TAZ
[mehr...]Sonic Seducer
[mehr...]Argh
[mehr...]Bad Alchemy
[mehr...]We rock you like crazy (engl.)
[mehr...]Elekt Noiz (engl.)
[mehr...]Bad Alchemy
[mehr...]Bad Alchemy
[mehr...]E/I Magazin (US)
05/05 (US)
off the spinelabel profile Vinyl-On-Demand
Frank Maier seems to have started his revisionist label Vinyl on Demand from his collector's obsession, giving his cherished
cassette culture collection of the early eighties a deserved and less debatable renaissance on the long-lasting vinyl format. The collectors world, whose completist hunger endlessly stretches between high prices and a quality that usually relates to obscurity, gets another ration of mostly uncharted german synth-wave saturnalia, in limited quantities, or a more exclusive members subscription with numbered, personalized editions and bonus recordings.
Though it would be intricate to trace a historical focus on the ambitious last year's one-per-month edition of mostly german outfits, the most represented iconography gravitates around the west Berlin '80s scene that was more than DAF or Einstürzende Neubauten, the sub underground that arose parallel to the art movement of the Neue Wilden, in opposition to the sophistication and conceptulisation high art was taking. Anarchists, activists, punks and the "Geniale Dilletanten" will gather around the now legendary club SO 36 in the Kreuzberg neighborhood, or labels like Cassettencombinat, Zick Zack, Eisengrau, Monogam, will rapidly exchange personnel and aesthetical manners. Among others, Die Tödliche Doris, Einstürzende Neubauten, Notorische Reflexe, Malaria!, Christiane F., Frieder Butzmann , Klaus Beyer, Sprung aus den Wolken, Kosmonautentraum, Jörg Buttgereit, Mekanik Destrüktiv Kohmandöh, Mania D., Alexander v. Borsig, Flucht nach Vorn, Mona Mur Vital, Sentimentale Jugend; constitute the DIY leftists of pre-electro and noise manifestos. A scene that towards half of the eighties began to vanish to persue other ambitions.
In spite of the fact that they are not german, the New Blockaders would come out in '82 with Changez les Blockeurs, a debut full of chaotic dada referentialism putting in the bag criptic Max Ernst collages on the inserts, Hegel or nihilistic Situationism on a declamatory manifesto, and disturbed tumult on their sound, to bring the corpse of art into the crematory again. And you will expect to hear overcharged electricity or deranged machinery, which is as far from that as it makes this edition an intelligent turn in retrospect. You will be tempted to think first of Erik Satie's musique d'ameublement (Furniture Music) in a perverse manner. They will reverse the logics that would generate muzak, "a music which was urging you to take no notice of it and to behave (during the intervals) as if it did not exist", according to Satie. The noises here are intrusive and sound as if the furniture is what produces them. A squawk symphony, plenty with rusty wheels and creacking wood floor, but you don't perceive electric assault whatsoever. There's even a dog disturbed or a trombone that sings along the crawled households; so that in difference to the angst or sexual violence of their industrial contemporaries to what they would be aligned (Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse) it was in Changez Les Blockeurs' case a syntax destruction, an anti narrative in form of a happening that would draw a sort of acoustic noise art continuity with the assemblages and environments, early sixties pre-fluxus, of Allan Kaprow, Jim Dine, Robert Whitman or Claes Oldenburg, or in case you permit me the license to align them to something academic, John Cage's 1940 score Living Room Music which reads: "to be played on household objects such as magazines, a table, books, the floor or using architectural objects like window frames", will allow it. Predating the Guds Söner, The New Blockaders refurnish. Housed in a box set, Changez comes with its companion First Live Performance, Morden Tower , Newcastle-Upon-Tyne 8th. June, 1983, where the self destructive art strategies announced in their debut will be more present and threatening here, turning the bag of things inside out. The squeaking noises invade like rats and repugnant beasts a sub world of stinking culverts that will frighten the bourgeois, including humming of malignant tape loops and decidedly amorphous, lacerant frictions.
