Vital Weekly 50! Hurray! Week 37 Number 50 INTERSYSTEMS -PEACHY (CD by Streamline) RAGNAR GRIPPE - SAND (CD by Streamline) With the invention of CD's I remember I said I would never get rid of my turntable as 'there are way too many records that will never make it to CD' .Well, I still didn't get rid of the turntable, but I must admit I was wrong. A lot of obscure, unknown records make it to CD. I don't think people will stop searching for the collectables, but they will play the CD version (of course if it is the music that they are after, and not the fact that it is a collectors item). Streamline's boss Christoph Heemann is one of the people who knows more about the collectables then anybody else. Among his first releases was a 1969 LP by Intersystems that was released in an edition of 50. Here is another record by Intersystems, this one from 1967 on Allied Records. A short one, but what strange thing: a lot of the sound is collaged sounds from sped-up tapes on reel to reel machines with a voice narrating a text. The montage techniques used are hectic. Play loud to discover the fine parts. Musique concrete in a non academic context long before Nurse With Wound started. Great stuff which doesn't sound outdated at all. I heard the name Ragnar Grippe dropped at various places but I couldn't relate to what he has done. The music was released on LP by Shandar in 1977 and to some a masterpiece they couldn't wait for to be on CD. Grippe uses 'consecutive overdubbing' to construct two lengthy pieces of music using organ, recorder, harmonica, electric guitar, bells, voice, thumb organ and maracas. I imagine a lot of the stuff has been put through various delay units (or maybe the reel-to-reel technique used?) and repetitive patterns occur. There is a percussive feel to the music, but maybe also a 70s hippie feel (to which I am a bit allergic). But nevertheless an interesting minimal effort. (FdW) Address: Streamline -Horngasse 2 -52064 Aachen -Germany GASTR DEL SOL -UPGRADE & AFTERLIFE (CD by Dragcity/Normal) So by now all the music papers have written about this, but as I like it a lot, I will spend my share of words on it. Gastr Del Sol is the collaboration work by David Grubbs (ex-Bastro) and Jim O'Rourke, renowned guitarist and composer. I found out about Gastr after they had done some releases and I was taken by their sound immediately. There is so much going on all the time (and the absence of things going on at the same), that any work by Gastr Del Sol is like a small symphony. This new CD is no different. The opening track is amazing: it starts droningly but is a collage of guitar sounds to end with jazzy sounds from records being played. When I first played this CD I didn't look at the CD player and each track naturally flows into the next, sometimes there are rich textures, densely layered guitar jams, but then just after that sheer silence, to be followed by a section using drones from a bass clarinet, horns and cello. Amazingly rich music of which I just can't get enough. Encore! (FdW) Address: hopefully any record store? AQUEOUS: Tall Cloudtrees Falling (Hermetic Recordings via World Serpent) Long time Hans-Joachim Roedelius collaborator Felix Jay recorded this album with fellow Gloucestershirian (Gloucesteroid?) Andrew Heath nearly two years ago. It's a tribute to Cluster, who's improvisational electronic techniques provided the inspiration for the "live in the studio" recording sessions that are heard here. Occasionally a record comes along that offends by being inoffensive. This record is easy to like, but if you spend too much time with it it's also easy to hate, as I found. The music is simple and pleasant (the title provides a clue to the atmosphere they've created) but it's also somewhat annoying. Light synthesizer keyboards mingle with random tones and chords. Digiflutes and plucked strings do the slowdance. And tall cloudtrees fall on my head. Although their mixing and post-recording treatments demonstrate consistent thoroughness and clear vision, the actual playing is average at best, and at times the apparently intentional randomness of it all is downright frustrating. It's like finding a nice soft bed that's infested with fleas. Real comfy at first, but then IRRITATING. Good mixing can't compensate for this so-so playing, and in a marketplace flooded daily with new releases, just being average isn't good enough any more. (CP) THE MOOG COOKBOOK (CD on Restless Records) Here is a product that is guaranteed to either make or put a brake your party depending on your taste in friends...a useful tool indeed. It's a project curated by Roger Manning (whohe ? -Ed.) who perhaps should be held responsible and accept his just reward. All tracks are made with Bobby Moog's machines and as such occasionally sound like a band of Rick Wakeman clones after a crate or two too much of the old aftershave. (Still it's only since Ricky stopped hitting the bottle and started hitting the shelves in modern meditation centers that I realized the merits of alcohol.) Back to the Cookbook...there are some tracks which I know but did not know the titles of and there are some tracks which I knew the titles of but had never heard the music. So it is, that Tom Petty, Lenny Kravitz. R.E.M.,Neil Young and Nirvana come in for moog- treatments with all the usual unreliable tuning anomalies plus some. Perhaps this is a good present to bestow on fans of these groups...it will either cure or convince them of the wisdom of their musical choices. (MP) DRUM 'N BASS FOR PAPA -PLUG (CD on BLUE ANGEL RECORDS) There's a voice at the start of this CD which promises the listener a 'fascinating churney' -ja, das voice haben ein Cherman accent -and Luke Vibert, the brains behind the music does his best to fulfil his pledge. Enter a world of extremely strange atmospherics which link and lurk at the back of some of the most impressive D & B programming I have heard for a while. While I was suitably impressed by Bukem's Logical Progression for instance, it comes across as 'reliable' and 'safe' when compared to this CD. Odd samples and quotations are tossed around, almost at random, while unrelenting fusillades of snare rolls and high- cholesterol bass booms buckle and rupture the air closest to the speakers. (I always find it difficult to listen (not dance) to D & B for more than forty or fifty minutes at a time...beats blur and I often find I need a little space before I dive in again.) This music is the closest to a D & B sound track I have yet heard... sonic cliches from the seventies and eighties are incorporated almost as comments on the whirling riddims that whizzspurt and dodge-dart about like highly strung teenage boys tenaciously approaching their first mango. There are, as there always are, a couple of shabby tracks, but I found these easy to spot and, thanks to recently discovered technology, easier to avoid. Faves are the first few and 'the life of the mind' a tasteful, noisy and almost undisciplined piece with glorious yellvocals. Certainly an indication of the way forward in this daunting musical area. Check it out. (MP) Addresss: Fax +44 171 627 8077 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), The Square Root Of Sub (HP), Ching-Chong Jing-Jong (CP) Visit us in Amsterdam or in Xyberspace Staalplaat's shop: Staalkade 6 -Amsterdam