Single of the Year - Tim Hecker vs Yves Tumor

As usual, there are plenty of lists with the best releases, re-releases, singles, videos and of all the things that people and music journalists enjoyed in 2019. In general, I noticed in myself a change in the type of music that I mostly attracted. This shift is mainly from the general abstract axis of ambient and electronic music, into more free and improvised jazz. It is a change that has started a couple of years ago, but in 2019 it became more prominent in the records that I bought. 

However, there are two tracks that I liked the most in 2019. As a big fan of Tim Hecker for many years, I enjoyed his latest release, 'Anoyo' in Kranky. Hecker after a small break-in 4AD he returned to Kranky and before 'Anoyo' he released 'Konoyo' as a full album release. In previous posts, I've talked about how innovative Hecker is and how he kind of redefined the whole landscape of ambient music. And still, after so many years, he keeps on offering something different, new and good, and in relation to ambient music, it isn't always easy to differentiate from the limits of noise and silence. 

In an interview that I read of Tim Hecker he refers that 'Konoyo' has a lot to do with the destruction and the end of the world. The cover of the album definitely offers these interpretations about the content of the album, in the limits of ambient and instrumental music. So, about 'Anoyo' my favorite track is called 'That World', and even the sticker of the vinyl has a picture of the globe that kind of prepares the listener about the content of the album. In this track Hecker uses Japanese instruments and sounds, as he did for 'Konoyo'. Also he uses different sound layers, but this time based more on  the instruments. The sounds from the track are like music coming from the chaos and creates a contradiction between a dark sense and more melodic sounds from the instruments. This contradiction feels like a competition of this darkness of the world and its gradual destruction, to a more peaceful melody of the great place we live in. How these two things are combined? This is something that Tim Hecker can do, and as I usually say I don't know how he does it, but he is doing in a captivating way that can absorb the feelings of the listener.

On the other hand, Yves Tumor moved from Pan Records to the Wrap label. Firstly, to mention that the album 'Safe in the Hands of Love' was released in 2018, but I heard it in 2019, and this is why I'm writing this review. This blog is mainly dedicated to experimental forms of art with the main focus on experimental music. Yves Tumor, for some listeners it could be labelled as modern, contemporary, or even experimental, but is a bit far what we've tried to cover here, as it could be easily listened to a bar, or a club.

The track I loved most from this album is called 'Hope in Suffering (Escaping Oblivion & Overcoming Powerlessness)'. And is the winner for 2019 as the best track I listened to in 2019. I have been looking for words about how powerful, dark and dominating this track is. The vocals and lyrics from Oxhy, are so strong that you can't discern if it is like reading poetry, expressing anger, giving orders in an assertive manner, but mostly the feeling I get is about emergency, fear, and despair. Of course, the lyrics itself isn't enough. The track starts with a repetitive tune from a cello and continues like that for the rest of the track. But the most amazing part of this track is the contribution of Puce Mary. Her industrial, metallic, electronic sounds, seems like that it is coming out of the factory, or a futuristic scene from a movie. The way that Puce Mary composes this sound and her production, along with the voice of Oxhy, is so expressive and I felt that I've been trying to focus on the different sounds and how they are used together in the track. Moreover, from a sound experience point of view and living in a city like London, I felt that using the underground every day is the perfect companion to the images and sounds I sense every day. That was the soundtrack of my everyday life and Yves Tumor definitely deserves it.

Relistening VI - Grouper, Dragging a Dead Deer Up A Hill...and a few words on Nivhek

Definitely one of the essentials re-listening adventures should include one of my favourite artists, Liz Harris aka Grouper and until recently under the name Nivhek. The first well-known releases of Grouper were in Type records and Kranky, and also her latest release as Alien Observer, 'Dream Loss' is also at this label.

About her latest project, compared to her releases under the Grouper name, the cover of the album has a lot of similarities, but with a difference that the 2LP the one is black and the other is white. The title of the album is 'After its own death/ Walking in a spiral' and it was initially a collaboration with visual artist Marcel Weber for an installation. My initial thoughts are related to ambient music, and since the advent of ambient music and the ambiguity of defining a musical composition as ambient music I've thought that there are many artists who have offered great works around ambient, such as Tim Hecker, Sarah Davachi, and Saaad to name a few. The release of the Nivhek project is definitely a different ambient release. Liz Harris is using her voice and her vocals more as an instrument and rather as a particular meaning that is attempted to be conveyed. Apart from the bell sounds echoing in the second composition, following the first part of the album, there are other instruments, which can be imagined as recorded sounds in a type of a frozen setting. In general, initially, I was a bit sceptical about this album whether I like it or not, but listening to it again and listening more carefully it is a great release and it definitely requires some deep listening and perhaps we need to forget a lot of the things we know about ambient music. Moreover, the instruments are also different, and she isn't using only her guitar, piano, and her airy vocals, but there are sounds, such as bell chimes, gongs echoing, and drones menacing somewhere in the space with different vibrations disrupting the silence just before it is about to settle.