Die Tödliche Doris from Berlin are the inaugural act of the VOD program, with the glossy box set Strudelsölle including six 45's in 12'' format, housing remastered tapes that appeared between.1980/85 in their own label of the same name. To consider the Deadly Doris only a (music) group would be to limit them. Many of their activities included not only records, but films, actions, performance, events in open spaces, and a series of artifacts that would settle them between the interdisciplinary inheritance of high art and its consequential response in form of bruitist deviations. They produced a complex body of work in different areas, which as celebrities, brought them to Tokyo, the documenta 8 in Kassel, the Museum of Modern Art in New York und the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris before they split-up as they planned concluding activities after 7 years. With a self-assumed dilettantism a la Shaggs, and an accentuated sense of humor, the trio of art students Käthe Kruse, Nikolaus Utermöhlen and Wolfgang Müller took part of divided Berlin´s own new-wave to create their very personal brand, embracing from loud noise, radical and ironic german texts, a big quote of self-referentialism on the german culture, to self-parody and non-musicianship as their best skills. That implied as much innocence as a spasmodic stage of high energy display. It is maybe difficult to contextualize these recordings more than 20 years after, since no later history can quite capture its special urgency or its contemporary flavour. Much of Doris ' approach is based on parody of the materials, the new forms and attitudes that were common fashion among the post punkers, where much of the seriousness of the industrialists with which they shared the scene would mix with the ambiguous naivete of the Neue Deutsche Welle, without identifying itself with any of them. Working on a specific concept for each project, they will sound as a primitive rock band making playback of themselves. Incorporating electronics and processes to mud their sound, to cover their identities, like in the extensively conceptualized Fällersleben that would appear later last year as a single LP where, taking as reference Friedrich Jürgenson and Konstantin Raudive's books on voice transmissions of the dead, a recovered concert will be totally obscured by computer processing as if it were a tape forgotten in the laundry. Like with Reynols and a bunch of another noise parodists, in their fragmentary vision they showed that everything was possible, integrating their own landscape.
At this point, a vague nostalgia eighties settles between kitsch and innovation, by the hand of Stuttgart original Hermann Kopp 's synth-wave. Japgirls in Synthesis reveals a dark side of a vaguely pigeonholed minimal-electro subculture. It reminds some aspects of the equally obscure french synth maniac- absurd ists Ptôse, with a somewhat relentless sense of playfullness. For those into the genre, Kopp was part of the electro group Keine Ahnung (meaning No Idea), which issued a much sought after mini Lp, and was himself involved in the recently rereleased soundtracks of movies like "Nekromantik", "Nekromantik 2", and "Der Todesking" (where he also acted) by moviemaker Jörg Buttgereit. Mysterious atmospheres matched by bursts of cinematic narrative ready to follow labyrinthine, found lyrics of surrealistic nonsense. His use of synthesizers and voice in a recitative german of gloomy monotony, have kind of a cold, wry distance. However, his yielding universe remains open to the subjectivities of a night sky exploding in fire-crackers, as in the oboe-like slow cadenza of "Noche de San Juan ".
Masked under so many aliases whose names will make fun of german speakers,(T.O.L.L., Porno-Graf, Geländeterror, Vorprogrammierte Zwangsneurose, Potenzstörung '81, etc), here a collection to introduce the manierisms of analog bubblebathing by Graf Haufen in the compilation of previously scarce cassettes Kontinuität der Befindlichkeiten. Minimal Electronics 1981-1983 that easyly could anticipate the selected ambient works of Aphex Twin to come. In these one-directional short tracks, there is an abbrasive repetitiveness close to post Chris Watson Cabaret Voltaire, a kind of concentrated rhythmic cells with playful organ tapestry. It is nice indeed to hear these electronic sounds lost in the past, as if in your old TV space invader series come back in purple technicolors to infect and crash your modern computer interface.
If electronic frequency infiltration, mantric rhythmic mandala and repetitive layering of patterns were the matters at play that served much post-industrial imaginery and supported research on these subjects as has been in Clock DVA for instance, then Head Resonance Company ( Peter Pixel and Benjamin Heidersberger), settled in the Castle of Wolfsburg for the recordings presented in 15 Tracks for Unknown People, did its contribution concerning "the study of the laws how an idea is realizing itself in time and space". 15 Tracks, recorded between 80-84, is pure dubby interestelar voyage to the inner self, where the testing soundings of sequencer and delay machines discover crates and volcanoes, time lag accumulators in their Terry Riley-esque loopiness will keep the flight all night long. Head Resonance's relation between themselves and the machine will prove to be also intuitive, as they built sequences also involving earthy guitar, bass, sax and metals out of structured improvisation that would be later assembled, informed by art strategies of the other areas they are active in, namely video, installation, perfomance, concepts, documentation. By comparison, Peter Pixel's accompanying 12" is more down to the floor. Dark, recitative corridor voicings, of a shady ritualist tone that may appeal the post euro body music enthusiast. A symptomatic alienation supported by rigorous, monolithic rhythmical sequencing and elegiac samples inform a robotic dimension.
