RIYL: Brian Eno, The KLF, Deathprod, Klaus Schulze, Ekoplekz, driving at sunrise
Imagine a long weekend. You are looking forward to escaping the grind of city life, driving into the countryside for some much needed rest and recuperation. It is still dark as you finish packing the car, flick on yr headlights, and head for the hills. You can hear only the lulling rhythm of tires on cracked asphalt, and the quiet respiration of yr sleeping passengers. Dawn is on the horizon, as you enter the claustrophobic confines of a tunnel. Yr tires catch corrugated steel as the air-conditioning fills yr cabin with a claustrophobic whine.
Emerging from the tunnel, you are surprised to find the day has been rewound, and has been plunged into a second twilight. The air swirls with mustard green fogbanks, as single-engine planes leave criss-crossing chemtrails overhead. Yr not sure what’s happened, but it looks like the end of the world. As the fog begins to clear, you catch a glimpse of unexplainable clusters of colored lights.
On The Ever-Present Hum, a micro-release on the British cassette label Tapeworm, the shadowy Head Technician of Pye Corner Audio has created an abstract, metaphysical road-trip album. Like Kraftwerk or The KLF‘s Chill Out, The Head Technician uses his arsenal of analog synthesizers to recreate the sensation of driving down an open road, with a minimal set-up of two synths and a delay pedal that THT uses for live seances.
This is how boomkat describes the action:
Using a relatively stripped down set-up of a looping delay pedal and two synthesizers, he weaves gaseous harmonics and delicious, wavering melodies breathing slow and heavy with dusty particulates on the first side. A barely detectable subbass oscillation gives some sense of forward motion (or is it reverse?) while his patient strokes gently colour the atmosphere much in the manner of his live shows, evolving to a near sacred finale of woozy organ chords. However, Part 2 feels very different; much darker. Hovering drones ice out any warmth on a glacial, psychedelic melt into the cosmic singularity, offering the lifeline of a sliver of melody to grab onto while the darkness spirals around us.
Despite all the apocalyptic imagery, The Ever-Present Hum is a mostly soothing listening experience; it starts off beatless, formless, with a subtle bass thump imitating tires on pavement. The only reason this release turns ominous is the machine hums and industrial drones, that create a dystopian sci-fi vibe. To these noise-addled ears, even Pye Corner Audio’s static sounds gentle.
After 2012′s relatively clean Sleep Games, on Ghost Box Records, its refreshing to see PCA return to their murky analog origins. All the frequencies are lovingly smoothed out, when transferred to tape, making The Ever-Present Hum a meditative, hypnotic affair, perfect for late night dérive or early morning beatification.
The Head Technician inspires us with what can be done within confines, with a limited analog toolbox that forces melodicism and musicianship. He has created yet another interesting and abstract interior film, to get lost and wander around in.
This release was ridiculously limited, and is long gone at the source, (yet another reminded to quickly grab up anything by either Tapeworm or Pye Corner Audio), so we encourage you to seek this out and hear it, anyway you can.
Porto Ronco takes you to a desolate space-station; an anti-gravity ballet of expansive ruin from Patrick Sottrop, aka Kareem.
This is Kareem’s first outing into Eno-esque instrumental ambiance (Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks would be an obvious reference point for this work), the producer is better known for his oil-slicked hip-hop in the early 2000s. Kareem was lulled into silence for the latter half of the first decade, unsure of where or how to proceed, but was pulled back into action following some personal toil. He has returned refreshed and renewed, with something to say, as this is his third release in a year-and-a-half, for the blossoming THE DEATH OF RAVE label.
Porto Ronco has the decaying gothic ambiance most sought-after and prized, here at ForestPunk. Music for urban exploration, for getting lost amidst the concrete and rubble. I’m not sure if it’s just the synths he is using, obvious touchstone of vintage sci-fi, but Porto Ronco reminds me of the run-down space station in Solaris, suffused in green, grainy light. It has a similar sci-fi humanism, like moving images of a lost loved one, splashed unexpectedly across a surveillance screen. It’s uncanny, it gives you chills; its hard to put yr finger on, elusive, like the phantoms in Solaris. Constantly darting around corners.
Khareem is coming from a dubspace. Your ears are filled with echoes; it gives a feeling of eternity, of time running slowed-down, which just helps to reinforce the sensation of floating in dark-matter outer space, reflecting, remembering. This is maybe the soundtrack for the automaton in William Gibson’s Count Zero – a machine wondering what it is like to be human. Perhaps this is Patrick Sottrop’s dealing with death, processing through his machines.
In the boomkat press release, there was talk of Berlin’s steely gothic futurism: “an elusive Berlin spirit which has been lost with successive tides of weekending dunces in the Easyjet age; a metaphysical feeling or spectral presence that has long lain brooding in the city since Conrad Schnitzler’s earliest invocations and since percolated everywhere from Christina Kubisch’s radiant electromagnetic recordings to the gothic industrialism of Einstürzende Neubauten, thru the monotone ecstasy of Basic Channel and the etheric romance of Leyland Kirby in his Friedrichshain period.” It brings to mind the specter of Krautrock, a generation haunted by its’ parents past, and forced to move on, look forward. The buried emotions and repressed thoughts coming out through synthesizers and drum machines, there is a subconscious mourning beneath the polished chrome and sleek automobiles, a grieving machine, a soul in the code.
I would not precisely say, however, that Porto Ronco is an elegy, its more like a soundtrack to a sci-fi psychodrama. Khareem’s machines summon black wind, hissing radiator drones, knocking rhythms, rootless melodies. It contains some of Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works II; also reminds me of an obscure Jefre Cantu-Ledesma cassette from a couple of years ago, Floating Weeds, in its underwater atmosphere and masterful use of reverb and space. The overall effect is bent, blurred, rippling, except Kareem’s distortion is more like flickering static, degraded and destroyed, like its been run through a million circuit-boards. Porto Ronco is one 45-minute long soundscape to get lost in. It’s a slow, gradual metamorphosis, like a dream in a Ridley Scott film. It builds a weird, surreal world in yr mind.
