srijeda, 31. listopada 2012.

Pye Corner Audio - Sleep Games + Stratus - As the Crow Flies




Snovito-ruševni tehno u ukletoj zgradi u predgrađu. Zvukovno fotografiranje mjesta koja ne postoje. Tuga cvjetanja i ushit raspadanja. Melankolija može biti radosna, gotovo plesna.

Streaming ovdje i ovdje


A fresh selection of dilapidated sloth-techno and decaying witching-hour electronica from this new master of home-brewed analogue doom. His wonderful eerie sounds come replete with an austere yet comfortingly nostalgic outlook that no-one until now has quite done this way. The first track makes me think of the Dutch techno underground - it has a sort of melancholic Eurodisco electro strut with liberal splashes of that pondering wonky synth that initially made OPN such an intriguing proposition. In short it totally rules and trips right into the richly hypnotic Carpenter-esque cruise of 'The Black Mill Video Tape'.
'Sleep Games' has that real classic hazy alternate-universe groove to it, like I mentioned in a previous fawning write-up, his music really does often resemble exciting archive tape discoveries. 'Palais Spectres', situated around the middle of this multi-faceted gem of an album, has authentic drop-outs and a murky patina to the sound. 'A Door in The Dry Ice' is like early Vector Lovers pacing glumly at a funeral in the snow but about twenty times better than that sounds.
This guy, The Head Technician, somehow manages to transcend much of the potential retro cheesiness of the main modern pretenders by making this whole thing sound like he was playing this on some real crazy old bulky synths that are a hairs breadth away from malfunctioning and dissolving into dust, whilst gazing wistfully out of his eleventh-floor flat window at a bleak forgotten city being battered in the wind and rain...
By 'Into The Maze' he has gyrated and shifted his sound towards a darkly sensual take on some form of moody backroom cosmic-industrial techno. This track is fucking ace with an entrancing bubbling synth motif that comes wandering in and features brief passages of weird unnerving screeing noise just below the sound horizon making you feel a little startled.
The Ghost Box family must be quite proud to have this shadowy youngster releasing stuff on their dinky electro-nostalgic stable. He brings a considered contemporary approach along with him and adds, what they themselves say, is this kind of "post-rave meltdown" affect to their bloopy quizzical niche. Some of the synth lines scattered throughout this album are truly evocative and genuinely affecting, his brittle, dystopian sound-world featuring superb shifting drone-arcs and plenty of curious grainy alien clutter. A cosmic death disco odyssey that will delight fans of most melodic electronic music. The closest thing this country has to a downbeat lo-fi Danny Wolfers?
If you buy two electronic records this Autumn make it this beauty and the new Andy Stott album. So sad, so full to the brim with slowly blossoming life. - www.normanrecords.com/




Overseen by the shadowy figure known as the Head Technician, the Pye Corner Audio project has garnered a swelling following over the course of three self released editions of the Black Mill Tapes which have appeared on an annual basis from 2010 onwards. These releases deal in sumptuous filmic soundscapes that reference everything from the Radiophonic Workshop to the wronged up Detroit style of Theo via krautrock and so much more.
Pye Corner Audio found wider acclaim earlier this year when Type Records collated the first two volumes on a sumptuous double vinyl release, and subsequent to that Seattle based label Further Records issued a cassette release of Black Mill Tapes Vol. 3.
The Head Technician is no stranger to the Ghost Box imprint overseen by Belbury Poly’s Jim Jupp and Julian House, having released the Pye Corner Audio 7″ Annual Activities split with The Advisory Circle last year, but Sleep Games makes for a more in-depth representation of the Pye Corner Audio sound.
Some 14 tracks deep – or 16 if you indulge in the digital or CD edition – the label describe Sleep Games as an album that “explores the non-places of Belbury and invites you to join in a new kind of game that you will not want to stop playing”. Brief snippets of six tracks from the album are available to stream as a taste of what to expect, and revered writer and critic k-punk aka Mark Fisher contributes “a very interesting missive”. - www.junodownload.com/


