Album: V/A – The Wire Tapper 22 (The Wire Magazine 2009)

The 22nd Wire Tapper comes with this month’s copy of the mag. It’s one of the strongest and most diverse yet – a great improvement on #21. Rather than write a long spiel, here’s 20 tracks in 20 sentences.

1. Stearica feat. Dälek. Big beats, distorted viola and all round heaviness combined with MC Dälek at his most downbeat, a magnificent start.
2. Arturas Bumsteinas String Quartet. Effective combination of melancholy drones and free violin lines.
3. Shits and Giggles. Stoned hippies with a deluded sense of their own wit and neatly summed up by the first four letters of their name.
4. Zenlo. Primitive sounding collision between early Cabaret Voltaire and Little Walter – great stuff.
5. Marcus Maeder. Near total silence punctuated by occasional quiet electronic rumbles.
6. Yoshio Machida. An excerpt from a live improvised piece using steel pans (they sound like steel drum – the same thing?) that turns something that’s usually joyous and danceable into something almost eerie and otherworldly – probably best heard in its unedited form for full effect.
7. Tomoyoshi Date & Corey Fuller. Beautiful poetic meditations over a melancholy backdrop of piano and electronics that are moving even if you don’t speak a word of Japanese.
8. Elodie Lauten. Excellent rolling, tumbling piano improvisation.
9. Clang Syne. Crepescular folk-noise that’s a little like Baxters’ era Jefferson Airplane but looser and darker; potentially a real find.
10. Climax Golden Twins. A little lame – Chinese scales played on acoustic guitars with no real gusto or tempo and ending up sounding like a learner’s piece.
11. Netherworld. Right up my street, this, a hypnotic, classical loop-based concoction of field samples of glaciers that slides along eerily until its sudden stop.
12. 10-20. An M M & M favourite, “Athens” is another winner that sets off like a bunch of pinball machines on speed before it begins to clear into a heavy machine-like rhythm.
13. Franck Vigroux. Wow! One for Pan Sonic fans as electronic pulses are swathed in bursts of noise like high velocity wind, building up a momentum all the way until the circuits seem to fizz and burn with electricity overload.
14. Arrington de Dionyso. A scary combination of roaring throat-singing, pounding drums, fucked-up organ and bursts of reed – like Beefheart crossed with a very angry grizzly bear (the animal, not the band)
15. Pink Mountain. A fun and gloriously heavy combination of pounding psychedelic doom metal and “Astronomy Dominie” type vocal harmonies.
16. Jørgen Plaetner. Nearly fifty year old electronic music based on oscillators and frequency pitching that doesn’t sound nearly as dated as it might, in fact it’s dark and engrossing.
17. Angkorwat. Pleasing laptop funk with strange wailing voices that sounds like it was recorded through a battered transistor radio.
18. Abreator. Bass-heavy Autechre beats combined with a droning analogue organ melody that gives the speakers a good shaking.
19. Oki Dokie. 74 seconds of machine driven hardcore – the missing link between Minor Threat and Nine Inch Nails
20. Keyboard Choir. A beautiful way to end proceedings with a nocturnal, Eno-esque keyboard melody full of a cosmic sadness.

Tracks
1. Stearica feat. Dälek – Occhio (edit)
2. Arturas Bumsteinas String Quartet – Karlstad
3. Shits and Giggles – Ripcord
4. Zenlo – The Crab
5. Marcus Maeder – Quadrate
6. Yoshio Machida – Setagaya Art Museum, Sep 28 2008
7. Tomoyoshi Date & Corey Fuller – Seiya
8. Elodie Lauten – Cat Counterpoint
9. Clang Syne – A Death and a Vision
10. Climax Golden Twins – Chinese
11. Netherworld – Aurora Borealis
12. 10-20 – Athens
13. Franck Vigroux – New York
14. Arrington de Dionyso – Rasa Sentuh
15. Pink Mountain – Ditch Witch
16. Jørgen Plaetner – Beta 1962-63
17. Angkorwat – Big / Little Edie
18. Abreator – Flagg
19. Oki Dokie – The Monad
20. Keyboard Choir – Tokyo at Night

Websites
thewire.co.uk

The Wire 297

Fantastic cover to this month’s mag (although my scanner has given it an odd colouration – don’t know why). The cover article, “Unofficial Channels – A Tour of Music’s Unauthorised Domains”, seems like an opportunity botched to me. It’s a collection of short articles about music produced and heard outside of the normal album / gig parameters – spontaneous performance, mix tapes, cassette culture, CDRs, file-sharing, blogs etc, and is a real mixed bag. Rob Young’s piece on the early English pub folk scene is very good, and there are interesting pieces by Joseph Stannard on home-made compilation tapes and Simon Reynolds on MP3 blogs. But there is also the usual pseudo-intellectual twaddle by the likes of Mark Fisher and David Keenan, and so-what? personal reminiscences by Clive Bell and Byron Coley.