That’s the thing with amorphous electronic music, it is not necessarily referencing things found on Earth, in every day life. You have nothing to relate it to, and the brain struggles to concoct visualizations. It forces you to be creative, to think of new things. It’s also part of why movie imagery is used so often, in that films using this type of music are some of the only way we have to relate to it; electronic music and sci-fi are interlinked, probably unable to be separated. But music happens within you, around you, doesn’t tell you what to think; its a subjective, introverted experience. Music also seems to have more of a direct link to the emotions, as well, which is part of what makes this record seem like the beating heart of sci-fi. It seems like things that are encountered visually are more analyzed, deconstructed; they can have an emotional impact, but its usually mediated by the brain, by the part of the mind that makes decisions. There’s more judgement, whereas sounds seem to link to more of a reptile, instinctive part of the mind: intuition.
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Porto Ronco was my introduction to the world of Kareem, the soundtrack to many insomniac rambles through urban jungle, lending my nights a grimey, cyberpunk sheen that i find most intriguing. It led me backwards to check out his material from the early 2000s, with his own Zhark International imprint, revealing an extensive underworld of European underground grit to explore. You can expect to hear more about this.
Ultimately, Porto Ronco does Dark Ambient better than dark ambient, without the hamfisted horrortropes that let you know when something is trying to be spooky. Instead, Kareem’s music is subtle and heartfelt, his machines dripping with emotionality. Patrick Sottrop is one of the most visionary musicians working in any genre, at the moment, constructing a nocturnal otherworld, with its own serene visions and infernal justice.
Porto Ronco is available from The Death Of Rave, on vinyl or download.
A ritual in the dark. Dead voices press at the inky blackness of the nearly vacant room – faint murmuring gibberish; unsense. The clock strikes 2; you dare not drop hands. You sit and wait for sunrise.
There’s a real reek of sulphur to this inaugural transmission from Robert Mitchell, released for free download by Bitsquare Records. With track names like ‘VOID’, ‘TRANSMISSION’, ‘SPIRITS’, ‘VISIONS’, ‘LEVIATHAN’; it seems that Dendrite intends to evoke aural witchcraft with every tool conceivable to a self-produced, droney, noise-y, improvised composer. You can hear the presence of loops, layered vocals, machine hums, banging racketing percussion; trying to guess the origins and methodology of each song is part of the intrigue of the listening experience. Time Immemorial is a basalt monolith of a record, immense and unbroken. It sets a mood and keeps you there; it seems to evoke vast empty space, radio telescopes, ghostly transmissions. One of the most remarkable of Mitchell’s abilities is his ability to create slowly morphing, continuous soundworlds – its uncanny how the pieces can bend and morph so subtly as to be unnoticeable. It creates the experience of yr inner world becoming unreliable, you can no longer trust yrself, yr senses. This is like a ritual evocation, but rather than being horned glowering high production devils, these are murky wispy ephemeral spirits of madness, spelling out gibberish on yr ouija board, whispering in yr ear.
Most of the events that transpire on this disc have a rather canned digital sheen to them, which makes me believe that it was probably self-produced at home, on a computer, never coming out the box, which gives it a lo-fi experimental edge, but it really could stand to have some bottom end (as is evidenced by labelmate Derek Piotr’s reworking of ‘SPIRITS’, at the end of the disc. The homemade quality of these recordings just adds to the air, but i’m curious to see what Robert Mitchell could get into, with a full-on recording studio and mastering job.
Dendrite is where Dark Ambient music meets harsh noise; there’s layers of hiss and grit that makes me drool through rotten fangs, and it is really something different than the usual fall-asleep-on-yr-synth-pad Lustmord clones. Add another element of ritualistic noise, with the levels of clanging gongs, scraping metal, modulated bells… it makes Time Immemorial sound like Funeral Folk favorites, Silvester Anfang, at times. In short, this is like nothing else going right now, and its slightly stupid that this is available for free. Check it now, before yr paying $40 for his vinyl runs.
Dendrite are adept at creating and sustaining a mood. Those that like to live in headphones, or have music perpetually looping, can leave this record on for days. I had the good fortune to have it playing, as atmospheric noise at a low volume, in the middle of the night, and two subsequent listens, wandering through desolate shadowy streets at 4:30 in the morning, through warehouse districts, watching trains rev up (pretty much the most ideal setting, for any kind of ritualistic dark noise). Dendrite put me deeply under his spell, with vague, indiscernible reveries playing behind my eyeballs. It’s a unique and powerful working, i think Robert Mitchell is really transmitting something. I didn’t want it to end; i wanted to lie under its leaden blanket for days.
Those that like deep space ambient, tape-collage invocations, EVP, shadowy YouTube clips with figures in the windows… add this to yr listening library. Its witchcraft.
More sounds from the concrete bunker, via Nick Edwards, sometimes known as Ekoplekz.
It seems as if Mr. Edwards must sleep in his studio, nestled in tangles of thick rubbery cables, lulled by blinking red-and-green LEDs. He’s released 12 albums and 6 eps under that guise since 2010, while recently instating the Nunton Complekz, The and Ensemble Skalectrik projects, as well. The man clearly has something to say. In a way, he is an Archetypal Noise Dude, releasing reams of semi-obscure/anonymous tape sculptures and concrete hymns, festooned with grim, gritty SF dystopian wrapping. It’s mysterious, ya know, not clouded with a bunch of personality. Yr not entirely sure WHAT’s going on, and in that, it makes you want to know more.