After all these years of being a very big fan of Liz Harris and buying almost every release, it was until recently that I watched a performance of hers, and according to the schedule it was under Nivhek. This was part of the 'Deep Minimalism' festival at Southbank Centre, and as the advertisement mentions, it was a weekend dedicated to meditative listening and it was funded by the Arts Council. The main reason I went to the festival was to see Liz Harris, but there were some very good performances from Laura Cannell and the London Contemporary Orchestra with Malibu...however, I didn't feel anything meditative, and most of the artists were playing their latest releases. I'd say, especially in the case of Liz Harris I felt that her performance was using a lot of drone noises and her vocals, without any use of instruments, and the general feeling was far from meditative. 

Now for the re-listening experience of 'Dragging Up a Dead Deer Up A Hill', some info that it was released on Type records in 2008, which is label focusing a lot on experimental and contemporary releases but compared to a big part of its catalogue, this release is comparatively different.

This re-listening experience doesn't change much my initial impression, which was very positive and very hard again to think of a genre for Grouper, except for the general dream pop, ambient that many journalists use. The most important are the feelings that were created by listening to her music. As most of Grouper's songs with lyrics, it is always hard to understand or make any meaning from her murmuring voice. However, the insights and projections differ, although this is more likely to happen in an instrumental track or composition. In the opening track, 'Disengaged', her voice is more prominent and clear, but as the track goes on a recorded drone sound is more intense. 

The next track, 'Heavy Water/I'd Rather Be Sleeping' is more melodic with her guitar and her voice giving more rhythm compared to the frosty and breathtaking opening. What is common in the tracks and sometimes hard to put into words is that all her compositions sound like they are coming from the background, and this is not due to the record production. Some times it feels like mourning, some others like narrating, and in many cases a great companion to her music, as a background sound whose purpose isn't to say something or make meaning but allows the listener to create its own interpretations. 

If I could make a comparison with her latest project and her first releases, there is definitely much more use of the voice as Grouper, and also there are fewer music effects and her guitar or piano, which is the only instrument that she was trained at. Also, in the earlier years, there is more melody and the duration of the tracks is not very long and well distributed in the whole album. I'm happily surprised that the times I was enthusiastic about her work are far more than the very few disappointments, and will be always looking forward to her next release, which makes me happy to follow such a prolific artist.

Relistening V - 3/4 Had Been Eliminated, A Year of Aural Gauge Operation

In comparison to the other albums that I have been re-listening, this album from the ‘3/4 Had Been Eliminated’ isn’t only an attempt to observe if my understanding of listening has changed, but also to enjoy once more this album. And at the end of this album, although my initial thoughts are that it is an album based on electro-acoustic music a lot, there seem to be more melodic parts. 

The first time I listened to a track of the ‘A Year of the Aural Gauge Operation, it was in 2005, which exceeds once more the 10 year limit I had set on my re-listening experiences. It was also the year that the album was released from the Finnish music label, Häpna. This particular label seems to be quite friendly to Italian artists, since other releases include Andrea Belfi’s ‘Between Necks and Stomach’ a year later after this release, with member of ‘3/4 Had Been Eliminated’ featuring on this release.

I remember that I was in Stoke-on-Trent on the university campus and listening to one of the most influential radio shows on Resonance FM, Frequenzen presented by Alexander Wendt, which it stopped broadcasting many years ago. I had a Siemens laptop with quite bad speakers, and listened to the show several times so that I could keep track of the name of the band and this track.

So, ‘3/4 Had Been Eliminated’ is an Italian band, featuring some of the most well-known artists in the Italian experimental scene, such as Stefano Pilia and Valerio Triccoli. The other two members are Tony Arrabito and Claudio Rochetti. There are many Italian experimentalists, such as Andrea Belfi, and it was also an era that the post-rock movement had influenced and gave rise to many post-rock bands.

The album has a lo-fi aesthetic, and inside the inner sleeve it is mentioned that the album was recorded in their flat in Bologna. The listener can found a lot of field recordings, voices humming and whispering in the background, and various instruments, such as electric guitar, double bass, and drums. The opening track of the album is the ‘Widower’, which starts very slowly with long guitars, drums, tape loops, which resembles to an opening track, although a bit longer in duration. The ‘Monkey Talk’ is the closest to a track with lyrics, compared to other tracks that contain voices as part of the recording experience. In general, it sounds more like a rhythmic track and the dark atmosphere mostly comes from the quality of the recording. The presence of guitars and drums is much more prevalent to the rest of the album, and perhaps the fastest track of the album.