What there isn’t, is any input from the sort of musicians, bloggers, labels and fans who are actively seeking to find new ways to get music across. Which would be a hell of a lot more useful, but obviously requires more effort than a 2000 word space filler.

At its worst, the Wire can come across like Mojo for the intelligentsia. Instead of the reams of paper given over to ‘heritage rock’ acts like the Beatles, the Stones, Dylan and the Clash, you get the same kind of fan-boy frothing over Cecil Taylor (check the ridiculous Masthead by Tony Herrington), the Grateful Dead, Derek Bailey, Throbbing Gristle et al.

At its best, of course, it still provides the finest coverage of new music, and moments to inspire the reader to investigate music hitherto unknown to him/her. What’s disappointing about this month’s issue is that it promises much of the latter, but delivers a surfeit of the former.

Album: V/A – The Wire Tapper 20 (The Wire 2008)

One of the joys of the biannual Wire Tapper compilations is their unpredictability. This latest edition (number 20 – given away with October’s issue of the Wire magazine) is no different. A glance at the track list brought nothing but an expression of bemused ignorance (or ignorant bemusement – whichever sounds less gormless) to my face. Of the 19 acts compiled, I wasn’t even vaguely aware of around three quarters – and had heard precisely none. This feeling of virgin territory being trodden leaves the listener no option but to approach with a totally open mind, unencumbered by any prior knowledge. It’s a bit like the magazine’s Invisible Jukebox feature, except that you have little chance of identifying any of the artists.

As ever the byword is eclecticism, and the quality is all over the map. The balance is happily weighed in favour of the great over the not-so-great. The least interesting and most conservative tracks all come out of the jazz and improv fields. Mike Osborne’s “Pure” could have been recorded forty years ago. It’s a harmless enough fast bop tune, with echoes of those classic seventies Quincy Jones cop show soundtracks like Ironside. The solos, though, are just fast runs through scales – and the whole piece just sounds so crushingly predictable. Random Touch’s contribution is typical of so much improv. You know exactly how it’s going to go from the first bar. It’s self-indulgent, and yet as hidebound by convention as any production line teen pop record. Lothar Ohlmeier and Isambard Khroustaliov’s piece suffers from the same problem, although at least their track gets more interesting towards the end.

I’m not implying that free jazz and improv are somehow inferior to other types of music, just that their champions appear less able to sort out the run-of-the-mill from the worthwhile. Orso’s “Warm Up” is a pleasingly loose limbed, folky free jazz work out. A_Dotigny manages to combine a scratchy, improvised jazz sound with the squelching 303 of acid house. With blasts of baritone sax and a tinny electro-blizzard, it shouldn’t work, but somehow does. Rarescale’s flute-based improvisation is also good, helped along by its noir-ish setting.

On the rockier side of things, there is Formication’s “The Mountains are Machines”, which sounds exactly like the title suggests it ought – a pounding, granite-hard rhythm. Punck and Tertium Quid both contribute good examples of improvised rock. Punck’s is proggy, warm and melodic, with a lovely acoustic figure emerging half way through. It’s let down by a clumsy edit. Tertium Quid’s piece is more no-wave / post-punk guitar funk, with a dark groove and blasts of guitar noise. MoHa!’s machine-punk combines in-your-face riffing and staccato blasts of noise to great effect. It’s a startling, bruising track.

I like Grails’ “Reincarnation Blues”. It’s a piece of bombastic, arabesque prog – pleasingly gonzoid, but also quite atmospheric. The warped, symphonic weirdness of Paavoharju is a little unsettling. Crackle’s excellent percussion-heavy space-funk has echoes of 23 Skidoo, or ACR on amphetamines (with added sub-bass). Wounded Knee’s looped throat-singing, and repetitive nonsense lyric is bizarre, but oddly affecting.

The world of electronica is, perhaps, a bit under-represented. RJ Valeo’s click/pulse electro-minimalism is similar to Carsten Nicolai’s stuff. Micronormous’ “Rainland” sounds like Air tackling a spaghetti western soundtrack. Zavoloka add cello and drone to a template of Kraftwerkian elecro-pop. It works very well. “Ghost Signal 2” by Anthony Kelly and Dave Stalling is a fragile, distant piece composed around radio noise and static.

Best of a varied, and generally strong, bunch for me is “At Dawn (Vogel)” by Pantaleimon. It has a crystal-clear, sweet, slightly melancholy folk-pop vocal juxtaposed with dark, rumbling drones – a combination of innocence and menace. In the end, it’s just a stunningly beautiful song.

So another Wire Tapper, another bunch of new names, many of whom I definitely want to hear more from. Job done, really.

The magazine itself features an in-depth piece on cover star Richie Hawtin, and a fascinating primer on Neil Young’s less commercial ouevre by Joseph Stannard that makes you want to go back to the records. And loads of other stuff too.