Ekoplekz’s music could be playing in a long, concrete fallout shelter, with blinking flickering fluorescents on the fritz, or it could be in the holographic waiting room, writing for a body to become available. Nick Edwards’ music seems ancient, archaic, yet of the future, as well. Is this the soundtrack for the archaic revival? A cyberpunk shamanism with robotic drum circles and pre-recorded prayers?
Edward’s is in love with machines. I would give one of my rotting teeth to get a look at his rig, to write down his signal chain, because it can be damn murky in here, and hard to tell what exactly the heck’s going on. You can realistically expect to hear shifting, dubby rhythm boxes, which he hand-manipulated and modifies with analog echo and delay devices, making an echoe-y dub drone that reminds me of the Stefan Betke, aka Pole’s, deteriorating machine riddims.
Another forebear whose name springs to mind is the spirit of Bryn Jones, the dearly departed Muslimgauze, who set the gold standard for fanatical home recording, a vague and shadowy agenda, and a relentless and unwavering fascination with THE BEAT and hypnotic trance riddims. Muslimgauze’s music was easier to place, however, with Jones’ almost cartoonist fixation with the Middle East and its affairs, hardwired with a corroded drum ‘n bass ethos and then blossoming out into an anenome forest of mutant buds. Ekoplekz’s music has less reference points, less acceptable signifiers, so one is forced to find one’s own descriptors, ways of relating, and actually make up for one’s self if it’s for you.
The thing with Ekoplekz’s music, and a whole breed of ashen producers, is that much of it is handmade, putting it in the noise realm, analog and irreproducable, related to experimental improvised musics of the 20th century. This is where the art gallery and the dancefloor come together, as a generation of folks reared on a whole continent of experimental sounds come to grips with all the potentialities and methods at our disposal, and decide for one’s self, and for once and for all, what you personally are trying to say.
By 2013, if one has an ear for electronic sounds, you have probably heard 10000 hours of dubstep drops, soulful beat excavation, live freakout sound manipulation, glitches, drones, breakbeats and field recordings, and it can all become a homogenous wash, so perfect inside the box, so restless in its perfection. There comes a time when you hear some ineffable, anonymous transmission from the dark side, something murky and mysterious, like a message left on a cheap answering machine tape, or a note in a book for a library. It’s like a surreal YouTube clip, or a dark alley at night; yr just not entirely sure what’s going on, and it’s up to you to investigate. In a lot of ways, Nick Edwards music is the definition of Lo-Fi, seemingly going straight to tape; 4-minute snippets of ineffable origins. But it is so much fun to wonder!
The whole point of this writing project is to figure out how to make my way in this cultural singularity we are living in, attempting to deal with 200 years of recorded media, not to mention several thousand years of writing before that, all available for inquiring minds. As i’ve mentioned in these (internet) pages before, my whole reason for getting into writing about music was to figure out how to be a musician/sound engineer/producer, all done on a zero-dollar budget, with borrowed laptops and wi-fi connections, going to preposterous lengths to transmit these sounds buzzing in my ears. As such, the way that i hear and listen to music has never intended to be objective, authoritative: i am a scholar of sounds, and i am trying to hear them all.
So the thing of it is is, WHERE TO START? What floats yr boat? I got interested in a certain sector of sounds, mainly Britiish experimental electronic music, and used that as a starting off point, to come to grips with (post)modernism, critical theory, art history, literary criticism, all tied up in a neat and infuriating knot that is difficult if not impossible to seperate, at this point. To even try something as simple as writing a record review means you have to understand 8 different musical genres, and to try and keep straight serialism, minimalism, post-punk, industrial music, drum ‘n bass and grindcore and not go a little batty is probably impossible.
So you have to take a stand against the erosion of Attention. After all, its yr only life (that yr aware of, anyway) and you can only listen to one piece of music at a time. Are you listening? Are you really hearing it? Are you picking up what the artist is trying to say?
It’s difficult to say precisely what Nick Edwards and his contemporaries are saying, exactly, (it’s like on the tip of the tongue), but their music sure seems to conjure visions. Ekoplekz releases a shit ton of music, and illustrates nicely the other (ANOTHER anyway) component of this writing project. To give time and attention to worthy albums, as art artifact, as time capsule, as journal and love letter. There’s a billion albums out there, and some musicians that release millions out there, so its nearly impossible to know where to begin, to not waste yr time, to not be mislead. It becomes increasingly essential for writer’s to act as tourguides to the blackened afterlife of experimental releases, and report back their findings. For some odd reason, i took upon the task of trying to describe sounds, or it took me to task, rather, so the mission is simple. To apply language, to try and describe some of the endless array of creativity that is out there. I have no training in this of any kind, other than a decade and a half reading the internet, magazines, and any books that i could find, that had anything in any way dealing with music. It’s all kind of a mad jumble, i’ve been progressing like a GO game, but the center is rising and it all starts to make sense.
It’s all about coming to the center, to an appreciation and awareness of yr own life. Music can either be banal and distracting, or it can be the most holy, inspired thing you’ve ever heard in yr life. It can be the gateway to magick. But you have to let it, you have to give it the time of day (or night). I can’t precisely say what it is, other than i am obsessed with EKOPLEKZ’s music, and 2 dozen others that are happening, as we speak, and it is opening gateways to creativity in my own mind, that is giving way to answers i’ve been seeking a lifetime.
