odijk in 1987. C-Schulz (real name Carsten Schulz) is a Köln musician born 1968, who has been associated with local artists and labels like Hajsch, POL, and projects with Schmickler, FX Randomiz, the Sonig label, etc. He’s now working on electroacoustic multi-chanel live performances. ‘Jahre Später’ is a remarkably fine release for a debut album, and is on a par with C-Schulz’s masterpieces to follow, namely 1991 LP ‘10. Hose Horn’ and the 1992 CD ‘4. Film Ton’ on Extreme. ‘Jahre Später’ is noticeable for its multiple references to extra-european music (excerpts from Tibetan, Indonesian and Turkish traditionals, as well as Umm Kulthum/Om Kalsoum), classical music (Schulz is a classicaly trained oboeist), found sounds or field recordings and avantgarde electronics a la HNAS. The music is perfectly balanced between clarinet, location recordings and keyboards. Contributing musicans include pianist Christoph Kahse on keyboards on tr. #5 & 8 and Ralf Reuter on #2. The last 2 tracks are utterly beautiful while the whole cassette shows a maturity rarely found in debut releases.

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