Three Things
(Adhuman) CD $14.00
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.
Roads
(Krim Kram) CD $13.00
Solo percussion by this noted resident of the worlds of free improvisation, new music, electro-acoustic music, and noise, described by Decy as “subtle, generous, extremely dexterous and keeps showing up some new layer with each listen.”
LUCIANO MAGGIORE / MICHAEL SPEERS
Necesse Est Numquam Revelare Stercorem Tuum
(Krim Kram) CD $13.00
Speers works with natural and synthetic sound material — drums, computer, microphones, feedback; the use of speakers and playback devices (samplers, CD players, walkmans, tape recorders) characterize the work of Maggiore, whose main interests include mechanisms of sound diffusion, performance, repetition, endurance, non-human animal languages, dance, and folklore. Together the duo’s music contemplates the kernel of black metal.
Can Yr Ysgol
(Krim Kram) Cassette $9.75
Rhythmic sounds both dissonant and harmonious by Lauren de Sá Naylor and Hilary Knott, who use voices, loops, field recordings, bells, drums and harmoniums. c60
Cup Queen
(Chocolate Monk - choc.558) CDR $8.00
“The energy of the Queen is situated between the 4 (security) and 5 (appeal of an ideal). She rests upon something that has been established, all the while knowing a new point of view exists. She is a pragmatic and active figure who knows her symbol well. She can become excessive, submerged by her element. Sea, shower, rain water hit the edges of their boundary spaces — shore, bath, polythene roof — and LDSN speaks variously on the subject of the water element, receptivity, fluidity and time, care and recovery. These are spare, playful compositions with vocal loops, field recordings, wind, strings, bells, birdsong, breath, claps, slaps, percussion and a mesmerizing quote from Ursula le Guin: ‘Neither grief nor pride had so much truth in them as did joy.’ ” Edition of 60
Ark Drane
(Chocolate Monk - choc.587) CDR $8.00
“Ark Drane’s debut is a collaboration between Karen Constance and Kristafer Abplanalp. ‘Hangnail Persistence’ dips the listener to a loping gate that fords up through the swales and circles round the midden, like if Brothers Quay whittled dub music out of wooden blocks forging a beat of wet earth stirred in memory dimly carried to bed at night on rainy days. ‘Laugh like Midwestern Wind Chimes’ is the resonating afterimage of finding yourself in an unfamiliar neighborhood liquor store asking for a six-pack of Peroni, only to be told that Peroni used to live down the block but has been locked up for ten years. ‘Monks on a Train’ produces the aural translation of the following Cormac McCarthy sentence: ‘Wasps pass through the laddered light of barn slats in a succession of strobic moments, between black and black, like fireflies in the serried upper gloom.’ Most of the source material to ‘Bloodline Stitches’ was reportedly recorded in a Kentucky hospital’s Cardiology Wing of an Intensive Care Unit, summer of 2021. From what this listener can discern, black husks of pupae swarm the purloined insurance agents rendering portraits of their noses, caked in enamel, framed in gold, with miniscule chains to fit under their clothes.” —Crozier Lathrop. Edition of 60
ALI ROBERTSON / NICHOLA SCRUTTON
The Longest Forty Miles
(Chocolate Monk - choc.589) CDR $8.00
“The last train is at 11:30pm and I wouldnae recommend the night bus. It’ll be full of Lothian troglodytes, Cumbernauld carbuncles and folks what like their improv idiomatic. Best hop in our taxi. It willnae be cheap and, with two drivers pulling in opposite directions on the same wheel, you’ll be unsure which way is up, let alone which is East or West. Ensure you’re wearing your seat belt on this tour of the Scottish Central Belt as your escorts are predisposed to unleashing belters for strings, gobs, and kerfuffle, and you’ll get pure pelters if you dinnae subscribe to their version of the Highway Code.” Edition of 60
Artificial Stupidity
(Chocolate Monk - choc.588) CDR $8.00
Andrew Sharpley got busy during the lovely lockdowns of 2021/22. Robots wake up, go to sleep, new age, old age, a plague on all your houses, wellness, sickness, gloop or goop? William Shatner, the Dalai Lama, facemasks, COVID, conspiracy nonsense, bad jokes, live in a bubble, live outside a bubble, who cares? The whole nine yards in 38 minutes. With some added Valery Pasanau. Sharpley reckons it is “a not very weird record of a very weird time. A kind of relic.” But it surely lifted the spirits of all in Wino Lodge. A repeater for sure. Comes with sticker. Edition of 60
Fug Gum, Vol. 5
(Freakdom - FO3) CDR $8.00
Twenty-two tracks by today’s most nimble audio sherpas guide you to the apex of sour. Good luck coming down. Mind the partially thawed corpses, if you please. Tracks by Le Scrambled Debutante, Slums, Tom Recchion, Knurl, Zebra Secrets, Hastings of Malawi, Comfort Link, Puppet Wipes, Rump State, vrg bls, Tommy Birchett, Porest, Samara Lubelski, Mannlicher Carcano, Thomas Carnacki, Rin Peisert, Clarence Bison, Black Bikini, Microminx, Venison Whirled, Magneticring and Dr. Bruce Russell. Artwork by Ted Trager. Edition of 100. Volume 6 coming soon on Chocolate Monk
The Guiding Fever
(Chocolate Monk - choc.590) CDR $8.00
“Huffing in trilling devices and electrical crackle. Soothed by meditative crunk and mechanical whir. A feeling of paper scraps, lint and carpet debris stuck to feet and the infamous one-note pianist has Mod Podge slavered down his front. Prophetic glitching with accompanying echo throb is giving me a bad itch. The grunts and whelps of gobs repeating on themselves. What did the headshrinkers see? Static tone float trembles and there is a weird shuffler in the corner. Bedroom wheeze and half empty toner. Skittering tapes with warm warble. Is that dirty device mechanics or electronic sputs? A dank gutter man. I’ve got the groo.” This compilation celebrates that fever feeling, when cognitive processing is simmered to shit and, for better or worse, one idea, sentence, image or sound gets stuck in your delirious head. Tracks by Vitjist (aka Witcyst), Karen Constance, Ida K (aka D Coelacanth), The Daimon & The Sloth, Slums and Soft Migraine.” Edition of 50