REVIEWS

jim o`rourke"Bad Timing" nannte Jim O`Rourke, Ex-Gastr del Sol und Ex-Sonic Youth, sein Album von 1997, das in Zusammenarbeit mit John McEntire (Gastr del Sol, Bastro, The Sea And The Cake, Tortoise) entstand. "Bad Timing" nicht nur, weil erhebliche technische und örtliche Widrigkeiten überwunden werden mussten, um das Album fertigzustellen ("Bad Timing was recorded in various spots and was continously plagued by bleaking equipment, so i just left the evidence on, or else i d never finished it.." O`Rourke), sondern auch, weil es auf dem Zenit der Technowelle grotesk und etwas albern erschien, ein "Folk-Album" zu machen, mit "echten" Musikern, mit Violine, Akustik- und Pedal-Steel Gitarre, Posaune und Waldhorn. Zu dieser Zeit machte das eigentlich nur noch Tom Waits. Jim O`Rourke hat sich aber nie lange in einem musikalischen Genre aufgehalten, was deutlich wird beim Hören des 2001 erschienenen "Standard-Rock" Albums "Insignificance", das u.a. mit den Musikern von Wilco sowie dem Jazz-Trompeter Rob Mazurek entstand: Lynyrd Skynryrd, Americana, Bruce Springsteen, Beach Boys, Pavement, um die Parameter mal abzustecken. 2001, im Jahr von "Insignificance" also, erschien erstmals das hier vorliegende Album "I m happy, and i m singing, and a 1,2,3,4", Jim O`Rourkes Laptop-Album, zusammengestellt aus "Live-Aufnahmen" von 1997-1999. Ambientige Glitch-Musik, am Computer generiert, meditative, episch-geränderte Soundscapes, die ein reflektives Moment enthalten, sich extrem langsam entfalten wie dimmende Lichtspuren, im  Panorama eines Sonnenauf- oder Untergangs etwa, oder wie flirrenden Lichtkaskaden, die das Auge nur halb wahrnimmt, in der Bewegung, durch beschleunigten Transport, bei einer Autofahrt durch die nächtlichen Innenstadtschluchten: Hell/Dunkel, Licht/Farben, Bewegung/Stillstand, Innen/Aussen, Schlaf-/Wachzustand -  "I m happy, and i m singing, and a 1,2,3,4", re-released bei Editions Mego, nun ausgestattet mit einer zweiten CD, die bisher unveröffentlichtes Material aus dem selben Zeitraum enthält, macht sich gut in einer Zeit, in der Stillstand, Aktion und Bewegung fest ineinanderschmelzen, Ein- und Dasselbe darstellen, den allgemeinen autistisch-stolpernden Wesenszustand einer Gesellschaft konterkarierend, so omnipräsent wie zeittypisch manifestiert, ein Zustand zwischen eruptiver Hyperaktivität, ADT/Attention Deficit Trait und totaler Paralyse. Im Kontrast betrachtet, wirkt 10 Jahre nach der Entstehung der Aufnahmen das Hören von "I m happy, and i m singing, and a 1,2,3,4" ähnlich wie ein stiller, ausgedehnter Waldspaziergang - im Cyber-Wald allerdings, wohlgemerkt.  

:: Jim O`Rourke/I m happy, and i m singing, and a 1,2,3,4 - 2 CD/Editions Mego/A-Musik. 

snd/atavismSND latest release on Raster-Noton takes interesting interpretation upon club music. Start designing their click-and-cuts sounds back at 1998, now it looks like they had enough with complicated structures and manipulation. Dealing with the aesthetics of rhythm Atavism is an experiment with undressing techno, house, 2-step and dubstep to single separated layers and very well self-aware sequencer usage. The simplifying is so extreme here, although you can hear the so-called IDM history runs through it. Yet, the step-sequencer is the main tool here, so is repetition. Each track grows slowly with mostly two channels - beat and chord shifts. The nice achievement here is that as naked as the music is, it still doesn't sounds empty. SND doing their best keeping the fun of club culture and observe it from the sometimes-too-serious eyes of raster-noton body of work. The greatest triumph of the albums comes around the middle, at track number 9 (all tracks are untitled) where a repetitive high-tone sample jumps like a ping-pong until the beat getting so blurry, just to attack you back with hand-claps and 90's house chord-shifts. The climax is so great, and the dancing feeling breathes up your back but on the same time totally fucks up your brain. Oh, they used to call it braindance like 10 years ago, right? --omer schwartz

:: SND/Atavism - Raster Noton/Rough Trade. 