The 6^th track of the album, ‘Loop Recorder in the Patient with Heart Disease’ is a type of preparation for my favorite track and the one I was introduced in their music is the ‘In Every Tree a Heartache’. There is a background noise, possibly coming from a turntable, while a guitar is stretching with low-tempo drums. The recorded voices are hard to discern what are the words that are being used in repetition. Possibly it isn’t a member of the band, since this is a female voice, and most likely comes from another recording or sample.

I’m not sure in what genre the music ‘3/4 Had Been Eliminated’ mainly belong to. Putting things in to the hugely broader genre of experimental music would be a huge simplification. Their titles are very long and so being the duration of their tracks, and for some people would put it into a post-rock band, especially with the presence of guitars and drums. Maybe in a more free, slow, and quite post-rock listening. However, the presence of Triccoli and Pilia makes it hard to make them a post-rock band. So, for once more let’s just say that they are a band expanding and challenging various music genres.

Re-listening IV - The Necks, Mindset

When I started these series of re-listening albums that I had bought a long time ago I had set a time period of more than 10 years. However, I wouldn't leave the amazing Necks out of this section of my blog. And that is because The Necks is one of my favourite bands and I couldn't miss this opportunity to write more about them.

I bought the 'Mindset' in June 2012, which was a year later than the official release date of the album. Back in the old days where many music fans would chase for an album in the record shops, there is also an interesting story for this album. I had decided that I wanted to visit the record shop of Sound323 in Archway in London, as it is a record store that I used to order on-line, but always had the curiosity to see how it looks like. And when I arrived this album got my attention immediately, and when I took to the till to pay for it the person who was there told me: 'Very good taste. I have been trying to sell this record for months!'.

I wasn't sure if his comment was supposed to be a good thing or not. Further to our discussion he also said that the record store would be closed, apart from the online store. So, luckily enough I was able to visit the store before it was closed down and also keep this experience in my memory.

The Necks is an Australian band who have been together I think for more than 30 years and consisted of some excellent musicians, in particular, Chris Abrahams, Tony Buck and Lloyd Swanton. Apart from this band, the members work on sidelines of other projects or solo releases. Chris Abrahams has released albums in the Australian label Room40, while Tony Buck has various collaborations with Fennesz and live performances with Magda Mayas. 

The album is consisted of two tracks, as most of their releases, except for their latest release the 'Body' that was released on cd format only, since there is only one track on the album of around one hour duration. Compared to other more recent Necks previous releases, 'Mindset' starts a bit more powerful. Other releases reach their peak after a few minutes and the experimentation gets greater through their tracks. The first track is called 'Rum Jungle', and in the beginning, what is the most prevalent is Chris Abrahams' piano. Abrahams starts very rapidly in his playing and in the background, the listener can hear Buck's drums playing like a repetitive loop. The track is around 22 min. long and its power its quite the same with few alterations and the human ear needs to pay a lot of attention to understand these changes. During the last minutes the tempo is slowing down and Buck's piano is less prevalent on the track while Swanton's and Buck's playing is getting more dominant. Especially Swanton's bass produces a very nice drone sound. What I can't tell is whether there are other instruments, because I can listen to some guitar playing and a type of electronic sound at the end of the track.

The second track of the album, although it is much slower compared to the first track, again it seems a bit different for many tracks from The Necks. Abrahams piano is also dominant, but what is again surprising is the existence of other instruments, such as a drone background guitar playing. The track is called 'Daylights' and is almost the same length to the first track. After a while, Buck's drums and percussion take a bigger role on the track, while Swanton's bass follows the tunes in the background of the other members of the band. At the last minutes of the track, you can tell that this is a usual Necks track with the melodic outburst, Abrahams' piano is less present and the dronish sound on the background is much easier to discern.

Going back to The Necks discography that I have in my record collection, and having listened very carefully the other collaborations of their members, I can definitely say that this album is quite different. The presence of other instruments or the way that they produce these different sounds like they are different instruments is one strong element of the album. The other highlight of this release is the energy on the first track is more intense to what I've heard at home or by seeing them perform live.

Sonic Experiences - On the Airport

It is Thursday, July 18, 2019 and I’m at Gatwick Airport. There are two different routes for the passengers to get on the plane. Those passengers with seat number greater than 20 need to go down the stairs and pass under the plane to get in. I have ticket number 16D, but for some reason I went down the stairs, although I shouldn’t.

I’m on the airport aisle walking under the wings of the plane and I sense a sonic experience that it is very different to what many people would compare to the Eno-squeue ‘Music for Airports’. A different way of sensing the space with all the sounds muted from the airplanes. Thinking about it again why this listening experience is so intense. It seems like the time is much slower. An esoteric word expression struggles to express something similar to a Terrence Mallick movie. The space is vast and the objects are dominating. Using a good pair of headphones helps so much to isolate the other sounds and focus on what I see.

