Vital Weekly 35 Week 16 Number 35 SEtF-TRANSFORMING MACHINE ELVES -GHOSTFISH (CD by Nova Zembla) Follow-up to that excellent debut from last year, which was a clever mix of techno/house music and more experimentalists, electronics in combination with a real flute and violin -I mean: can you believe it? This CD contains 4 solo tracks by W.O.R.M. and 5 by W.O.R.M and The Square Root Of Sub. I am not sure if STME becomes a solo project by W.O.R.M. -let's hope not. This said, the three solo tracks by him that open the CD are excellent. Straight forward techno, lush synth lines and vocodized vocals. Or ethno samples as in 'Tahiti' -hey, nothing new under the sun, just joyful and pleasant stuff. In the collaboration tracks the sense of experimenting with samples and dubby rhythms become more apparent. STME also borrows tricks from jungle, such as in the version from 'O.K. That's It' (which is on their debut), now called 'K.O. ' , including violin and Jorge Reyes samples. The last track 'Spacefour' has some deep, moody samples and again a slow rhythm. It sounds quite threatening, but looses it's touch somewhere halfway through. Despite this, this is an excellent CD. (FdW) Address: DJ SPOOKY -SONGS OF A DEAD DREAMER (CD by Asphodel) Aih... this is one to give me a hard time... Unlike many other DJ's, DJ Spooky likes to write, to theorize about his work as DJ. 'DJ culture -urban youth culture -is all about recombinant potential' it is said in the booklet, which is a text by Spooky, packed with text samples from Gertrude Stein, Deleuze/Guattari, Susan Sontag, Francis Bacon and others. Another quote: 'Each and every source sample is fragmented and bereft of prior meaning - kind of like a future without a past' .Spooky doesn't make music, but 'electronic hybrids, that would create a milieu where a previously interior world could be brought to light through methods like keyboard mapping and time stretching... ' .Before I discuss the musical content, some of my comments on his text. I wonder in what way then the DJ differs from musicians making, let's say, house music or industrial music? They too take sound out of the prior context and combine it in a new work. Any old 80s recycles, P16.D4 or Kapotte Muziek, for instance, have done this to a wide extent, or even made it to their sole starting point in music. The 'studio as instrument' dates back to musique concrete of the SOs, but has been used in pop music before, from The Beatles to Jimi Hendrix to Brian Eno. What then, so we ask, makes the DJ different from any of that. So far, I didn't discover much new in his writing. Let's hear that silver disc. A dark intro takes you into the city, as if you were coming from Mars. Several discs with some rhythmical matrix is played in Phase Interlude. This is like a trip hop rhythm, which we encounter a few times on this disc. Like most of stuff that I heard in trip hop, it is austere music, dismantled and stripped down to just a few basic lines. The atmosphere that DJ Spooky brings out lives up to the name of it's creator. I very much enjoyed the music, eh... the mood sculptures or electronic hybrids. You don't need to call it music, if the term shocks you (and that's my sample in this review) Address: R & D by DISINFORMATION ( CD on Ash International) This is the third time Joe Banks AKA Disinformation has appeared on an Ash release. First up was Ghost Shells a mini-LP issued with dire warnings regarding the safety of your speakers which was followed by a track on The Fault In The Nothing, the latest Ash compilation reviewed in this bulletin Issue # Joe dabbles in the nether regions of the radio spectrum, recording sounds which float in through this particular acoustic window. The liner notes, though brief, are beautiful, and they read like a surrealist poem... ' storms crackle: biostatics whisper, hiss and sigh: televisions scream: pylons and power loops drone and roar: military signals, the musical pulses of navigation systems, timecodes and the coded data broadcast deep beneath the sea... , The sound structures on the CD buzz and hum with the suggestion of information...the compositions are mostly brittle structures comprised of a few layers. The colors of the sounds are sharp, angular and, on occasion, quite disturbing. R & D Track 6 sounds like a sophisticated piece of gardening equipment now in control of it's own destiny cleaning up in a toddlers playground ( or is it just my imagination ? ). My favorites are Track 1, which includes grass insect and leaf static's amongst it sound sources ( all sources are listed and they read like the ingredients of an alchemical formula from a future world). Track 8 is great too; perhaps this is because of the inclusion of an unidentified harmonic motif recorded from a HF broadcast A compelling release. Address: HIS HOLINESS FRANK ZAPPA ( Deceased) -THE LOST EPISODES ( CD on RYKODISC ) I have a hunch (entoot) that the Zappa Archives will be regularly dusted and that his family will continue to occasionally release items of historical value ( not too many tho' , 'cos they still love him ). Frankly, I've heard all official Zappa releases and many of the items included on this CD were previously made available on the Mystery Discs which accompanied the Boxed sets of old material re-released on vinyl several ,or was it almost ten, years ago. Ultimately, I suppose, all of the 'exclusive' Zappa vinyl's will become available on CD. The Lost Episodes fills in loads of holes in the tapestry that Conceptual continuity has become. Most of it will be mostly meaningless from this point of view to new listeners -but how many are there of them who scrutinize this broad sheet. Zappa, comfortable in all musical styles compiled this CD shortly before he so graciously shrugged off his mortal coil to promote nicotine abuse elsewhere, so at least he was involved with it. I suppose he managed to compile a couple of these retrospectives during his last years, and as always, there are examples of wonderful musicianship (Frank was stern and demanding even then) and some rather demented pieces, a lot of which document his early ear-stretching routines with Captain Van Vliet. The current re-emergence of Easy (G)Listening music, till now shunned by most, is surely indicative that nostalgia has almost run it's course ( again ). First we glorified what was considered good/acceptable (check current Pop Charts -half of the tracks are usually cover versions of reliable, safe songs which have proved themselves in the past) and now it is the turn of the alternatives to glorify everything previously considered crass and crap. Sadly this wave of sewerage has yet to crest. Zappa made a parody of nostalgia way back then which remains as valid now as it ever was. The semi-acoustic nature of this CD is also refreshing and as with all of the posthum(o)us releases, accompanied by copious liner notes. The Conceptual Tapestry may be completed yet... (MP) BLACK LUNG -THE DISINFORMATION PLAGUE ( CD by NOVA ZEMBLA ) Another release from Australian D. Thrussell licensed for Europe by Nova Zembla, which follows a remix project of tracks from his previous CD 'The Depopulation Bomb' .In many ways, 'The Depopulation Bomb' far outstrips this CD especially with regard to the fear and paranoia it can generate. The sounds are still beautiful and carefully arranged in deep and dark compositions which sometimes burst into relentless pounding rhythm tracks. As before, the track titles and liner illustrations and text concern themselves with the dangers of the conspiracies that just might (unknown to us) be directing us to work, work, work so that we can spend, spend, spend on all the stuff we don't really need like Pariah Carey posters and silly putty conjobs. Thrussell has a very individual sound, easily distinguished from that of his contemporaries. Few composers bother to traverse this sonic terrain; if they do, then they don't do it very well. Perhaps it's best left to the Thruss. Check it out...and yes, screaming does not require a mouth... (MP) Vital Weekly is published by Frans de Waard and submitted for free to anybody with an e-mail address. If you don't wish to receive this, then let us know. Any feedback is welcome . Forward to your allies. 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