The Experimental Thread

Oval - "94 Diskont" (1995)

These Germans were pretty much responsible for putting the niche electronic subgenre of glitch on the global music map with this, their third full-length album. I have to admit that, despite enjoying other glitch releases over the years, I've struggled with "94 Diskont" this week & it's been more about the format of this music than the quality that the record contains. You see, all five tracks included are well produced but they sound very much like the subgenre title in that they could well be a computer glitch that's been allowed to play out for an extended period & I simply can't find enough conventional melodic or structural reference points to find actual enjoyment in it.

For fans of Fennesz, Tim Hecker & Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto.

3/5

The Gerogerigege - Instruments Disorder

Genres: Harsh Noise

Listening to noise albums helps drown out unwanted sounds when doing outside work, so I've kind of forced my subconscious to become interested in critiquing noise music.  Just started this iconic one, and it's not the first of their albums I've heard.  I heard a couple of their "Senzuri" ones ages ago in prep for this and later forgot.

Current top 10 noise albums (not including noise rock, pop, punk, etc., unless the album falls under both straightforward noise and one of these genres.)

1. Uboa - Impossible Light (100)

2. Full of Hell & Merzbow - Sister Fawn (100)

3. Man Is the Bastard - The Lost MITB Sessions (100)

4. Uboa - The Origin of My Depression (97)

5. Cabinet - Hydrolysated Ordination (96)

6. Full of Hell & Merzbow - Full of Hell & Merzbow (96)

7. The Caretaker - Everywhere at the End of Time: Stage 5 (95)

8. Lingua Ignota - Caligula (95)

9. Uboa - All the Dead Melt Down as Rain (95)

10. Alder Deep - Chapter 2: Kobolds, Goblins, Cretins, Fiends (95)

WHOA.  Didn't think I had ten five-stars.

Ground-Zero - Consume Red (1997)

Genres: Drone, Exp. Rock, Noise

On my noise ventures I had been putting off an album I've been needing to get to for a while, Ground-Zero's Consume Red.  Now I've heard one of their albums before, Revolutionary Pekinese Opera Ver.1.28, and despite giving it a perfect score, I didn't go back to any of their other albums because it seems that each album goes for a different collective of genres.  And I also put this one off during my noise studies because I wasn't sure from the genre-tagging that it would start out with the noise I needed to drown out certain outside work.  But just look at the RYM tagging for the secondaries: Turntable Music, Free Improvisation, Noise, Korean Folk Music, Fusion Gugak, Sound Collage, Sanjo, Totalism.  All of that in an experimental hour?  Sounds like heaven to a Zappa fan like me!

At least the idea did.  The first twenty five minutes are dominated by the abuse of the same few jazz notes over and over and over again with only slight instances of noise building up overtime.  It got so utterly infuriating.  And then finally, almost halfway through the album's single-track hour, it finally brings in a lot more noise and some rock drumming.  Now at first they're welcome additions, but them the combination of the three practically refuses to change pace once the three are in place, so once again I'm stuck with a drawn-out work that completely fails to utilize the best of Ground-Zero's proven experimental prowess.  You can barely even hear the fourth major component, the shamisen.  For twenty minutes this goes on until around the 45-minute mark, where it mostly becomes a noise album.

I was really hoping for something much more insane and much less repetitive, but I didn't get that.  This feels like pussy when compared to Ver. 1.28.  How did this get nearly a 4.00 score with almost 7,000 on RYM?  I certainly don't know, but it failed to be an atmospheric experience and only got to the mania in the last 12 minutes, so I left largely dissatisfied that the genre-tagging caves in on itself via the repetition and annoyance.

58

Merzbow - Metalvelodrome

Genres: Harsh Noise

On my noise ventures I found myself mostly driven by the challenge of finding truly artistic music from the more extreme variants: harsh noise and harsh noise wall. And I've found some that I've liked, but mostly when it plays with other genres like a Uboa album. But this 4-hour Merzbow album is at the top of the RYM harsh noise charts. Was that a good sign, or is this an album that only the ones who would listen to four hours would finish anyway, thus allowing less people who see problems with it to even rate it in the first place? Since I have the capacity to enjoy noise music and am mostly a rocker, I felt I had to say something.

