11 Short record reviews:

Keiji Haino & Charles Hayward, A loss permitted to open its eyes for but three
hours And there glimpsed, finally in focus a mystery That begs earnestly, ask me
nothing Now, once more the problem is yours alone

While their performance at Hebden Bridge in support of the album was tremendous, the
album itself is kind of underpowered. It’s not bad, though there are some moments it
seems to be treading water.

It’s strongest where Keiji Haino shows off his vocal range, completely opening his throat,
and when little yellow hints of feedback fringe the voice. Or when sounds are left to play
out, when there’s suspension; when silence is an active physical component of the
sound; when diverse approaches are tried; when the two lock together and either dance
around each other in interesting ways, or develop a huge roaring noise. There are strong
understated moments.

Worth a listen, but it isn’t on my essential list for either artist.

Robert Ridley-Shackleton, Card Funk

Relentlessly funky lo-fi rhythms and lo-fi production. Unusual metaphors. Compelling and
personal. Personable. Ongoing commentary as you might expect.

Memorable and minimalistic. Like a lost 80s home recording on tape rescued from a box
in a forgotten corner. I want to make my own collage sleeve from a Cornflakes box to
keep it in.

It’s an engaging, endlessly listenable album, which makes perfect sense on vinyl.

Totally recommended.

Chow Mwng, Bo Rane

Tung clung. Ping. Stray notes.

Spaces between. Clusters and clutches.

Distorted vocals. Ramshackle. Deviating from tidy conformist structures, pristine

recordings and absolute precision. Instead breaking down the membrane between
conception and execution, intention and accident., conscious and unconscious,
recording and composition.

At times interrupting and seeming to overwrite itself in the moment. Again minimal but
not. A sense of something personal, a glimpse inside a process of creation but with the
lacunae and directionless moments edited out.

And seeming more casual than it actually is.

Posset/Ulyatt, A Jar Full

One of at least a couple with Shaun Blezard mastering. Talented chap, that one. Gets
around a bit.

Hesitance and interruption. Silence. Thoughts cut off. Moments repeated. Quiet phrases
under the foreground. Rattles and khkrr. Incomplete.

Here, as with Chow Mwng, approaches that remind me of Derek Bailey. Varied techniques
and sounds. Shifting tempos. Self-disruption. But sonic consistency and definite skill.

Minimal but not. A lot happening, quietly, with space, with silence.

Grunt and moan, flutter, shriek, crunch. Short or submerged musical phrases. Glittering
scraped strings. Slithers and judders.

Haunting.

Crank Sturgeon, Fyjk/Furd

Tortured and distorted electrics and voice. Hiss, buzz, crackle, crunch, howl, ffft, amplified
objects, mutter, feedback auras like sonic ghosts.

Tumbles and pauses. A culture rebuilding itself from broken remnants. Scratches and
scrapes.

Scrap collectors drive around side streets calling for broken goods. Dreamers scour
countryside, abandoned plots gathering debris. People wander round their houses and
apartments making fractured sounds their friends and colleagues will find unacceptable.
Post-industrial audio vagrancy. Posthuman nervous systems misfiring.

Like Bo Rane and A Jar Full I want this to be a soundtrack to something.

Flaring and wailing, rattling out of the dark. A soldered rumble. Notes and noises
sustained. Reverse and self-subvert. Roars. Squeal.

Kikikikikik.

Daniel Padden/Fritz Welch/Drew Wright, The Forgotten Voices of Unclean Men

This is about four years old now, though I was still able to get it on tape. There’s a good
review from Posset on the “Radio Free Midwich” blog from 2016.

Voices repeat shifting phrases. There are echoes of Meredith Monk, of sound poetry, of
indigenous musics. There are propulsive sections. The voices make clear, well-defined,
intentional sounds. The pieces seem to be composed rather than improvised.

Voices layer and play, produce compelling harmonies and rhythmic structures. Quite a
range of techniques are used, though mostly invisibly, not drawing much attention to what
they’re doing.

I’d put this on at a party, sections of it even in a club. This is why I have no friends and
absolutely cannot DJ. Well, that and not knowing how to.

For me this tape’s uplifting, fun, and great to listen to, though I can imagine it might make
some of my friends tense. If I had any.

Memorable and hooky. This kind of thing should fill out Manchester Victoria Warehouse
on a summer weekend. But no. No. We have to have indie bands with guitars trudging
from chorus to chorus that office boys can sing along to.

But you know what? You can sing along to this too. It’s more fun, more challenging, and it
might just encourage you to explore your own voice and imagination. Singing as a
physical and mental experience to add to the social aspect.

Burn down your local indie nightspot, hand out copies of this and Meredith Monk’s
Dolmen Music and start anew from the ashes.

Mariam Rezaei, BLUD

Rustle and swirl. Thump. Fuzz.

Stop.

Start. Repeat. Reverse. Stop. Start.

Compress. Spin out. Growl and chatter. Rage and roar.

Voices. Sounds hidden somewhere in the sounds we hear. Tracks pour into each other.
Quiet moments.

Drones and tension. Overwhelming convocations of sound.

Way back I loved the soundtrack to Pump Up the Volume, a film with Christian Slater as a
high school student broadcasting pirate radio. I kept imagining that film remade with
BLUD replacing the music throughout. And why? I really don’t know.

Listen and follow in its turns and changes.

