Voiceprints & Aircuts: Sound Poetry By Other Means
(Adhuman) CD $14.00
From a distinctly leftfield position relative to the gnarled, textural tape noise works of Nothing New Under the Sun cassette (Gift of Music, 2022), that guy from Melkings, Zwangsbeglucktertum, and Association Copy offers an obscure, bloody-minded take on Sound Poetry and voice-based sound art. “According to Enzo Minarelli, the Italian pioneer of Polypoetry,” says DeAngelo, “Every poet needs a theory. With pince-nez tilted towards nothing less than the failure of the avant garde to realize itself, Sound Poetry By Other Means utilizes the strategies of audio poems circa-mid 20th century as a vehicle for this virtual history tour. The various deficiencies, missteps, gear fuck ups and general atmosphere of ‘Why?’ all bleed into the smudged margins to reinforce the cart-before-horse nature of producing art indifferent to, nay, incapable of commodification within a cratering Marketplace of Ideas. While the message is by no means optimistic it is voiced in an unaffected, at times even joyous register befitting the paradox of post-End of History déclassé unfreedom. Although intended to be taken as a whole, the disc provides plenty of meat in the purely sonic form of alienation for audience members antagonistic to such prescriptive formalities.”
Dog Wearing Dracula Fangs
(Adhuman) CD $15.00
As if to kick the existing ideas of Syed Kamran Ali’s Harappian Night Recordings work into all new orbits of singularity, Dog Wearing Dracula Fangs wrenches a dense throng of voices, electronics and busted instrumentation thrashing and wailing through filters of avant-psychedelic glimmer, mock exotica and atrophied, fusion-esque sheen. A dry, mysterious spoken prose underpins the sonics, appearing to speak in terms of daunting geopolitical allusions in one breath, then glib, tongue-in-cheek piss-taking sarcasm the next. These narratives pull you immediately into what feels like an entire universe of vivid though scarcely penetrable imagery, begging to be decoded and explored in detail. Yet even through repeat listens of this enticing work it is difficult to fathom exactly the type of thinking this music has sprung from. Far too crude and homespun to be the product of arch cultural strategy, the blown-out fidelity is indicative of untarnished, DIY spontaneity and the willingness to let things emerge as they will. Clear as day from the moment of playback, however, is a confident, fully realized other-worldliness to this music that is anything but accidental.
Three Things
(Adhuman) CD $14.00 (Out-of-stock)
These long-term collaborators, known for multi-pronged activities as artists and organizers, have quietly but surely informed the shape of the United Kingdom’s experimental audio underground for many years. Under the guise of NOPAON, they developed a series of events and performances in which they realized scores by Alvin Lucier, Robert Bozzi, Ken Friedman, Emmet Williams, Walter Marchetti and of their own creation. Described by the duo as “unrewarding task-based actions” or simply “two people in a room, doing something” these outputs have resulted in an ongoing performance practice based on prompts, actions, and scenarios which they continue to explore. A persistent quality in Maggiore and Rice’s work is a willful embrace of humor and the acknowledgement of their performances as a basis for absurdity. This element runs throughout Three Things, starting with “Hissing for White Shoes (#6),” where an otherwise unremarkable recording of a drive around London is punctuated by loud hissing whenever their vehicle passes an unwitting participant in the street, their footwear acting as a prompt for the vocal intervention. The same sense of humor looms large in “Pocket Fascinator (#7)” where audio derived from EMS Stockholm’s Buchla synth is played back and re-recorded via mobile phone speakers in the duo’s pockets as they attempt to walk in sync with its pulses. “Phone Work,” the first piece realized outside of the project’s typical real-time approach, is a sequence of voice recordings exchanged via WhatsApp where they mimic each other’s contributions until all memory of the original has been lost. The results are set to synthesizer in a nod to the duo’s long-standing interests in electronic music as solo artists. The maddening audacity of Three Things is fundamentally driven by sincere observations of the historic avant-garde. At the heart of these recordings lurk conceptual strategies recalling the core methodological projects of Fluxus, classical sound poetry, field recording, electronic music, movement-based performance and contemporary composition. Their willingness to direct such methods toward nakedly silly outcomes whilst poking subtle fun at the emergent tropes of these cultures reinforces an entirely serious inquiry into the modern-day application of avant-garde technique in sound creation. When accepted in full, Three Things is a challenging, amusing assertion of genuine commitment to experimentation and aesthetic stress-testing.
Chimerism
(Adhuman) 2xCD $20.00
Based in Hamilton, Ontario, and operating with scant regard for the cultivation of listenership or exposure, Nathan Ivanco bears similarities to the mid-00s era of grimy USA basement noise and home taping, interpreted perhaps by the lo-fi obscurantism of fellow countrymen Korea Undok Group or the equally murky Makade Star outfit. Mangled, stripped-back samples are subjected to the crudest of electronic processing, while washed-out ambience saturated with tape hiss and eerie recurring motifs gently propel themselves across multiple tracks. Elsewhere more outwardly experimental and freeform works appear in the mix. Quiet sophistication is evident in the arrangements and pacing, which evoking the most classical instincts of concrete sound obsession even within such deeply homemade sonic environs. Presented in free-flowing sequence across both discs, the formerly distinct tracks play out in a longer form which lends new shape and context to the music. Despite sitting firmly in ‘reissue’ territory, Chimerism offers a refreshing angle from which to indulge in Shadow Pattern’s rough beauty and may well highlight areas of the project’s vision which have until now gone unnoticed. All music originally recorded during 2019-2023 and previously released on Hamilton Tapes and Radiant Clay Records
You Are Not Alone
(Adhuman) CD $15.00
Even within an already microscopic community of oddballs resident among Brighton’s experimental art and music underground, Teignmouth Electron has continually stood way out on its own through deceptively crafted, conceptually guided works drenched in fun, bizarre and often profound sentimental atmosphere. With You Are Not Alone, Maureen Hallomas — otherwise known for involvement in projects like Polly Shang Kuan Band, Rubber Demon, Leopard Leg, Men Oh Pause and more — takes us back in time via two archival pieces derived from tape recordings predating the official existence of the project. Material from a cassette made in 2001 is presented here as “From Beyond the Attic,” a pair of tracks in which a single possessed tape walkman acts as conduit for a symphony of broken electromagnetic noise and interference. Punctuating the murk are snatches of barely discernible radio broadcasts and, shockingly, nearby phone conversations somehow picked up and voyeuristically captured on the tape unbeknownst to the callers. Where these tracks are presented largely unedited and unadorned, “Science TAC” sees a more compositional strategy put to work, with Hallomas pulling apart, processing and rearranging a 1999 recording of herself and a friend improvising surreal skits and zero-competence musical performance.