And this is what I have to say: it's definitely the latter. If Merzbow, a man who had been doing noise albums for 15 years up to that point, wanted to make a 4-hour behemoth of ugly sound, then he should've done more to play with the sound. By this point, the vast majority of noise tricks pulled in these four hours can be done by literally anybody if you ask me. I've heard imitators that were much more intriguing. It starts out cool, but the entire first half is just generic noise music at this point. Now a lot of wacky and cool ideas are played in the 45-minute track, Another Crash for High Tide. The weird sounds, the vocal effects, it's all pretty cool. But there's so much packed into it that most of these ideas only get about 20 seconds of album time. And the worst part? THIS SONG STARTS AFTER THE FIRST TWO HOURS ARE OVER. In other words, it's two hours of generic noise before creativity has a say. Why the hell didn't Merzbow flesh all of these ideas out into better songs throughout the whole? That's pretty infuriating, especially since it goes back to generic noise for the rest of it, mostly.

This four hour behemoth needs a serious re-evaluation on RYM by more serious and diversified explorers. This is a pretty standard noise album for most of it with some creativity attached, going into unholy lengths to get 1 job done for three out of the four hours. Merzbow would do much better in the close-by following years, so while this album shouldn't need to be heard, historically speaking, it doesn't deserve to be the highest rated harsh noise album on RYM at all, let alone any website that covers noise music. If you wanna hear REAL Merzbow music, try Electric Salad.

52

Glenn Branca - "Lesson No. 1" E.P. (1980)

The debut solo release from this Pennsylvania guitarist sees him coming up with a completely new musical concept that's based predominantly on theoretical concepts. Totalism sees an artist adding additional energy & rhythmic complexity to the ideas presented in the classical genre of minimalism & Branca pulls it off with utmost ease here, although it has to be said that this doesn't always amount to an enjoyable listen. The first of the two lengthy tracks ("Lesson No. 1 for Electric Guitar") is a beauty & sees the concept presented in an easily palatable & highly professional format that's built around repeated, rhythmically-phasing melodic phrases. The noisy & musically awkward twelve-minute B side ("Dissonance") doesn't fair nearly as well though & ruins the release's chances of making a marked impression on me. Still... I'm interested to hear what Branca would become in the future so I can see myself checking out some more of his work in the future.

For fans of Manuel Göttsching, This Heat & Steve Reich.

3/5

Hermann Nitsch - "Island: Eine Sinfonie in 10 Sätzen" (1980)

There are times when all serious music lovers subject themselves to long periods of aural pain in the interest of expanding their musical horizons & that is exactly what I've done this week while sitting through a full three active listens to this 3 hour 43 minute experimental release from Austrian composer Hermann Nitsch. "Island" is built on a concept that combines the early drone sound with modern classical arrangements however it regularly crosses over the border between music/art & meaningless noise for long periods, leaving the vast majority of listeners wondering just what in the actual fuck they're listening to with the sounds being emitted from the speakers often resembling the members of five symphony orchestras all warming up through completely disparate exercises before a show. When it comes together, you get some deep, unusual & quite cerebral drones but when it doesn't it's just a total mess &, given the really long track durations, you're stuck with it for what seems like an eternity before the next piece shows up, often providing more of the same. The length of this release is absolutely absurd as there are nowhere near enough different ideas to sustain even half of the run time. I'm afraid this one has just gone straight over my head, despite my enjoyment of a few of the thirteen pieces.

For fans of John Cage, Cornelius Cardew & Terry Riley.