These rare coincidences happened this morning. What I have been listening is a track called – Session III (Angelige Noaten) from Peter Broderick & Machinefabriek in the ‘Mort Aux Vaches’ album. The track starts with slow piano, possibly from Peter Broderick and a background continuous electronic sound. Quite rare to categorize into an electronic noise or minimalistic sound.

The music instruments while listening to the track change. Broderick plays the violin and Machinefabriek uses a more noisy background sound with voices that are like they are transmitted from radio, which are hard to discern what they are saying.

Voices make their appearance in the track. Broderick possibly records them and they repeatedly being heard in this composition. Piano appears again, and Machinefabriek use a low frequency more pitched electronic sound to accompany the peak of the track.

Listening the track I feel the vast space of the airport overwhelming. The presence of the airplane is huge, but listening again feels like an ambient and live composition coming from everywhere. I don’t know exactly where to look. The huge space of the airport or the airplane. I need to get up to the stairs. I want to stay longer and use all my senses to feel the moment…but I can’t stand still.

Flutter Echo - Book from David Toop

Recently I ordered from the Wire Magazine a signed copy of David Toop's new book 'Flutter Echo'. Before that, I had read the amazing 'Ocean of Sound', which - needless to say - totally changed the way I perceive the sounds that surround us in our every day lives. But it also opened up new knowledge and horizons and I started to watch movies and follow artists that I wasn't aware of. I would say that it has been very influential, such as reading the great 'Undercurrents' edition from the Wire Magazine, and Brian LaBelle's books.

After the 'Ocean of Sound', the next book I read was the 'Sinister Resonance' and was definitely something that was capturing my attention. David Toop has always been an artist that I meet in many gigs in London, such as Cafe Oto, but never got the courage to talk to him. The last time was in May 2019 in Stoke Newington, where I had the pleasure to watch him performing at the Dronica festival. Although later in social media he thought that the experience was difficult, mainly due to the architecture of the church. The following is a collection of thoughts about the book, and some excerpts that definitely caught my attention.

After finished reading this book, I felt it was very different to his previous books, and that is because it was a collection of Toop’s memoirs and not a collection of experiences, thoughts or opinions around sound or sonic experiences. The memoirs do not follow a particular time series of events, but are grouped by themes such as exhibitions, gigs, journalism etc. Of course, in the book very important names are being referred to, such as Bob Cobbing, his long-term friendship with Steve Beresford, Evan Parker, Brian Eno, Peter Cusack, and Max Eastley are amongst many others. Toop also refers to the time that he met with Rie Nakajima and their collaboration until today.

David Toop writes about his childhood and living with a working class family that wasn’t well cultured. He continues talking about his studies and dropping out from the Fine Arts school. The long years of struggling financially and trying to make a living through writing and journalism. Other attempts to be creative such as the magazine Musics and Collusion, the creation of the London Musicians Collective (LMC), and his trip experiences in places like Venezuela and Japan.

While I totally respect and admire David Toop and all his life time collaborators or just people that he worked with, what I found the most interesting were the many details about his personal life and the suffering he went through. Apart from the big financial problems, the suicide of his ex-wife and the responsibility of raising his daughter are events that I didn’t know before reading this book. How he dedicated himself into work not only to support financially his family, but also as a means of catharsis and solace. A life full of agony, struggle and personal misfortunes that shows how many great artists have been through these problems and how it shapes and defines them. Moreover, one of my favorite excerpts in the book is how he refers to age and getting older: “When I said age is a devastation I meant not in itself but in the way we become victims to it through self-loathing, a collapse in confidence, the feeling of entering into a kind of shadowland. But more and more I’ve been thinking of time going in circles, back on itself to beginnings, each time refreshed or seasoned, almost broken, a skin that is thinner but toughened or sometimes stripped away completely to reveal the rawness underneath, rawness always there from the beginning.”

At a personal level, this book helped me a lot to understand my interest in arts, especially in relation to music, sound, and experimenting about it. The fact that I grew up in a family that had no relationship whatsoever with arts, and how it appealed to me from a very young age. That even I was never taught how to play a musical instrument I could sense the sounds around me and grew a curiosity to understand how they are connected with daily life, what are the various influences, and how it defines my way of viewing things. The need to read books, journals, attend exhibitions and installations and understand the world through sound, and most importantly understanding myself.

It is quite unavoidable not to make personal projections reading a book like that and perhaps any other book that goes into someone life, whether it is memoirs, psychology or philosophy. And this is what I did while reading this book. The music that was actually used as a resort to a difficult adolescence. The need to escape and rely on a world that existed somewhere else. The art as a savior. This savior that makes things far more important and meaningful. A life that wouldn't be the same without individuals such as David Toop.