Vital Weekly 46 Week 31 Number 46 PRINCIPIA AUTOMATICA : SYSTEMATIC SONORITY ( CD on MINUS HABENS RECORDS) This CD starts out wonderfully in a massive and scary place and I found I was quite willing to let my ears wander about in it for a bit. Memories of this creepy place return sporadically throughout the CD and how I wish that once I had entered this strange forest I could have stayed there. Sadly (in this case) there are a few forays onto the beach marked 'beat' and this is where, as Neil Young once put it 'disappointment lurks' .After all had I wanted to listen to Clock DVA wouldn't ich have bought a CD by himthem. The rhythmic excursions on this slice of silver do not even try to escape Mr. Newton's sonic influences...all that's missing are the paranoid, apocalyptic mutterings and the clenched teeth that grind. Systematic Sonority appears to be a collaboration between Implant Code and someone else and would do well in a hard chill cellar. (MP) (e.mail: i.iusco@agora.stm.it) SINGLE CELL ORCHESTRA: SINGLE CELL ORCHESTRA - CD on ASPHODEL ) We all like drugs CHORUS: We all like drugs Except those of us who don't. This music is another example of the basically normal, although it has been made with utmost care and sounds fabulous. It starts with an amazingly high techno track which ends just in time. This is followed by a rather lovely drumbass piece which is unfortunately ruined by the waves of horrid preset sounds that eventually suffocate it. (Can't stand most preset sounds, me.) And so it goes for the rest of this release...there is another area of note further on down the road,as it were. It is a track, the number of which eludes me for the moment, which sounds so much like half the riff Rick Wakeman used circa the somewhat appropriated overture at the end of 'The Journey To The Centre Of The Earth' .I don't like memories like these being dredged up by anything so it's back to the store with this one. Pluspoints for it's undeniable drug activation potential, though. The fifth letter of the alphabet and a bit of this should get you into orbit, no worries mate. (HP) (e.mail: asphodel@interport.net) BISK : TIME (CD on Sub Rosa) Wow! That was my first reaction to the first track on this new item from extremely unusual and great Belgian label Sub Rosa. This is a very intense experience...it's like there is a new sound introduced every time there is a beat in the bar. The music is made by one Naohiro Fujikawa, who may be a drummer in real-time-life. I'm not sure...he is certainly one hell of a programmer. The music twists and turns donning different rhythmic disguises as it thrusts and pounds it's way out of the loudspeakers. I was left with the idea after listening to it a few times that I should have heard it on a bigger (read I louder ) sound system. One thing it sort of all sounds the same, which is not a bad thing if you like the sort of sound that it has. Personally, I think the first track conveys the character of this music quite well and would be happy to hear it as part of a compilation sometime. (HP) (address: p.o. box 808, 1000 brussels, belgium) MICK HARRIS/JIMMY PLOTKIN I COLLAPSE (CD on ASPHODEL) Music made with guitars as a primary source will always inspire me to use stuff from Main as a comparison.(I think they reached a major highpoint with Firmament 2...finally an album of music made from completely new and unrecognizable sounds... 'Hz' , the arty box set of six CD singles contains some major lowpoints on the other hand. Bobby shouldn't sing, geddit ?) I really got into this collaboration between Mick & Jim (sounds like an ice cream company, dunnit?). It starts out well with the track 'Momentum', which is as absorbent as a sponge with big holes. Murk lurks in Mick's soul and Jimmy won't wash cars (well, that's what I read anyway).The gents continue grinding away at their machines, flexing their drones and using titles like 'Collision', 'Collapse', 'Drench' and 'Dissolve' to frighten the children some more. I liked it all with one exception... 'Drench', I think, because it incorporates what sounds like a goddamm yedaki (that's digeridoo to you Rolf)...and if there's one instrument that I have heard enough of lately (well, for the last few years) this is it. Shame because it distracts. Worthwhile anyway. (MP) (e.mail: asphodel@interport.net) RAPOON: DARKER BY LIGHT (CD on SOLEILMOON) Robin Storey, spaced cadet and man behind Rapoon has produced what is for me his most interesting release since 'Raising Earthly Spirits', which was released by Staalplaat a while back. (The first track on 'Raising Earthly Spirits' is called 'Alchiva' and is THE Rapoon track as far as I am concerned. It is ten minutes long and opens a lot of doors down that long corridor leading to wonderland.) 'Darker By Light' has a similarly ritualistic quality to it, starting with a bunch of Tibetan monks growling before breakfast The blurred, eccentric rhythms so characteristic of Rapoon smudge their way through, dragging delay trails like jetstreams behind them as they are stirred into this muddy pond. Midrange frequencies linger like silver snail smears on a cold morning. It's like watercolour paints which are allowed to trickle and blend into each other, creating ,by chance, new shades, new shadows. I enjoyed the sequence of tracks on the CD too...there is a definite sense of 'motion towards' and when it's over a certain feeling of having arrived. This CD is far, far superior to the other Rapoon product which came out more or less as at the same time titled Errant Angels. Errant Angels is an audio document (let's be kind here! ) of a pirate radio broadcast of a live performance by Mr Storey somewhere in England and which I guess, will soon end up in the bargain bins. Sod the Angels, get Darker. (MP) (e.mail:soleilmoon@aol.com) SHEA-RIMBAUD-HAMPSON :SUB ROSA LIVE SESSIONS (CD on SUB ROSA) An interesting (and perhaps predictable) collaboration between three of the trendiest names in the 'alternative' scene at the moment. David Shea was recently in Europe to promote his latest CD 'The Tower Of Mirrors' (also on Sub Rosa) which stunned me when I first heard it. I had been waiting a while to hear so much in such a short space of time. The first track on this live session is a duet twixt Mr Rimbaud and Mr Shea. Scanner meets Sampler in a swirling mix of Sheasounds with (live?) intercepted telephone conversations. There is a brief interruption by a bit of a breakbeat and theremin vox (?) before it returns to the sound track. I really enjoyed the reapplication of sounds by David Shea. A lot of the material he uses in this session has been incorporated elsewhere. Back- and foreground change places continually. Extremely odd combinations of sounds occur - Shea's post-Penderecki samples and arrangements don't quite cut it with a (possibly Robin's) techno section and there is a rather awkward fade of the track 'The Land Of Pure Illusions' by Shea which was recently released by Sub Rosa as their first vinyl foray into the dance arena. The second and last track on this live set was performed by Mr Shea and Robert Hampson and already at the start sounds much more subterranean than it's predecessor. (Although there are thoroughly ecstatic moments such as when a Perrey/Kingsley sample is combined with Bobby's serious guitar and a load of heavy,heavy breathing. Suddenly we break through to a fifties movie set which is slowly torn apart by a very gnarled thing while twelvetone trumpetbirds yurp their appreciation. There is a (very) brief distracting abstraction of rhythm which is so short it is almost a memory of itself. The terrain shifts more and more slowly becoming very thin and transparent. Mostly it glows with the joy of melding minds merging music. I also enjoy the very 'live' feel of this CD and don't miss for a moment the chink of beer glasses as they collide with unsuspecting crania. Excellent stuff by a smart trio. (MP) (address: see above) 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 by Frans de Waard (FdW) and The Square Root Of Sub (MP)