\ / | ----- /\ | \ / |== |== | / | \ / Week 12 \ / | | / \ | \ /\ / | | |/ | \ / Number 74 \/ | | / \ |--- \/ \/ |__ |__ |\ |__ | MASAMI AKITA - THE PROSPERITY OF VICE/THE MISFORTUNE OF VIRTUE (CD by Che) The first solo CD by Merzbow's frontman! At long last. Now we will know what Mr. Akita's input is, and of course everyone is curious to hear the difference between Merzbow and Akita. The 18 pieces on this CD were composed for a theatre play by Japanese theatre group Romantica and the play was based on texts by Marquis de Sade - topics not much different. The seperate pieces are short and vary in volume - yes, some can be called soft (... to some extent of course). Some of these pieces have a pulsating rhythm basis and could easily compare Panasonic (to name one). The second piece, with scraping violin and throbbing rhythm is a different affair. If one listens to this CD as one piece the collage character is more apperent. The sound shifts back and forth a lot. But the gigantic Merzbow sound is also there. As a whole I think this CD does not much differ from the Merzbow sound - so I wonder why this wasn't called Merzbow... Needless to say that this is a great CD! (FdW) Address: PARA NOISE TERMINAL - MECHANICAL FAIRYTALE (CD by Stein Sein) To manufacture a CD is a cheap affair nowadays - the result is clear: the market is flooded by new releases every week, in all musical areas. Another result is that it is harder and harder to produce a new CD on a 'real' label. Luckily there is a new thing, the CD-R. The recordable CD will be the medium of the future. The machines are getting cheaper every day and soon all of us will have one of those at home and we can bake our own CD's (being one step away from downloading music from the internet). More and more artists will produce small editions of their own work on a good quality format and offer them for the price of a normal CD. Here is one such band. The two piece group from Germany with some history in releasing cassettes offer CD-R with full colour xerox cover with two excellent live recordings. Metallic sounds are drenched in reverb and the synth bubbles along. Quite quiet atmospheric music. They have been listening to zoviet*france, but are less refined or more rough edged. As said excellent stuff that will give you a good impression what this band can do at your chill out party. (FdW) Address: MAEROR TRI - MORT AUX VACHES: HYPNOS/TRANS (CD ON STAALPLAAT) The first of two new releases on the 'Mort Aux Vaches' series released by Staalplaat documenting live radio concerts commisioned and broadcast by the VPRO Radio Show 'De Avonden'. Previous releases in the series include performances by Deutsch Nepal, Merzbow, Illusion Of Safety and Scanner. Hypnos/Trans contains three long tracks, all very similar in structure and sound. Now, I've no recall of ever hearing anything by this group, so cannot compare it to their previous output; apparently though, it all sounds a bit like this, so it may be a case of heard one, heard 'em all. I have no idea how they work...the sounds could have been produced by anything, but I suspect the inclusion of at least one guitar, bunches of tapes and samples (?) and an arsenal of effects. All three pieces exude confidence and power, starting as well-defined drones which continue to develop and thicken, in some cases muffled percussion swirls in the background, and there is an obvious lack of silence in the world of the Tri. I felt little difference between the pieces; they could have all been one long take actually, and sadly none of them really managed to propel me anywhere. Frightful psychedelic packaging, too! BEEQUEEN - MORT AUX VACHES: STET SON (CD on Staalplaat) The second release this month in the 'Mort Aux Vaches' series is by Dutch electronic duo Beequeen. It contains four tracks... the first is a composition for two musicians: Big interstellar ships materialise out of the billowing wind and hover, humming. The hum fills the heads of all occupants of first a city, then a country, then the planet...except for one man who, desperate to document his audible memories, hammers away at an old Rermington. The voices of the dead percolate up through the soil evapourating and filling his ears with their discordant murmuring as they float past on their way to trance-mutation. Track 2 is named after your