It was only a matter of time before Ghost Box Records and Pye Corner Audio got into bed together. Both have existed in the same universe for years - creating unsettling, out-of-date electronica - and now thanks to some manouevring by Martin Jenkins and label head Jim Jupp, they’ve come together on Sleep Games. Marrying the ambient weirdness of Pye Corner Audio with Ghost Box’s eerie school video skits, Sleep Games gives both sounds a dark, disco edge, resulting in a hybrid that feels like Johnny Jewel being allowed a seat at a séance.
In many ways, Sleep Games is everything fans of both the artist and label could have hoped for. Tracks alternate between the lurid, the psychedelic and the funky, and the bare-faced thefts from John Carpenter soundtracks. ‘Yesterday’s Entertainment’ focuses on cool, free-floating keyboards that sound like French house exiled into Belgium, while ‘The Black Mill Video Tape’ is thudding electronica built around a brass synth line that melts away into sirens. Referencing Ghost Box’s Cold War keyboards and Pye Corner Audio’s decayed pop, this album wants to keep you disturbed but in motion, and for every chiller - ‘Experimental Road Surface’, wind and screaming, a blizzard that changes chords - there’s funky, more inviting stuff like ‘Deep End’ or ‘Palais Spectres’, both of which could be an alternative Knight Rider intro.
On occasion the balance tips into double darkness, which is where Sleep Games will shed its casual listeners and retain only those who survived Jenkins’ Black Mill Tapes compilations. ‘Print Thought’ is a minute of solid static, while ‘Into the Maze’ is a keyboard program that decides midway to morph into Orbital Green-album techno. Both don’t seem to fit the possessed physics video theme that Jenkins is aiming for, but they can’t be faulted for their own power to unsettle. Neither can the icy wind of ‘A Non-Place’ or the popcorn tones of ‘Remanence’ - these give Sleep Games a hissing aura, copying the 'my cat slept on this' noise of Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works 85-92.
Shapeless moments aside, Sleep Games emerges as a strong enough entry point in either Pye Corner Audio’s discography or the murky world of Ghost Box. The few middling tracks at its centre reveal an emotional final third, with ‘Chlorine’ sounding like a haunted house theme played on ice cream sirens, and ‘Nature Reclaims The Town’s sad synths crying out for Owen Ashworth to groan about girlfriends over them. Sleep Games’ crowning moment comes with the beautiful ‘Nostalgia Pills’, which could be the long-awaited high-five between Vangelis and Boards of Canada. A symphonic TV network ident played in shimmering fog, it rubber-stamps the album as a strange, inviting vision, and shows in two minutes how Ghost Box have got stronger with every release. It seems fitting that it’s taken Pye Corner Audio to realise their world fully and map it out with such care. - George Bass



Pye Corner Audio's darkling synthetic transmissions had been hovering under the radar for a couple of years before 2012's Black Mill Tapes collection on Type brought them to a wider and grateful audience. Now, Martin Jenkins finds himself equally lauded by the likes of Sandwell District's Juan Mendez and Minimal Wave's Veronica Vasicka as by the UK hauntological set - a testament to the scope and adaptability of his stygian productions. Nonetheless, this album release feels right at home on Ghost Box, and it follows Jenkins' contribution to the label's 7" Study Series last year. If The Black Mill Tapes focussed on the unheimlich but decidedly driving meta-techno side of the Pye sound, Sleep Games gives as much time to exploring its more abstract and oneiric peripheries. Nonetheless, rhythm is foregrounded throughout: from the woozy, tape-warped Boards of Canada-ism of 'Sleep Games', via the Xander Harris/Umberto-esque giallo-disco chug of 'The Black Mill Video Tape' through to the distant, dubby pulse of 'Palais Spectres' and the rolling toms of 'Underneath The Dancefloor'. Eschewing the tweeness which has arguably softened the impact of recent Ghost Box releases, Sleep Games is refreshingly drug-hazed and zonked-out yet shark-eyed, minimalist and full of post-apocalyptic, cold-wave menace: you can more easily imagine this stuff soundtracking a car ride through the deserted industrial zones of coastal America than a ramble round the Belbury parish and its bucolic environs. At the same time, this feels like a Ghost Box release through and through: 'Print Through' is a radiophonic seance right from the grimoire of Eric Zann, 'Deep End' has the school textbook sci-fi sigh of classic Belbury Poly and 'Yesterday's Enemy' the occult public service broadcasting vibe of early Advisory Circle. - boomkat


