Gordon Mumma - Studio Retrospect (2000 compi of works 1964-84)

Another ear-bending and brain frying collection from Gordon Mumma, who previously featured here with Electronic Music of Theatre and Public Activity.  This CD from Lovely Music is an equally well-rounded presentation of what made Mumma's electroacoustic music so interesting - the six works here might be missing their theatrical elements, quadrophonic mixes and the like, but the pure sound is still so engrossing and often noisy and jarring that it rewards repeat listens.

Taking up the retrospective theme straight away, the opening track here is called Retrospect, a mix of earlier tracks spanning 1959 to 1982, including Chilean president Allende's quip to the New York Times on the day of his death that he'd have to be "carried out in wooden pyjamas".  This is followed by a couple of works from 1964-5, which were first released on a 1979 LP along with Megaton (see link above).  Music From The Venezia Space Theatre is a whirring, hissing piece of electronic mayhem from a live multimedia revue organised by Luigi Nono, and The Dresden Interleaf 13 February 1945 commemorates the WW2 bombing of that city with a proto-SPK grind in which the silent intervals are even more unsettling than the noise onslaughts.

From 1978, Echo-D is an extract of an evening-long dance performance, and musically is based around a pedaled D note on a harpsichord whilst a Buchla synth and other sound layers float in the space around it.  Very minimal stuff, but fascinating to listen to as it progresses over 15 minutes.  The following Pontpoint underwent a lengthy and frequently interrupted creation between 1966 and 1980.  Its eight short sequences features an instrument Mumma made frequent use of, the bandoneon, and a bowed zither, both 'cybersonically' modified by him.  The resulting sounds, that gradually mutate in pitch, timbre and rhythm, are probably my personal highlight of this collection.  There's still a four minute postscript to go though, in the nice little mix of acoustic and digital spectral sounds that makes up Epifont (1984).

link

AMM - The Crypt, 12th June 1968 - The Complete Session (rel. 1992)

There's nothing like blowing the cobwebs away at the start of a new week with nearly two hours' worth of fearsome, ear-blasting free improvisation, so enjoy.  A decade before Throbbing Gristle were terrifying London audiences (including at The Crypt), and three years before Kluster recorded Eruption, there was AMM at their most unhinged.

Wishing to stake out territory far beyond free jazz, Eddie Prévost, Keith Rowe and Lou Gare hooked up with pianist/composer Cornelius Cardew and percussionist Christopher Hobbs to make this glorious racket.  Prévost continues with versions of the group to this day.  First released as a an extract on one side of a shared LP, more of the Crypt performance was given a double-LP release in 1981 before the complete recording came out in 1992 on this 2-CD edition.

Fades where they occur are when tapes ran out; other than that, all 109 minutes of the show are here for your, erm, enjoyment, and actually it's not all quite as extreme as it starts out.  Long passages of meditative, near-ambient formlessness crop up at intervals; often I just pick a random 20 minute section of The Crypt to listen to, and always find something new to focus on.

Disc 1
Disc 2

Zbigniew Karkowski - UEXKULL (rec. 1988/9, first rel. 1991)

First album by Krakow-born Karkowski (1958-2013), an experimental musician and composer who undertook some compostion courses with Xenakis, Messiaen and Boulez  before striking out as a much more raw-edged sound-shifter.  This hour-long drone piece was recorded in the late 80s using the UPIC composing software that Xenakis had invented a decade previous, and it caught my attention whilst pottering around on discogs last week. 

Intrigued enough to add the out-of-print UEXKULL CD to my wantlist, I had the pleasant surprise shortly afterwards that it has in fact been reissued digitally by the AudioTong label, who are now offering it for free/name your price on their Bandcamp page.  So that's where the download link below leads.  Lossless formats available too!

Musically, then, UEXKULL is based around a circulating bass drone that gathers momentum by various electronic mutations for its first half hour before scaling back again.  It doesn't stay there for long though, filling out into a dizzying, brain-frying electronic wall of sound that brings to mind Merzbow or 90s Whitehouse more than Xenakis.  Karkowski did in fact collaborate with Masami Akita several times, and with many other avant-garde noisemeisters in what looks like a fascinating discography that I'll need to delve into further.  Sadly though, Karkowski's life was cut short at 55 by pancreatic cancer.  Apparently his final weeks were spent canoeing into the Peruvian jungle in search of some shamanic healers for a truly unique throw of the dice.

UEXKULL

Max Neuhaus ‎– Fontana Mix-Feed (Six Realizations Of John Cage) (2003 compi of '65-'68 recordings)

Regular visitors here will know by now that I like sharp contrasts - and every warm ambient masterpiece deserves a teeth-grating, bracing, cold shower like this as a follow-up.  Fontana Mix-Feed, originally released as a four-track LP in 1966, gave avant-garde percussionist Max Neuhaus the prime credit as 'Fontana Mix' wasn't a set score composed by Cage, but merely an abstract set of patterns that could be subject to any desired alignment and then followed as a unique set of directions for any instrument(s) the performer wished.

In this case, Neuhaus used contact microphones set atop various percussion instruments, placed in front of loudspeakers to create something much more than simple screeching feedback - shimmering, oscillating waves of tightly controlled noise.  As captured on the CD cover photograph above, Neuhaus sat on stage orchestrating this racket on a mixing desk, like Stockhausen jumping forward a decade in a time machine, listening to Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music and then trying to recreate it on his return.

 original LP cover, 1966

So yep, this album is very noisy indeed, and wonderfully overpowering at high volume; but the joy is in noticing the subtle differences between each of the four live recordings (and on CD, a studio recording and a WDR radio recording) as the performance was affected each time by the physical space of the venue, the exact instruments used, their proximity to each other and to the mikes/speakers, and so on ad infinitum.  I'd love to have been present at one of these performances in the mid-60s, to be overwhelmed by the sheer sonic assault and see the audience's reactions.  A New York Times review from the performance at which track 4 was taped gives a tantalising indication - "This piece was not the kind of electronic music that emanates distantly from the speakers. It felt as though one's own head were part of the feedback circuit."

link

Maurizio Bianchi - Mectpyo/Blut (1980)

When I first got a taste for the noisier, more avant-garde end of the music-sharing blog world a few years back, mp3 rips of Maurizio Bianchi's tapes seemed like an almost never-ending excavation of decaying ferric oxide and xeroxed/handmade covers.  The grainy sound quality of the ageing cassettes seemed to sit perfectly with the aural contents - grinding, humming and squealing voids of tape loops and electronic noise that Bianchi described (in various obtuse, highbrow liner notes) as symbolic of social, industrial and human decay.

It was for this reason that I avoided picking up any CD reissues of MB's work for so long, wondering if cleaned-up sound might kill the mystique.  When this release was flagged up on my discogs a month ago, however, thought I may as well take a punt - Mectpyo-Blut was the first MB tape that I listened to (and the first he released after some initial experiments under the name Sacher-Pelz), and it's remained a favourite.

Glad to report that Mectpyo-Blut sounds superb on CD; it's still 90 minutes of sheer nihilistic sonic muck, but actually benefits from being given clarity.  Every sequence of tape looping, hand-spun LP samples and saturated electronics shows off Bianchi's skill in overlaying these sound clashes and also never staying in one place for too long, creating an ever-(d)evolving post-apocalyptic landscape to get lost in.  And the final crescendo into outright noise assault has to be heard to be believed.

Disc 1
Disc 2