common and garden, everyday household appliance, the honey pump (every bedroom should have one !). The honey pump sounds like a modified lawn-mower or edge trimmer (but is really a sewing machine), fouling up in dense growth, while a mechanical bug inches forward; it's blue spring-steel heart straining like an old hinge. Then, a voice reading from Joseph Beuys'I'm Searching For A Field Character' emphasises Beuys' philosophy that 'Every man is an artist'. I wasn't really invited by the tone of the voice to listen to the multi-syllabilic, bulky text, and besides, voice in music is known to throw me. It is almost drowned out by de drones, dough. Nice grind. Track 3 is named after the title of the text used in the previous piece...bloke walking, scrunchy gravel. Space chord drifts like slow snow. Weird shout. Owl response. Head down...left foot, right foot. Mall memories. Chirp, chirp. Tweet, tweet. Loads of stones, maybe we're in a quarry. Ah! He's buggered off. (So he has...he's scarpered!). The last track on this CD is called 'Phlight'...BIG metal sky slides shut. Monstrous locusts sharpen their rasps. Dropping their steles, they line up in rows around a central place. They dance in preparation for flight. Morse code. Dot. Dot. Dot. Wonderful piece which pushes at the edges with it's bigness/closeness. (MP) Address: DECREATE - BUMP & GRIND (XT9605) CLIPPER - SPIN-OFF (XT9604) NEVEN - SCARWASH (XT9601) (All on Ex-it Records) I've trawled the internet and asked around, but no-one seems to know much about Ex-it Records and their acts. As a result I'm forced to review these CDs with just the music to guide me. Now, that might sound like a healthy approach, but I ended up wishing I knew something positive about this music or the people who made it. These three outfits contain varying permutations of the same team. Thus Peter Clasen turns up in both Neven and Clipper, and the delightfully named Chester Fondu handles all artwork duties. All I can say is, I wish he hadn't - the Ex-it corporate sleeve design could be sub-titled "Cheesy Photoshop For Beginners" - its dull, its derivative and it doesn't contain much in the way of ideas. Unfortunately it suites the music all too well. But lets try and be positive - Neven is the best of the bunch. Here you get an intelligent overview of a variety of rhythmic formats, with a commitment to melody and the occasional interesting sound or texture. Re-contextualized this could work well. DeCREATE and Clipper both chart similar territory but with less success - there's a strong feeling of accurate but uninspired formula-following, as though this music is a minutely observed copy of an altogether more exiting original. There's nothing explicitly wrong you understand, its just that there's no real point of difference between these acts and a hundred other techno-influenced outfits. The hi-hats are crisp, the bass pumps, its well recorded but it just isn't happening. The ratio of generic dance features to original elements is wrong. So what we get is a reasonable example of what we've all heard a hundred time before - is this the music that inspired your author and her mates to race around the M25 in the late eighties, dodging the cops and looking for raves? I think not. (RTH) Address: 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 (MP), Ching-Chong Jing-Jong (CP), Radboud Mens (RM), Sister Clika (RTH) -- 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: Vital Weekly/Frans de Waard -P.O.Box 11453 - 1001 GL Amsterdam - The Netherlands All written by Frans de Waard (FdW), The Square Root Of Sub (MP, ), Heimir Bjorgulfsson (HB), Dolf Mulder (DM), Meelkop Roel (MR), Brian Lavelle (BL, ), Gerald Schwartz (GS), Niels Mark Pedersen (NMP), Henry Schneider (SH), Jeff Surak (JS), TJ Norris (TJN), Gregg Kowlaksky (GK) and others on a less regular basis. This is copyright free publication, except where indicated, in which case permission has to be obtained from the respective author before reprinting any, or all of the desired text. The author has to be credited, and Vital Weekly has to be acknowledged at all times if any texts are used from it. Announcements can be shortened by the editor. Please do NOT send any attachments/jpeg's, we will trash them without viewing. Backissues may be found at: www.staalplaat.com and http://www.aesova.org/vital