For those following the thoroughly British Ghost Box label since its inception in 2004, Pye Corner Audio’s Sleep Games won’t come as a noticeable seismic shift in the label’s direction. Though it doesn’t traffic in the mystical medieval whimsy invoked by Belbury Poly or the ’60s fetishism of Roj or the New York Times Book Review bumper music of that Mount Vernon Arts Lab reissue, Sleep Games enthusiastically invokes the spirit of the label without making its references to British science fiction as plainspoken as the rest of the roster has in the past.
More than anything, what unites Sleep Games to its brethren is a shameless love of and devotion to that once-dirty word, “progressive.” Sweeping synthesizer melodies like “Deep End” and “A Door in the Dry Ice” or the deep intergalactic pulse running through “Palais Spectres” demonstrate that Our Head Technician – the anonymous but fairly approachable guy behind the project – has a deep love of Jean Michel Jarre, Popol Vuh and assorted ’70s b-movie space soundtracks. I also hear traces of Yes and even The Alan Parsons Project in its grand scope and occasionally addicting, well-nigh friendly melodies. As advertised, John Carpenter, post-rave comedowns, and VHS copies of the original Wicker Man are also threaded throughout. You know the guys at 20jazzfunkgreats lose sleep over copping stuff like this.
Of course, if Sleep Games were that simple, we’d slap a “Moroder via Van Der Graaf Generator” tag to it and call it a day. But it’s far, far stranger than merely prog. Prog is the beating heart of the album, but Our Head Technician’s campy sci-fi synthscapes are interwoven with the dark hauntology and sinister shadows of Italo horror soundtracks, early post-punk and industrial, and musique concrète. A recent Silent Servant mix for Fact settled Pye Corner Audio right in next to Minimal Wave releases and Cabaret Voltaire, and his affiliation with the Modern Love crew and Joseph Stannard of The Outer Church is documented. So, early in the album, you get the two Prins Thomas-esque space-disco songs of the title-track and “The Black Mill Video Tape” followed by the aloof interlude “Print Through,” another melodic track in “Deep End,” the minimal thump of “Into the Maze,” and the creepy “Experimental Road Surface.” Its willingness to explore sounds that wouldn’t necessarily jive out of context is admirable.
While I’d never suggest that Sleep Games (incredibly unsettling sleep music, by the way) is about escaping that aforementioned “essential Britishness,” you can hear that the added influences make it both more and less of that mindset. I’ve tried talking about Jarre and Vangelis and Prins Thomas only to return to Demdike Stare and 20 Jazz Funk Greats and rave culture. Which is what makes Pye Corner Audio’s latest the marquee example of Ghost Box at their most distilled, their most essential: reaching beyond by reaching within. - Patrick Masterson


Black Mill Tapes Vol​.​3

Streaming ovdje


Black Mill Tapes Vol​.​2


Streaming ovdje


Black Mill Tapes Vol​.​1

Streaming ovdje


The Head Technician's Generosity

Streaming ovdje

&



Stratus, As the Crow Flies


Martin Jenkins of Pye Corner is also one half of the filmic, psychy, expansive sounding Stratus and their new self release album is available now on download and CD here. This is a beautifully produced and massive sounding album, that you really should check out.




Stratus, Beneath the Wheel EP (2011)


Streaming ovdje

Gen Ken Montgomery - Drilling Holes in the Wall [+ Sons of God]





Topli oblaci zvukovne čudnosti. Anonimne mehaničke aktivnosti, ptice i bočice šampona pod tušem, bušenje rupa u zidu... Ken Montgomery/Gen Ken/Egnekn stvara rupe u našim ušima u kojima gradi kakofonijska gnijezda od perja sudopera i krzna Morseovih znakova poslanih u prazninu. Distorzija kao uspavanka za raster naše srednjovjekovne duše (dok mi frenetično trčimo između točaka uvećane jave).