vainio & capece'Trahnie' is the meeting of the seemingly unlikely duo of Argentinean reeds player Lucio Capece (who may be new to you) and Mika Vainio from Finland who should be all too familiar from his solo releases on Sahko and Touch as well as his work with the seminal electronics duo Pan Sonic. The pair found common ground through their residency in Berlin where the album was recorded over the last 2 years. Capece's background is in jazz and free improv which seemed an unusual counterpart to Vainio's typically bleak electronics. The reeds are however surprisingly sympathetic to harsh noise bursts and metric pulsing of tracks like 'Juurake' and 'Sahalaitainen'. The harshness is balanced out by quiet and delicate tracks where the reeds wobble against pure tones (see 'Siglio'), in fact the whole album is richly contrasted: it's as harsh as it is pure, as acoustic as it is electronic, and as intense in volume as it is quiet. There is also an intreguing contrast between sections where the two conversing elements are easily distinguishable and the times when they fuse particularly strongly, mostly during the noisyer emissions where it's pretty impossible to fathom who exactly is doing what. By the end of the album it becomes of little importance as to who or what is producing the sounds because there is such clear purpose, power and intent, from the AK47 like battering of 'Tolmavuo' to the organesque tonal tiding of closing track 'Manana', that you can only sit back and admire such finely crafted passages of sound. --simon harris.

:: Mika Vainio & Lucio Capece/Trahnie - Editions Mego/Groove Attack/A-Musik. 

blackdice.repoREPO is the 5th studio album from Brooklyn fuzzmongers Black Dice. The Brothers Copeland and Aaron Warren have spent almost a decade extracting the worst possible sounds from a half broken heap of pedals and adding in some kind of half broken bashed out beat or the kind of woozy synth trash that could melt Jean Michel Jarre's face off from 20 paces. In this sense Black Dice fans will get exactly what they expect from this record and after such a long period together they have gotten unsurprisingly good at it. They have opted not to expand in any way on their previous works like 'Creature Comforts' and 'Load Blown' in favor of sticking to the same formulaic frazzlemadazzle that has grossed them such a fan base. Tracks like 'La Cucaracha' are as humerous and daft as they are poppy and infectious. The album is patched together by some cruddy rhythm loops (see 'Ultra Vomit Craze' and 'Lazy TV') that hold your attention whilst the kitschy sounds plundered from the Radio, TV and no doubt the internet drift around in a state of psychosis. This music is somehow a bit wrong, but i dont think that they really care. And why should they when they can sound this careless/wretched and deeply precise/splenderful in equal measure? --simon harris.

:: Black Dice/Repo - Paw Tracks/Indigo. 

roedeliusFirst released thirty years ago, in 1979, Jardin au Fou is a collection of gentle instrumental pieces by Hans Joachim Roedelius,  also a member of Cluster and Harmonia. The deceptively-simple melodies are mainly constructed with piano and keyboards, but cello, flute, guitar and beats also surface occasionally. The overall impression is something like the gentler instrumental tracks on Brian Eno's Another Green World but without Eno's characteristically spiky sense of irony. Instead Roedelius' music has a musicianly, meditative quality. Roedelius' liberal use of 3/4 and 6/8 time signatures lends a soft carnivalesque quality to his quintessentially European sense of melody and harmony. Drawing inspiration from the French romantics, his melodies also recall folk music and never forget that the idea of dance and the movement of the human body is at the root of all music. "Le Jardin" features birdsong alongside its stately piano and organ; there is a pastoral feel throughout this disc and a sense of refuge sought from the harsh clang and scrape of modern life, which by implication surrounds the bubble of serenity that Jardin au Fou represents. It would be difficult to find a wasted note here or any moment of unnecessary extravagance. To contemporary ears, perhaps more accustomed to the bliss-though-surrender of noise and metal, this collection might at first seem slight, or lightweight, but allowed time and space to work its charm, Jardin au Fou remains fresh three decades after coming into the world. -- nick ilott.

:: Roedelius: Jardin au Fou - Bureau B/Indigo.

pvreIfication, the latest release from Pure, otherwise known as Peter Votava, is seven tracks which stand independently as pieces of work. It is an electronic album with an ever changing background peppered with an array of less subtle noises. Instruments weave and drag around their own stretched sounds and generated electronic hums. Votava has come from a DJ background, through techno and rave, to a now more drone based sound. The voices of such musicians as Ilse Gold, Erich Berger, Alexandra von Bolzn and The Heart Chamber Orchestra exist somewhere in Ification. Pure has twisted and shaped them to create his work. The record opens with “Fire” and a sledge hammering guitar repeated over and over with subtle variations in tone and length. “After the Bomb”, a notable contrast, has a nice background tone pierced with high high pitches. It leads appropriately to “Approximation” in which has the effect of an orchestra stretched to a thin line under ominous brass blasts. Ification continues in a similar fashion with further sampled and drill like sounds. “End”, in particular, harmonised really well with my aging fridge. In general the tracks are long and become seemingly longer through lack of variety. There is little development within the tracks which makes it sound thin. Maybe that is the point. -- anna johnston
:: Pvre/Ification - cronicaelectronica.org/A-Musik.