So what about DEVESHAM DUB? What does it sound like? Difficult to surmise, to say easily. It’s 16 tracks, and was originally laid to tape by Sex Lies Magnetic Tape in March, before quickly morphing into Ensemble Skalectrik and releasing Trainwrekz to much praises, on Edition Mego. Devesham Dubs could be seen as warming up for the main event, if not for the fact that most, if not all, of Nick Edward’s music is improvised, the man jamming with his machines down in his basement, and then doing some form of processing and post-production, adding further layers of degradation and grit. As such, it seems like Ekoplekz’s music may be of a whole, interchangeable, and i don’t yet possess enough information to report how he has been progressing as an artist, over the duration. I intend to find out. But for now, i would say that most of the material on Devesham Dub consists of minimalist percussion, of the analog rhythm machine variety, run through a bevy of makeshift guitar boxes (in a real vintage dub conqueror kind of way), with some antiquated synth textures over top, but you won’t find much in the way of melody or harmony here. These are more like Sci-Fi dream sequences, mood music that also would work in adventurous dance clubs (if yr clientele are cool, anyway). I am reminded of the works of the ’80s band Monoton, whom i have only just gotten into, with very clean, precise hardware rhythms that seem to go on forever, in the endless futuristic spirit of Detroit techno. This is cyberpunk, see, this is industrial. All the skinny puppy kids never really went away, as Witch Haus has reminded us.
The one last touchstone i will leave you with is the legendary Wolf Eyes, who have plied their brand of rustbelt horrorshow over 15 years and hundreds of releases, many of which they have released themselves on their very own Hanson Records. It seems like Nick Edwards has something similar in mind: he just wants to jam, man. He wants to make his records, and people can buy ‘em if they want, but he’s too busy moving FORWARD. It seems like he is leaving behind an engrossing soundworld of CCTV and burned-out cars in a back alley, John Carpenter meets Derreck May to ward off a demon infestation. It stands at a crossroads of arthouse futurism, degraded SF, dub, techno, industrial, and improvised musicks, and finally, we meet.
Ekoplekz’s music can lead you to all kinds of good shit, to get lost in for days and weeks at a time. It’s like living in a Tarkovsky film.
High Tech High Life sounds like a private press New Age record that’s been left on your dashboard in the sun. Occasionally the paradisiacal synth arpeggios bend and warp, like the tape’s being eaten, reminding you that yr listening to a tape (or perhaps the re-issue on vinyl). The medium is the message on this inaugural transmission from this young Swedish upstart.
The thing with Hauntology is that it makes you come to terms with the past, reminding you to see and look at what has come before in a new light. But where Ghost Box Records are creating alternate history, 1991′s first record stands in the infinite now. It’s dated, scuzzed and moldering yet still sounds entirely fresh, in the present tense. It’s an ace introduction into a whole world of plastic, cinematic futurism, a good way to introduce the uninitiated what these kids with their synth sense are up to.
The main thing that seperates 1991 from the slew of bedroom tweakers is a strong sense of melody, and whatever synths the producer are using sound effing sublime, gloriously rendered and recording, sounding great laid on tape (and wax, no doubt). Most of the record is comprised of beatless ambiance, warm Newage trance, that is only occasionally interspersed with the rhythm boxes. But those tracks with the drums are most likely what’ll hook most people; ‘High Tech Slow Life’ sounds like a dancefloor in slow motion, or a steampunk rave in cloud city. The following track, ‘Regulate’, with a slowed, slurred voice spouting data theory beneath clouds of noise, lets you know that there is a theoretical underpinning to this transmission. The producer is trying to get shit out there; he has something to say, and it makes you wonder why he is trying to say it.
The thing of it is that a lot of the amateur, lo-fi synth records out there are legitimately GOOD MUSIC. They have strong melodies, harmonies, structure; it’s like classical music on a budget. A hasty listener may discard the sounds as dated, based solely on the materials with which they were created. And that is to write off a whole musical era, the late ’70s and early ’80s. High Tech High Life makes us fall in love, again, with Futurism (even if it is of the retro variety).
There are two handfuls of musical movements and genres we follow with close interest, here at Forestpunk. We are trying to come to terms with the sounds, to seperate the wheat the chaff, to find the rarified essence, and discover the Zeitgeist in the process. Listening to HTHL for the past six months has instilled a renewed wonder for early ambient music, and paves the way to understand the VaporWave style that is emerging. We are calling back to futurism, to optimism, before the crushing hopelessness of the ’00s. In these machines, there is the ghost of the future that we wanted, that we dreamed of at late-night raves and beaches at dawn. The spirit of HOPE is not easily snuffed out.
The basic premise is to find a sliver, an aesthetic, and expound upon it, drown in it, surround one’s self in it, until it becomes instinctual. This is the way to train yr ears, to learn how to integrate new, alien sounds, and find a way to relate to artist’s on their terms. There’s a billion genres out there, and as many compulsions to make them. The human soul stands at the intersection, and in this way, the futuristic nostalgia of 1991 meets chanting and drum circles. Magick, emotions, intuition… all vague specters, difficult to quantify.
High Tech High Life will delight lovers of old library music and adventurous club DJs alike. It goes to show that Opal Tapes are a label to watch, to see what is truly going on with the electronic underground, and makes me hungry to see what this young producer will cough up next.
Listen If You Like: Coil, Throbbing Gristle, Einsturzende Neubauten, Skinny Puppy, Prurient, Actress, Emptyset, Pete Swanson, Regis, Surgeon, spelunking, seances
I’ve recently discovered a whole grip of new artists and musical styles that have left me feeling like i am 17 again, that has renewed the initial passion for discovery and creation.
I first heard Alberich on Boomkat’s 14 tracks compilation, Trouble At Mill,(you’ll hear more about that later), nestled alongside Prostitutes and Miles from Demdike Stare, all things good and rusty, essentially. Alberich, one of a handful of projects by Kris Lapke from Hospital Productions, makes the gritty power noise version of the muscular industrial techno that is rising from the collective unconscious at the moment. If Godspeed You! Black Emperor were the sound of humanity’s last lament, a funerary rite for civilization, then Alberich and his android ilk are the sound of mutants thrashing in a ruined cement factory. It’s what it would sound like if Karl Connors were to set up and do a live-PA in a grim, gritty warehouse, and this is the lo-fi cassette bootleg of the proceedings.
