Beins / Rowe
(Erstwhile - ERSTLIVE01) CD $14.40 (Out-of-stock)
The first volume in Erstwhile live series took place during the first night of outside shows in the Berlin half of AMPLIFY 2004: addition. This was their first set as a duo since the sessions which resulted in Grain (Zarek, 2001). “Rowe (credited with guitar, electronics) seems to be responsible for the buzzsaw-encountering-sheet-metal racket and fastforward/rewind activity,” Exclaim muses, “while Beins (percussion) contributes everything from tingling bells to rusty playground-equipment shrieks. The results are a terrific earcleanser of an album, a salutary blast of spleen and perversity…”
Grain
(Zarek) Used CD $5.00
The “first track is one of Rowe’s liveliest performances for several years,” asserts The Wire, while “the second track finds him in more customary static mode, with Beins sounding like he’s arc-welding as a distant thunderstorm subsides into an eerie metallic calm. Beins’s work is more about friction than percussion: his masterly use of polystyrene blocks and small stones to create sustained timbres seems to have no precedent, except perhaps AMM’s Eddie Prévost, of course. The final live track is a tour de force: at first Rowe seems content to lead from the rear, his radio emerging imperceptibly from behind a cloud of cymbals, before he gradually warms up and unleashes a volley of dazzling rattles and buzzes while Beins’s close-mic’d bass drum cranks up the tension.” From 2001
Mensch Mensch Mensch
(Alt.Vinyl - AV054) LP $22.50 (Out-of-stock)
Electro-acoustic explorations by these two Berlin-based composer-performers, who draw on musique concrète, free improv, noise and industrial, utilizing synth, field recordings, trumpet and percussion. 180g vinyl. Edition of 250.