Tracks
1 ZAVOLOKA Inhale
2 CRACKLE Heavy Water
3 FORMICATION The Mountains are Machines
4 PAAVOHARJU Pimeänkarkelo
5 ORSO Warm Up
6 A_DONTIGNY Tatline
7 RJ VALEO Monday Night
8 RARESCALE Apparition and Release
9 MIKE OSBORNE Pure
10 RANDOM TOUCH Tripping So Fancy
11 PUNCK Piallassa (Red Desert Chronicles)
12 GRAILS Reincarnation Blues
13 MICRONORMOUS Rainland
14 PANTALEIMON At Dawn (Vogel) Andrew WK remix
15 LOTHAR OHLMEIER / ISAMBARD KHROUSTALIOV Scratch
16 TERTIUM QUID Early Disturbance
17 MOHA! Too Smart Enough to Think
18 ANTHONY KELLY & DAVID STALLING Ghost Signal 2 (Wire remix)
19 WOUNDED KNEE My Wooden Cupboard

Album: Wire Tapper 19

The Wire magazine’s biannual smorgasbord of contemporary sounds comes free with the April edition of the magazine. As ever, it’s an eclectic 20 track romp through all things avant garde, experimental and esoteric. I don’t know if it’s just me, but are these things getting mellower with the passing years? The quality control department certainly seems more vigilant than it used to be. There are some superb pieces on the CD.

But first the clunkers. To be fair, there’s nothing truly awful. The Phog Masheen track “Survey Of Brutality” has an interesting genesis. It was recorded using contact mikes on the valves of a trumpet. The result, though, is less interesting – pretty much a barrage of formless noise. Japan’s Setsubun Bean Unit combine tuba and vibraphone with a bouncy nursery school rhythm which shouts “look at me, I’m mad me!” which I find intensely irritating. There are a few other tracks which are OK, if nowt special. The live recording of GF Fitzgerald and Lol Coxhill dates back 33 years. It’s not altogether surprising that it’s taken until now to see the light of day. Alexei Borisov and Anton Nikkila’s laptop manipulations are also taken from a live recording. In the digital age, every damn musical fart seems to be considered deserving of a release. Nobody seems to be capable of self-editing any more – this track being a case in point, even if it is available only as a download.

Stop moaning – it’s free! OK, gripes over. There is a lot of excellent stuff here. Some are new names to me. For instance, Nico Muhly whose contribution “Mothertongue – Section 2” is a rich and warm chamber piece overlaid by a Babel-like babble of soprano voices (or multi-tracked voice). It’s both beautiful and unsettling, weird but comfortably familiar. Pink Skull’s funky techno meets free jazz meets electro-minimalism is impressive too. Of the more familiar names, Yellow6’s slightly spaghetti-western guitar drone is as impressive as ever. Talvin Singh’s east-west fusion rarely disappoints, and Mike Ladd’s contribution is a top drawer slice of jazz-rap. Finally I get to hear Our Sleepless Forest too. There’s been a hubbub of positive noise about the band for months now, usually accompanied with an aside that they are young enough to make the Arctic Monkeys seem like wizened old timers. “Nomads” is their contribution to Wire Tapper 19. And it’s very good indeed. It has echoes of Susumu Yokota as a muted skank rhythm underpins an ambient stroll through the babble of a tropical rain forest. Actually that makes it sound like one of those fucking awful ethno-ambient crusty acts from the mid nineties. It sounds nothing like that at all.

The mag itself has Gudrun Gut on the cover, plus Michael Rother (trying not to be horrible about Klaus Dinger and failing!), Benga, Robert Hood and Henry Cow (who I’ve always steered clear of because of a schoolmate who would insist on playing them, Hatfield & The North, Caravan and Gong at every opportunity – the horror!).

Tracks
1 OUR SLEEPLESS FOREST nomads
2 SNORKEL the conversation
3 NICO MUHLY mother tongue – section 2
4 GF FITZGERALD & LOL COXHILL echoes of duneden
5 XA CUTE FEAT. MIKE LADD survival of the vinyl
6 DANIEL FIGGIS VIA SOMADRONE 40 shades of figgis
7 FLUORESCENT GREY molten ghost
8 KAFFE MATTHEWS men being butterflies
9 ALEXEI BORISOV & ANTON NIKKILA engineer Strepetov’s curve
10 TALVIN SINGH piya milan
11 ILLUSION OF SAFETY wherewithall (for Lauren)
12 THE MASTER MUSICIANS OF HOP-FROG song of the south
13 PHOG MASHEEN survey of brutality
14 SETSUBUN BEAN UNIT gujo ondo
15 PINK SKULL u.g.uo.aaahhhhh
16 LOWDYNAMICORCHESTRA improvisation 1
17 LARS AKERLUND volt
18 TANGTYPE blank lackluster eyes…data takes over
19 YELLOW6 you can’t be everywhere he said
20 NEVER ENOUGH HOPE des moines