Psychology Of Love starts off dirty, ruined, tortured, and stays that way. With the first track titled ‘Thus, I Curse Love’ opening a pit of throbbing sub-bass, pulsing beats, and whining oscillators, it seems as if the individual has given up hope, and decided to make a black magick pact, opening the portal to Tartarus, and this album is the document of his trip through the 9 rungs. This is the radioactive, blackened shadow to Jefre Cantu-Ledesma’s Love Is A Stream, which focused on the ego annihilating powers of being in love, painted in rich, colorful guitar drones. Alberich’s pallet is entirely earth tone: mostly black, but with a bit of rust brown and spectral gray thrown in for texture. ‘Thus I Curse Love’ gives way to ‘Rumbala’, which was Alberich’s first release for Hospital Productions, gathered here. I would dare to call this the single from the album, but it’s all of a piece really, but ‘Rumbala’ is a great synopsis of what Lapke is all about: churning, chugging distorted beats with demonic dithered xenoglossia. This is trance-dancing for the rest of us, worshiping Kali rather than Shiva.
These grinding, pummeling beats sum up about what great about listening to Alberich, and industrial techno in general. It’s like being chewed up by some dilapidated cosmic machinery, like being reconfigured in a LeMarchand Device; it’s post-human, transcending the emotions, exploring the body. In spirit, it is a descendant of Swans and Throbbing Gristle, with the same BDSM concerns, but delivered with a wicked beat that is screaming for dirty warehouse parties. It is a relief, to see dance music being reclaimed from the candy ravers and ecstacy philosophers.
Listening to the Psychology Of Love, late night, waiting for the buses to begin running, has re-awakened me to the visionary powers of noise music, how it is essentially lo-fi industrial psychedelic music, that also addresses the body. It shuts down the frontal cortex, the ‘personality’ through extreme volume and repetition, and creates a sonic ritual that opens a portal, binds you to something vast and ageless. And you can take it with you on the bus! Alberich transforms yr workaday world into a zombie nightmare of sex, miracles, & unimaginable power.
I want to know more! I want to know everything there is to know about this music: when & where it was made, with what equipment and personnel (i think it’s Lapke, solo). I make no bones about the fact that i listen to, and write about music, with the hope of making my own. It’s all research, a DIY doctorate in dirty electronics, and i’ve found some excellent tutors lately. I mark the success of a release by how badly it has me clambering for my laptop, warding off sleep, trying to work a little longer, trying to capture some of the sounds i’ve cataloged and dreamt up during the day. It’s also lead into a new appreciation for harsh noise, classic industrial music, scuzzy black metal, and all things that sound like they were recorded on a dingy cassette you found in a building supply warehouse.
Psychology Of Love sounds like watching a S&M black mass on a closed-circuit television. It makes you feel as if you’ve been bathed in oil, and then rolled around in salt. Yr body is dirty, but yr mind is clear and full of insights. It’s a portable ritual for 3 a.m., for those that worship in ghettos street corners, in subway tunnels and empty, newspaper-ridden city parks.
Listening to Alberich can turn you on to a vast, dark continent of harsh, powerful electronics, that are entirely of the moment. Referencing masterpieces, but still entirely new. I can’t wait to see what happens next! Hospital Productions has been really killing it lately, and i strongly recommend you pick through their back catalog, for further initiation.
Dystopian Daydream: The Rise Of The Machines. Intelligent Design, Deus Ex Machina. Archaic Revival; Technological Shamanism.
Crushed Interiors is a DXM trip through a dusty, rusted factory. It’s that moment, standing in the center of a room, when all the industrial drones and hum line up, link up, tune in and form a clattering symphony, and you watch the air melt before yr eyes.
Jim Donadio crosses the line from dub techno to harsh noise: Crushed Interiors sounds like Wolf Eyes jamming with Basic Channel, while the Konono No. 1 guys look on in hooded robes. This is junkyard epiphany, the rise of the new techno, by for and about the people, defying the smoothly-rendered CG of the mainstream dance elite. There seems to be two directions for dance music, at the moment: those who are perfecting and polishing, pushing ever forward into the Uncanny Valley, and those that are resisting the spectacle, making dirty holy artifacts, bound with rust and twine.
After several decades of rejecting our humanity, disputing the soul, the human hand and fingers are finally working their way back onto the dancefloor. It’s like the faithful have returned to Detroit Techno’s handmade hardware soul, and proceeding like nothing ever happened. We can’t ignore 3 decades of listening to noise, world music, fucked up tape documents of every underground movement ever, and what we are left with is a cyborg shamanism, like voodoo rituals occurring in hyperspace.
This is important: there’s so much music out there. It can be hard to know where to begin, what to pay attention to. Some people are all about formulas, the machinations of pop music perfected, until the audience are so many dubstep puppets, twitching and writhing as electro-chemical receptors are pushed and prodded in Pavlovian perfection. But there has always been a tendency towards subtlety and attention in the underground, people using music to banish the cobwebs from the haunted halls of their minds. These records are our flashlights and our exorcisms. We are not puppets and we are not dogs.
There is magick in this record, and in the shadowy legions of post-industrial techno that is starting to emerge from their secret chambers. They will never tell you what they are doing, (a magician never reveals his secrets), but it is right in front of yr face, once you see. Crushed Interiors is a factory seance, a phosphorescent trance; repeat listenings will propel the listener into straight theta-wave Gnosis, rewire yr amygdala to hear perfection in the ambient detritus that surrounds us concrete jungle dwellers.