2/5

Roland Kayn - "Tektra" (1984)

Now, this release was a serious challenge given its enormous 292-minute run time which takes up 6 LPs or 4 CDs. It's taken me a full week (or more) to get through three full listens but the effort was thoroughly rewarded with one of the most forward-thinking, ground-breaking releases I've ever encountered. If you like drone then look no further because most of this material is utterly transcendent. I find it to be utterly ridiculous that "Tektra" was released way back in 1984. 

For fans of Bernard Parmegiani, Eliane Radigue & Alvin Lucier.

4.5/5

Heavensouls - Debut

Genres: Electronic, Experimental

What with heavensouls releasing a new jazz-funk album of all things, and considering its grand reception so far, I figured it was time to see just how eclectic this half of Sidepieces was.  This is one of those kinds of albums that makes a point of showcasing creativity in almost pronographic display, yet it also becomes a very clever mixed back.

For example, track 1, 4.99 a Pound, was way too short, needing expansion for such a good direction.  The second track was too long, but had a brilliant mix of radio bumpers, hip hop, Merzbow noise and raw chaos.  I love it when electronic albums go all over the place.  Track 3, named 0, gives us some ambience with a slight hint of noise and a careful dose of reverb, the kind of tape music sound that I was introduced to via acts like William Basinski and The Caretaker.  When I heard this track, I realized, I kinda missed that sound, eventually becoming a house track.  As well, it's so fitting to have this kind of track follow up such a whirlwind of sensory overload a la I Talk to the Wind from In the Court of the Crimson King.  Now the middle house section is boring and dull at first, but the last third adds some backdrops which aren't so wild but deliver a proper dosage of character.  At the end of the day, this was a proper EDM song IMO, boasting the careful shifts that were pioneered by early EDMers, notably The Future Sound of London in my head.  Next comes a 2.5 minute track called Fallin Off, which I could only hope isn't too short like the opener.  This one uses extra-dense sampling, atmosphere and two shifts in the middle to deliver a thick and active track which had more than enough to say in two minutes without overwhelming, and yet, left room for a quiet noise outro for the next 30 seconds.  Another proper piece.  The first half ends with Love You Down, which is a nice and soft piece with clear but low female pop vocals, which are nice to hear.  They're justified not only by the unpredictability of the album, but by the ambient instrumentation which goes in hand with the first act of 0.  But, it's a repetitive five minutes, so the general idea was a good one, but the delivery needed work.

The second half begins with the five minute Cold, which makes a point of repeating, glittery instrumentation and piano, like a remix of a Final Fantasy track.  No complaints here.  It's a very nice tune which puts images of ponds and fountains in my head, just the kind of thing that was missing from an album that seems to have everything already.  And yes, the five minutes were repetitive, but more atmospheric and a little more creative than before.  The prettiness and ambience return with stronger force on Manderan.  I was beginning to miss the density, so I'd say that the return of it was pretty well times, especially when you have a good female singer and a deep voiced male duking it out at the same time to the ever-growing ambiance.  It eventually returns practically everything we've heard so far in just a seven-minute runtime, and it even managed to do so on the four minute mark.  It was all a jouryney, a proper journey through music's full capabilities.  After four and a half minutes, we get the nature recordings of bird chirps and some actual jazz in the mix.  In other words, Heavensouls is telling us...

I love jazz so much.

Next comes a cool jazz cover of What a Wonderful World, but recorded to sound like the music and a bunch of people in a building are both talking over the singer, as if this was a simple bootleg recording.  Clever.  Once again, Heavensouls proves that there's even more for this album to do.  The final track, Often, makes a point of sparcity, creating a whole other mood for the album, one full of despondence, concern and empty apocalyptica.  Honestly, from a compositional opinion, this was too sparse to really consider a proper big bang for the album.

This is an album of strong hits and near-misses that makes a point of having everything, and mostly rocks it while occasionally struggling with a consistent tone a la Thembi by Pharaoh Sanders.  Still, the track Mandelan is one of the best experimental tracks I've ever heard.  This was a very bold step for a debut and am now all the more interested in Heavensouls and his past and future ventures.

85/100