Vital Weekly 37 Week 19 Number 37 CONTROLLED BLEEDING/DIVE - NIGHT SHADOWS {CD by Fast Forward) Compilation CD's with 15 bands are out, those with 2 or 3 are in? Well, maybe. The fact is that through a longer track, a band is introduced more thoroughly. On the other hand, do bands like Controlled Bleeding or Dive need an introduction. C.B. are around for a decade or so and their music had about any style you can think of: obnoxious loud industrial, dance floor, ambient, guitar noise. But not everything was that great. In some of the areas they explored, you could find others doing better stuff. The last year or so, it has been quiet around C.B., apart from some re-issue album. The almost 30 minute piece on this CD finds them in ambient territory. The piece evolves slowly around drones - similar to the better stuff on the Fax label. The piece could be part of the Fax catalogue -and sound quite fresh. Maybe a good re-start? Let's hope so. Dive could never interest me. The pumping rhythms I heard before {e.g. Esplendor Geometrico) and the voice always was too macho for me. His piece on this CD is no different, except that Mr. Dive borrows this time from Suicide. His track could be half it's length and then there is still plenty room for a third band... Next time, please use the full CD length! {FdW) Address: Apartado 50204 1706 Lisboa Codex - Portugal CHI - THE ORIGINAL RECORDINGS (CD on Container) Container is a new sub-label started by Staalplaat so that they could release the more accessible, atmospheric and sometimes danceable music which until now has come out on the Staalplaat label itself. This is the first release on Container. Chi was founded by Hanyo V. Oosterom and includes two of the main members of East Meets West, a cross-over band occupying similar territory to Jorge Reyes but incorporating Turkish influences instead of tequila and the San Pedro cactus. I really like the cover of this new CD - the serenity of Japanese meditation gardens are contrasted by images of downtown Japan with it's profusion of cars, people and neon signs; ie no information versus too much information/ imagination versus reality. This CD contains little I have not heard before and as it is such a murky area, I find it quite hard to say whether it is good or not. It certainly does not relay the enormous contrast implied by the cover art. Wailing guitars float about in thick, sluggish seas. The atmosphere is reminiscent of Roger Eno, Michael Brook (on Valium perhaps) or Jon Hassell on a mediocre day. Completely inoffensive, as it was intended and probably very relaxing if you like it this way. Personally, and regular readers of this broadsheet will probably know this, I like a bit of ruff before, during or after the smooth. (MP) Address: CHRIS MELOCHE -DISTANT RITUALS (CD on Silent Records) Once again Chris Meloohe has produced a work of liquid beauty. Interpreting the word 'ritual' as 'repetition' is appropriate to Meloche, whose new work is based on subtly changing sounds 'set free to grow in a very organic manner with very little interference from outside', At low volume it is true threshold music - physical space seems to breathe with it as it coils about like a thin trickle of heavy smoke seeking escape. I thought his earlier releases on Fax; 'Recurring Dreams Of The Urban Myth' and 'Wireless' were great too, particularly the former which must be a classic amongst music of it's kind. I rank 'Recurring Dreams... , along with B.Eno's best. 'Wireless' did not make as strong an impression as it, or this, which, like a soft shifting mix of shortwave noise, suggests so much with it's fragile transparency. As with the other two CDs, this is an excerpt from a long-duration radio piece broadcast twice in 1995. Total dream-music. I cannot recommend it highly enough and it is surely one of the best ever releases on Silent or it's subsidiaries. (MP) Address: WAVEFORM TRANSMISSION -V 1.0 -1.9 (CD on Silent) Here's another project which consists of (mostly) a live radio broadcast (nice one Kim -see what else is out therein the aether with similar roots please ). The sound sources include microwave communications, recordings of the dead (again!) and granular synthesis courtesy of M.I.T. (whohe ? -Ed). Hats are doffed to an interesting selection of musicians/composers which include Geir Jenssen, Chris & Cosey and Dae Sylvian. There are hints of a microwave conspiracy misusing Nicky Tesla's research generating plasma clouds and interfering with the electrojet! Additional liner notes reveal that an important acientific discovery, the neurophone, which makes it possible to download information directly into long-term memory, has been ignored by the US government despite it making it possible for a deaf man to hear. All very enigmatic, as is the stark, parched yellow cover, I thought. The music... ah, the music...is a slow crawl through confined, dark, dank spaces... suggestions of distress signals flow towards us from out of the gloom. "Why is your water so dark?" springs to mind here as a suitable question for this duo from (where else?) Amerrycow. This is a sound track for a desolate, scarcely populated city sometime in the future. Long skyscraping corridors channel the wind which twists and churns finding little to move, having long since whooshed away everything it could carry to the place where winds end. Muffled mouths dispense incomprehensible sounds. The continuous dispersal of information which no longer has validity. Truly the voices of the dead and the sounds of the place they inhabit. Welcome to the real Interzone. (MP) KI SYNC PULSE -KI SYNC PULSE (LP on KORM PLASTICS Different kinds of music have different effects on energy, Some excite it by adding to it and some soothe it by relating to it like a familiar friend. And then there is that music which does both at the same time creating moments when many things can happen. This debut by a Dutch composer is one such s record. It consists of slow and patient filtration and resonation of a few very, very fat sounds -tones which make the body itself vibrate with a gut yearning. The sounds arch and fill the corners of the room relentlessly pushing the walls outwards, fissures crack open and hiss in a seemingly endless rising ride into the bliss of oblivion. Endorphins have no choice but to activate, flooding the undulating terrain that is their home. Meat responds to this sort of thing in the best way. Whilst comparable to much of what I have heard on Fax (and by god, it's not half of what has been released yet), I find it stronger, a striking, powerful and individual statement about one person's vision (?) of sound. Should go a long way. May we have some more please ? (MP) Address: Korm Plastics -P.O.Box 11453 -1001 GL Amsterdam -The Netherlands 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. Snail mail: Frans de Waard -P.O.Box 11453 -1001 GL Amsterdam -The Netherlands All written bv Frans de Waard (FdW\