I am beyond ecstatic to find Crushed Interiors, and all of Jim Donadio’s works. There is something going on, and trying to describe it keeps me awake at night. I listen to Prostitutes, Ekoplekz, Actress, Hacker Farm, Vatican Shadow, and it has me salivating to make music, to reach for my own machines and get down with the channeling! It is the combination of hearing sounds of which i am obsessed with actually having a recording studio of my own, over a decade in the making. Suddenly, it all seems o so possible, if i can just get my own nervous system in line. Like Anthony Hopkins says in The Rite, “I feel God’s fingernail scraping me from the inside out.” These techno wizards are hollowing me out, the trance leaves very little personality left, and it’s all one glorious flow. Inspiration, wizard, the old dark ways, channeled through the machines.
This is old and very, very new. File under archaic revival, CONTROL has not yet managed to codify and destroy the human spirit, because it doesn’t know what it is. Neither do i, and that’s the fascinating bit. Come alive to magick, and yr life can become whatever you want it to be. Reality hacking 3.0, technological utopianism has not gone away, just gone underground to hide, as it always does. But the shadow is rising, and the sounds of Prostitutes and ilk is its jungle heartbeat.
This is my current favorite record in the universe; i’ve been rocking this pretty hard at work, and it melds nicely with the sounds of fans and blowers, with ghostly dub reggae bleeding through the walls.
‘Dial Tone Degradation’ is the banger on here, although i recommend hearing ‘A Pack Of Dogs’ and ‘Make A Hole, Look Out’ for more subtle manipulations.
Fans of Vatican Shadow, Cabaret Voltaire, old Muslimgauze, Nate Young’s solo material, look out! This one will get inside you.
brittle breakbeats. grinding techno. super repetitive; hypnotic. Trance inducing.
Demdike Stare represent everything that is right and holy with being a musical archaelogist; their name, their album designs, their mixtapes, all seem to suggest a bottomless well of cultural references, deep dark mysteries like fatted worms, beneath the logical surface of tensile industrial rhythms and obscure samples. This is music by and for diggers, those looking for the dark heart of music, who are not content with shallowness, obviousness or immediate gratification.
Forestpunk was pretty much begun as a Demdike Stare blog. When yr surrounded by all the music that ever was or were, it can be impossible to know where to began. After a decade of being a frustrated musician and a starving music fanatic, i found myself in the position, living with society and technology, that suddenly it was all at my fingertips. The Akashic Records were revealing themselves to me, and it was all there for the asking. This coincided with two significant, but ordinary, events in my life:
all music available for free, on the internet
the introduction of ableton live in my life.
For years, i struggled with music theory, trying to find the secret to songwriting, with no money and no recording capabilities. I was listening to tons of music, trying to work it out, but i didn’t know what i was hearing in my head, desperate to get it out, just to see what it was. Finally, i got my own machines, and steady access to the internet, and i exploded into light. I had all the sequencing, all the instruments, all the samples i could ever pray for, a google search away. But i was studying everything myself, and i have a curious mind, so it was like being pulled in every direction at once. So i was forced to pick a direction and go with it, to apply logic and deduction, to formulate my own syllabi, and you can study whatever you want.
Electronic Music is a simulacrum of what it is to be alive and participating in society in 2013 (post singularity). You can use the gear of the day to make something that sounds like everybody else, and you’ll probably get wildly rich and laid a bunch along the way. But musicologists know there is more to it than that, and you start wondering what it is that seperates BRILLIANT art from the merely commonplace. I started looking for what i call QUALITY (quaintly borrowed from Zen & The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance), the feeling of a Master’s hand in the works. A spark that is transferable, that wakes something up in you.
As i listened to more and more electronic music (and all other kinds) i noticed a trend that acknowledged masters of the form (like Aphex Twin or Autechre, or even Burial) were doing everything by hand; chopping their own samples, endlessly tweaking the drum arrangements, finding shit that nobody else had. This totally lined up with Demdike Stare, who seemingly source their material from antiquated equipment, grimey old VHS tapes, field recordings, the radio that they are listening to. You get the sense of Miles Whittaker and Sean Canty eternally holed up in a room with an old VCR and a tape recorder, there is something Burroughsian about what they do, very old skool cut-n-paste. The organic ways their loops line up and hit off of one another, like some hellish but beautiful machine. Their music left me swaying and gasping for breath, forever clutching towards excellence.
Add on top of this the occult origins of their name (Demdike was the name of the most famous victim of the Pendle Witch Trials); shit, these guys were even referencing history in their sound. Here was a pair that i could stand behind, believe in, obsess over to death. They encapsulated almost everything that i am interested in, in one fell swoop, and it made me start Forestpunk, to start to dissect these trends in music and culture. The rise of the occult, the rise of mastery and excellence, and attention to detail – the antidote to the garbage disposal culture of retreating attention spans and eternal hunger.
I found within myself an answer, a way out, through the mindlessness of postmodern society, by appreciation of my own life. So you start asking the air what it is trying to tell you, focusing on the emptiness with unfocused eyes until something starts to emerge. Letting Demdike Stare’s music play around your house, or while you walk around, is to embark in an ancient ritual; fires begin to spark behind your eyes, and dark figures dance. The keepers of the old wisdom, the old ways, everything wild and beautiful and free. Did you ever read From Hell, by Alan Moore? Jack The Ripper stood in triumph over modernity, thinking the harsh flourescent lights of the 20th century would dispel all the shadows, all the uncertainty, all the sickness and the death. All we had to do was move into white clinical rooms, be entirely on time, all the time, to be good little machines. But see, Humans started in the wastelands, assailing mountain tops, crossing seas. Some of us have a thirst for moonlight, remember what it is to drink frosty water from snowmelt rivers. We have been rushed towards the margins, like the old mental institutions, but we have never forgotten and we have never gone away.
And guess what? Yr fucking system failed. Unemployment is skyrocketing, people are eating each other’s fucking faces, businesses get ever more competitive over diminishing resources, and there’s no good answer in sight. Logic and reason are on the ropes, and who’s looking for the soul?