The second side: the album live in different order, different recordings, different versions
that perhaps flow more organically. For live at least. It sounds like a remarkable
performance.

Perhaps some loss of fidelity, but nothing to trouble you.

Rethink and rehear. It sounds contemporary and ancient. Technology and tradition fuse
and mutate and spit out something new.

Get it.

Sheer Zed, Ansaphone Messages Are Wounds from the Teeth of the Streets

An older CD, I think a giveaway with TQ zine earlier this year.

Underground mutterings. Machines and resonant spaces. Ambience. Degraded sound.

Performative voices. Everyday performativity: passing on a message, anger, rather than

singing or acting.

Something you could have exchanged on tape with minimal information 30 years ago. Or,
with some of the music, maybe found on a Ninja Tune sampler 10 years later. But actually
more. Beyond that. Its own thing.

The CD’s most compelling for me when it sounds like places, spaces, cities inside and
out, occupied and noisy. A variety of sounds to pick out from the overall scheme.

Shifting concentration. Focussing, unfocussing, snap back. Listen and hear. Quieter
passages. A lot of things it reminds me of, none of which it really sounds like.

Wails and click. Hiss and confusion. At times I could meditate to this. Hypnagogically
experience imagined spaces. Navigate their implausible complexity. Maybe put on a fan
and let their sounds combine.

Normally this wouldn’t be my kind of thing. But somehow, here…

Blue Yodel & Lovely Honkey, Poppies & Cocks

This I think is six years old. It came along with something else. A limited release from
Chocolate Monk so it won’t be available any more. I don’t even think it’s been uploaded
to YouTube. There’s some Blue Yodel on SoundCloud if you want to hear, and lots of
Lovely Honkey on various platforms.

Voices moan and cry and strain. Feedback and distortion. Breath and the mechanics of
voice, of soundmaking.

Squirm and scream, whisper, stage-whisper, pop and crackle. Grunt, gasp, mouth sounds
and roar. Clicks and recording noise.

Objects clunk and creak and groan. Like being pocket-dialled by a dictaphone.

Quieter tracks and quiet passages. In louder moments, like the opening, it’s as if your
radio, water pipes, household appliances, and a classroom of children decided to make a
heavy metal record with only a written description for reference, and only a contact mic to
capture the sound.

Sounds come and go and pulse and breathe. Thin then gather.

Artefacts of sound and recording swallow and transform the voices. Block them.
Articulate something else. Electronic voice phenomena drowned out by the machine itself
taking over. Not so much Stone Tapes as the Steel, Glass and Concrete Tapes of some
electronics factory. The cries of us crushed by capitalism.

Wooaahh aaahhh eee.

Charlie Ulyatt, Inaudible Gestures

The second mastered by Shaun Blezard, and I think the second free with TQ zine. It must
have been last year.

Scrapes and taps and skitters across strings. Notes, or near-notes. Rubs, flutters, howls
and gaps.

Suspension.

Tense.

Squeal. Dense resonating strings. Voice shadowing. The bow or the string rattles. Close
sounds.

Moves slowly.

If Jan Švankmajer made instruments that came to life and animated themselves, playing
their own bodies. Crawling across floor and tables. Climbing down from cupboards,
testing themselves to breaking point, then reconstituting in new forms. Mimicking then
swallowing their musicians, making a new music.

Sounds and notes given space and time. Phrases almost accidental. Buzz and honk.
Deconstruct and reconstruct.

Close sounds. Like musical vore. Swallowed by the sound holes.

Shuffle. Clatter. Dingggggg.

Breathing and stumbling. Groaning.

Treading lightly.

Caves and mental spaces. And then, that’s it.

Dave Clarkson, A Pocket Guide to Subterranea - Mysterious Caves of the British

Isles

Water. Shrill tones. Gurgles. Deep echoes.

Ringing sounds. Subterranean murmurs. Sudden splashes. Like being inside giant
sleeping bodies. Manipulated sounds.

Plinks and drips. Hisses. Distant flanging sounds. Distant roars. Resonance, oppressive
silence, or water running underground.

Rhythmic thumps. Glittering whistles. Birdsong. Bang (of pumps, perhaps?). Voices.

Superficially a similar technique to Sheer Zed’s Ansaphone Messages… with different

locations. But much as I like that, this is much more compelling to me. I’ve returned to
this most of the 11 records I’ve done short reviews for here.

But we’re not here for simplified ratings, or ranking the albums. My taste isn’t your taste,
and besides, I know nothing.

Sounds appear and disappear. Are explored and transformed. Are repeated and layered.
Sometimes music emerges. The last few minutes of White Scar are a dancefloor banger.
Though, conflict of interest, I grew up just a little south east of Ingleton and the cave.

But you could also take eckies and dance to Blue John and Clear Well.

Plunk. Crunch. Shimmer. Watery percussion. Percussive water. Liquindi.

Mid-late 90s echoes: μ-Ziq, Tasha Killer Pussies, Aphex Twin. But faint. Faint.

Stone Tapes again. Stone vore. Sleeping armies underground. Crouch and crawling
passages. Darkness. Sound without context. Amplified. Strands of music.

The sea. Stones and shells rattle over each other. Ebb and flow. Wail of wind or
withdrawing tide. Chatter, chitter, rattle, hiss.

Play it again.

Matt Dalby, Fri 12 July 2019