Space arcane of our days, cultband Mutter (Mother) is the quintessence of German rock with roots in a swollen (post) punk that continue shaking Berlin, with a personal psychedelic, expansive touch, of garage wall of sound between Wire, early PIL and the Melvins, feedback explosions including. CD des Monats, in vinyl only, comes with bonus of the group's vocalist Max Müller and his Filmmusik. Dense, powerful rock of howling guitars, declamatory vocals in German and dirty fuzz with cinematic outlines, it represents urgency and desperation in its raw emanations. Aggressive changes of dynamics and FX trickery, align them with recent noise-rock paraphernalia in destroyer to stoner modus. Müller's incidental music is another affair this side of fragmented scenery snippets for action films, including changing passages where relaxed ruminations prevail.
By the way of Wunderschöne Rückkoppelungen (wonderful feedbacks), we go back to some early rediscovered and remastered experiments from the vaults of Berlin's Frieder Butzmann , with recordings dating between 1969 and 1971, and not far away from Asmus Tietchens or the tape madness of Luc Ferrari, this is primitive conceptualism at his best. If the recording deals with feedback is not hard to notice, since a humorous take on mostly floating tones and the almost uncontrollability of this pure sound phenomena coming from sources as flutes, walkie talkie or radios, is accelerated, cut or slowed down, into the void of a living laboratory, extracting solid miasma out of it.
To distill a 'Zeitgeist' of the early eighties in Berlin has been in the program of VOD, rediscovering the work of some obscured outfits as Sprung aus den Wolken or the label Exil-System that were part of a programmatic scene were exteriorization and loud sentimentality encountered a DIY aesthetic of synth primitivism and reductionist new wave. Legend tells that Thomas Voburka and Michael Schäumer started the label exil-system while working as waiter and cook in a now famous restaurant. 1979-2004 appeals to the intrinsecal youthful hunger for hymns, for a generation that escaped from the disco-stablishment and searched for a social refuge in the simplicity of beat boxes and keyboard-riffs they mistily knew how to operate. Here you have from short quotes to the Stooges to queasy Lou Reed vocalizations and guitar parts that bear Jonathan Richman comparisons in a multiplicity of versions or remixes of the same pieces.... while Kidy Citny's existential negativism on Sprung aus den Wolken weaves a cacophonous force that will translate to the milestones of the underground, his labels Cassetttencombinat and Faux Pas. Unsurprisingly, his music is frequently compared to early Einstürzende Neubauten, with whom he shared personnel sometimes (Alexander Hacke makes a cameo apperance in one track), and a sort of kindred atonal ambiance. They will write collectively the annals of at least the period documented on this release, Early Recordings. Affinities aside, Sprung aus den Wolken liked the grey electronic machinery sequences to be on top of their awkward gesture.
Seemingly to have flirted with the
Genialen Dilattenten-wave and sounding decidely in another
constellation, Berlin's Das Synthetische Mischgewebe's Inventaire &
Contradictions, covering the early period '82-'88, is of a somewhat
different and alien nature. Crude and metallic, the pieces of Guido
Hübner, and later Isabelle Chemin who will join in from '85 on, are
real compositions made out of acoustic and electronic sources, avoiding
the characteristic dominion of the rhythm common among his
contemporaries, to favour distorted sound assemblages resembling
amplified insects imprisoned in a glass capsule, cords that try to
strangle the structure of a metallic bridge while nocturne merchant
ships past underneath. This threatening universe invites the marriage
of broken music concrète with drilling pagan muzak. Most of the early
stuff documented here is of a somewhat pretty homemade invention. Going
through with what was available for a inquisitive painter with
background in fine arts who wanted to realize sound ideas out of visual
principles, he exhausted the possibilities tape decks are capable of,
with simple procedures and strong results. One of the pieces included
here was released on Cassetencombinat, others were on his tape label,
Alien Artists, or in Merzbow's ZSF Product. Between conceptual-derived
electronic music, blank aesthetics of noise and home-made electronics,
Hübner's proceeds stand fit enough to fight its coming of age.Also
absurd german acid rockers S.Y.P.H. seem to have come from another
hole, with their electronics cum delay in a cave ambience full of rock
instrumentation and knobs. In their exhuberant wackiness, they
exemplify why krautrock had a special reception in Japan ; adapting
rock's dead end to deform it like a tongue which wasn't their own. Dub,
Sun Ra, Amon Düül I & II and the inventive of pioneer producer
Conny Plank will come into the cocktail. In part served by the original
line up, Rare & Lost Into the Future presents unissued tracks,
covering the period between 1977, when they formed in Solingen , and
1986.