Well, the good news is Demdike Stare, and countless million others, have been looking for the soul all along. These audio warlocks are bringing it back in high fashion, and raising the bar in breakbeat excellence.
Testpressing #001 is the first in a series of 12”s on Modern Love (who’s been killing it lately), hot on the heels of their Weight Of Culture mixtape (these guys never sleep). They’ve picked up the pace quite a bit, weighing in with two 8 minute industrial drum ‘n bass bangers. Miles Whittaker has made d’n’b for years, and their sound has always had been a mixture of dancefloor and seance. The sound design is excellent, showing yet again their attention to detail. The soundsculpture at the beginning of ‘Misappropriation’ sounds like a winged eel sludging through a sewer, and reminds me of Coil. The ghost of Muslimgauze also haunts this track, with Bryn Jones’ distorted arabic beats thankfully preserved in amber and brought back to life twelve years later. Canty and Whittaker have the most exceptional of taste (or maybe just tastes that mirror my own), and i’m super stoked to hear these sounds brought fresh into modern ears.
Demdike Stare have reminded us to look for things that are hidden, things unexplored, the thrill of discovery and innovation. Every release of theirs’ is an occasion, and Testpressings 001 is no exception, especially if you consider the sweet lo-fi graphic design of the sleeves, old school dubplate status, super minimal. Everything that make is super sharp looking and collectible, as well as sounding awesome. They are truly a template of an elemental creative force, taking dance club musique concrete sculptures to a whole ‘nother level, and showing a dark continent of weird old horror movies, private press ‘70s German synth records for us to explore; dead voices, conjured from the air and channeled – a back pocket voodoo ritual.
Listening to U/H/F, while holed up in my attic bedroom watching Italian cannibal video nasties, a number of themes have become clear. The first theory, which we have taken to calling Mojo Rising (which you will hear more about in the coming months); it’s the handmade quality of art, an inherent animism, where you can sense the seams and stitches, the artist’s hands at work, like the cave paintings of Cueva de las Manos, in Argentina. This closely ties into the movement, which we’ve been calling Grey Techno (which you will also hear more about), handmade handheld electronica, frequently played live on hardware. It’s irreproducible, subtly shifting, out of time, loose and organic, the machines and humans, meeting and melding. In this era of mechanical reproduction, where it seems like nearly everybody is using identical means of production, the soul is increasingly essential, for art to rise above the line noise.
The hands-on method of U/H/F, including homemade and circuit bent objets de art, inherently remind one of early horror films, like the proto-industrial metalscapes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The feeling you are left with is of a psychogeographical, hauntological trip to Yeovil, where the pair (who is actually a trio), live and work. It’s like a British version of Blue Velvet, turn over a rock, never know what you’ll find. It’s like closed circuit footage of stone circles, like a ghost caught on tape.
A robot’s voice arises from the bedlam of the track ‘One, Six, Nein’ to proclaim “We refuse to participate in this pale simulation of reality, that you have created for us to consume. We embrace the real. We inhabit the now. This world is ours.” Striking back against the simulacrum, getting back to the real world.
“We reject your hollow spectacle.”
This strikes right at the heart of what we mean, when we say Mojo Rising. It is easy, perhaps inevitable, to get lost in the datastream of the internet, to spend yr entire life staring at flickering screens, forgetting the source of real art and inspiration, namely the real, yr actual life. Hacker Farm brings it full-circle, compelling the listener to hack their own reality, find their own inspiration. They are unabashed proponents of the noise jam; they are like a Somersetian Wolf Eyes, conjuring flying saucers and cold war voices, rather than rusty robot behemoths. Remember when all this shit was fun? Exciting? Recall, perhaps, yr first rave, or the first time you hooked up a synthesizer, the endless possibilities. It’s ironic that we have to have throwback art remind us of the future, but hey, we’ll take it where we can get it. HF compel us to make our own mixtapes, to slice our own samples, to burn Cd-rs and put shit out there. It’s punk rock, if the punkers were fighting against Cyberdine.
I know the album is mostly instrumental, but I’m hoping people will get a vibe off of it, or just get on and do something. It doesn’t matter what it is, but just get on and make something, draw something, write something, record something. Fight back on some small individual level. I think that’s what the core of the album’s about.
- Kek – W, from an inteview with The Quietus
To hear more about the music contained on this slab, i recommend reading this review, at The Guardian; they sum it up quite nicely. They describe the overall character of U/H/F as “carboot electronics … a celebration of the homemade, the salvaged and the hand-soldered. DIY electronics performed on obsolete tech and discarded, post-consumerist debris.” It’s trash, debris, urban grit, decay – techno for Patrick Keller’s London. I think too much has been made of the spookiness of this release. It’s unsettling, sure, and not the kind of thing you’d pull out at yr next mint julep party, but it’s not exactly black metal. The electronics just sound kind of sickly, wheezy, a little green around the gills, but it’s still got a beat (and a lovely martial machine drum beat, at that). It’s a close cousin to what you actually hear in clubs, it’s dance music, but it also feeds the head, filling yr mind with all manner of delicious and depraved imagery. It’s a descendant of Death Disco and Industrial Records, which are two things i can always have more of in my life. Maybe most reviewers have not been as thoroughly inundated in harsh noise and weirdo electronics as most of us, here.
It’s easy to imagine Kek-W and Farmer Glitch, cloistered away in their Somerset compound, complete with miniature pony, wearing tin hats, watching the skies with tears in their eyes. They seem like affable crackpots, and in short, i would love to hang out with them. They seem like lovable loonies that are following their aesthetic to the outer limits. They sell their albums in re-purposed, pre-distressed jewel cases (although no one has yet taken them up on their offer), and play local shows in non-places, using milk jugs and washtubs as a PA. Kek-W has furthered his cause, writing alternate history comics for 2000AD. He also did an online paper ‘zine, complete with mock google ads, in the corner.
These two are hacking reality, anyway they can get it, commenting on the culture, while reminding us of where we’ve come from, of what is possible. Listening to U/H/F makes me want to fire up antiquated drum machines and set the world on fire! Inspirational in the best possible of ways. I can’t thank them enough, or anybody else going the extra mile to make interesting, inspirational art, that’s not afraid to show the seams. Raw, intuitive, atavistic! More please!
If anyone wants to buy us a copy of Poundland, i’ll be yr best friend, and i promise i’ll write about it, and if you know of anything else that sounds like this, please let us know. We’re all ears.
Dark ambient/industrial project created in 2013.
Thank you for visit my site,dark greetings
from the world of spirits
That’s all the information i have been able to dig up on this short, 2 track EP.
For the past month, i’ve been especially obsessed with all things haunted and spectral. I’ve been desperately seeking out music that evokes the feeling of a haunted house, that perhaps might even make yr own home haunted, in the listening. Most of what i found were cheesy (although still sweet) Haunted House sound FX CDs for Halloween. Useful for filler, perhaps, or to manipulate into yr own ghostly musique concrete or noise, but not that aesthetically useful, otherwise.
Of course, Dark Ambient came to the rescue, but even then, most dark ambient music evokes vast, empty landscapes, with nary a door or portcullis in sight. There’s the music of Atrium Carceri, whose music definitely reflects a form of twisted infinity, but he was drawing inspiration specifically from haunted institutions, like prisons and hospitals. It’s a different kind of damnation. Look at how widely different the two seasons of American Horror Story were.
I was quite excited to stumble upon this project, probably on SoundCloud or the dimly lit corridors of Slseek. After wading through 45 minutes of novelty rockabilly numbers and disco remixes, i finally found something called Haunted Houses that was actually good, that actually lived up to the name.
This is a brand new project, and whoever s/he may be, they are coming out swinging. Started in 2013, HH has released 3 short EPs, and a 7-track digital album, all available for free download, via Bandcamp. The covers have all been sourced from old Weird Tales magazines, and the lo-fi, public domain photoshop chop job gives the proceedings a gritty black metal mood, that suits the music well. As does the lack of a public persona. These sound like actual haunted places, like EVP recordings, caputred in the dead of night.
There’s 2 tracks on A Fate Worse Than Death (finally, an album short enough that i can actually write about the songs!), the titular track, and ‘Into Nothingness’ (typical dark ambient cheerful nihilism). The tracks are mostly interchangeable (part of the reason why i don’t even bother describing individual songs, oftentimes); both tracks are 8:40, are held together by looping groans and digital mist, slight industrial rhythms rolling by like a locomotive, bathed in steam, in slow motion. It’s like a ghost train ride, through an actual house of horrors. These spirits sound like the idiotic dead, zombie-like, ghoulish, vacant eye sockets staring, while hanging jaws issue a wordless incessant moan, reaching for things they can no longer even remember.
‘Into Nothingness’ is the slightly brighter of the two, the digital murk given an opalescent sheen. Perhaps dawn is breaking, and the gloom is separating. I prefer the first track, personally, only because i like the grayscale fog, think that it suits this kind of music.
Finding this record, and leaving it on repeat on a Friday night, around the house, has surprisingly rejuvenated me, and my sense of purpose, as far as writing goes. My thoughts and words gaining a new crystal clarity. Think about something, long and hard, then forget about it, and wait for results.
The conclusion that i’ve reached, this particular night, is that i got into this game to write about music that i was listening to, to chronicle my life and perhaps turn some people onto new sounds. ‘Yr job is to describe shit,’ Lily said, and it stopped me in its simplicity. For the moment, my job is to describe shit, and i am looking for ways to pay attention, to hear what the music has to say, what visions it evokes, and to try and pass that along to the curious. I cannot perform this function when i am stressed about practicalities and finance, so i end up nocturnal, stealing an hour away from the dictates of the modern world to do what the fuck i want, and the world can kindly leave me alone.
Which is pretty much the premise of this haunted exploration; a prolonged and continual derangement of the sense, as Rimbaud would say. Focusing on the irrational, the unsane, the illogical. Looking for things that aren’t there, thinking empty thoughts, begging the air to let loose its treasures. It’s like looking at the world cross-eyed, and it doesn’t change overnight. These dark, noisy records, and horrible traumatizing films are my macabre meditation, a meditation on death perhaps. I cannot say why i became morbid (and the police told me i was morbid, once, so it must be true). All i know is that i have a really hard time, fitting in with society, and keeping up with a normal person’s responsibilities. All i care about is this thinking, this reading and writing, this listening, then spilling. But the funny thing of it is, is it’s come full circle. This cheap murky fucked up recordings now demand that i become a real person, that i shit or get off the pot. That i finally figure out what the fuck i am trying to say, and how to say. To hear and speak and think, for real, and not just twitter my life away.
Haunted Houses makes for some lovely, creepy at home listening, perhaps when yr by yrself, or if you have weird friends. It is psychedelic, in a gauzy hazy kind of way, i can practically see skeletal faces, emerging out of the swirling smoke. Haunted Houses clearly have a vision, are driven. It’s kind of magnificent that they’re just giving it away, and that deserves some praise and attention.
This could be excellent theme music for yr own haunted house, or yr next drunken dark ambient bedrest, or a dark-themed role playing game.
A Fate Worse Than Death also reminded me of another purpose i had, starting this blog, which was to listen to more dark ambient music, for it to have a presence on Forestpunk. Dark Ambient, like Noise, is a very prolific genre that can sound a lot alike, to the untrained ear, so it is my public service to mine the veins and find the richest ore to lay upon you, and report upon the process.
Label: Tapeworm