Streaming  Birds + Machines, Live at WFMU on The Open Door with Richard 2/11/82,  Pondfloorsample    ovdje


http://www.genkenmontgomery.com/news.shtml


Gen Ken Montgomery (USA, 1957) was a pioneer of independent noise/concrete music with the cassettes: Gen Ken & Equipment (1981), Kalckreuth Keks (1986), Beatmusik (1987), Stepping through Rooms (1987), The One Sided Triangle (1987), Drilling Holes in the Wall (1989 - Monochrome Vision, 2010), containing a 30-minute suite which represents one of his aesthetic peaks, Endogeny (Direction Music, 1990), OnomAtopiA meccCANIcA (1990), Mall Muzak (1992), The Beat of The Refrigerator (1994), etc.
Other recordings appear on Greatest Hits (De Fabriek, 1985), Beyond My Ken (Esplendor Geometrico, 1989), Keystone Model CC 16 (State of The Union, 1992), The Sound of Lamination (Firework Editions, 1999), Wake Up - Because Tomorrow Comes (1999), the 4 CDR set Droneskipclickloop (Generator Sound Art, 2001), Slice of Life (A.T.M.O.T.W., 2003).
The double-disc Pondfloorsample (XI, 2002) is a selection of his works, including the 31-minute environmental noise symphony Father Demo Swears (1989), possibly his masterpiece, a terror-inducing wall of noise for amplified violin, voice, street noise and (massive) feedback; a 52-minute live improvised performance of Droneskipclickloop (1998), and the 19-minute Aquarium Fishtank Symphony, also improvised.






The Sound of Hardware Shopping

Enjoy the experience of shopping at your favorite hardware store in the privacy of your own home. Close your eyes and imagine that you are strolling through Crest Hardware, home of the Crest Hardware Art Show in Brooklyn NY. Find tools you never knew you needed. Be greeted by Finlay the parrot. Find all your hardware needs, make a key and visit the Urban Garden Center and meet Franklin the pig. A sonic excursion into the joy of hardware shopping. Only authentic hardware sounds used. Smooth sonic finish throughout provided by The Ministry of Laminations's Dust-Free sandpaper.This CD is part of the Crest Hardware Art Show 2012.







Birds + Machines, Pogus-CD USA, Recordings 1980-1989

"What sounds or sources form the components of this music (everyday or extraordinary objects; musical instruments or electronic tools; his own voice or environmental recordings), what is important is the mind that processes them and welds them together into the independent entities that we call songs. These songs are explorations. Trips into an unknown. Everywhere he goes Ken Montgomery creates a buzz. He creates a sphere of sound around him that feels humane, sociable. A warm cloud of sonic strangeness. But a loud cloud, too, mind you." - Rene´ van Peer


My favorite story about Gen Ken Montgomery tells of a party he gave at which there was no loud music piping from stereo speakers and no live band. Instead, Montgomery simply turned on appliances and other noisemakers around his apartment, filling the fete with an ambient, uncanny din. It’s this sort of minimalist repurposing that is Montgomery’s best-known work today. It was featured prominently on the first half of 2002’s two-disc Pondfloorsample, only one in a steady succession of releases over the last decade by the largely overlooked New Yorker.
Montgomery’s readymade compositions are exercises in the complexity that can be birthed of simplicity, taking a straightforward concept and unspooling it into a miasma of otherwise unheard (or unnoticed) sound. Birds + Machines isn’t quite as austere as tracks like “Egnekn’s Fridge” and “Laminator Model 2291,” but it’s another look at hard-to-hear work by a composer who remains rather unrecognized even in this age of endless rediscovery and internet-facilitated obtainment.
Montgomery cites the inspiration for this album as a shampoo bottle falling in the shower. It’s not quite Newton’s apple, but the sound of the bottle being pelted by water sent Montgomery on a mission to re-investigate his work from the 1980s, resulting in Birds + Machines. The disc mixes live tracks with previously released selections, a mix of environmental sounds (be they outdoor or in-) with electronic augmentation the common thread. Chiming bells and singing birds are some of the only identifiable sound sources, though there’s plenty of anonymous mechanical activity to be found at the heart of many tracks. Rather than encouraging the listener to take more care in considering their surroundings, Birds + Machines finds Montgomery creating more mysterious settings. The aptly titled trio of “Subliminal Clutter” tracks are fluid and unpredictable, meditations of a kitchen sink variety that scatter fragmented rhythms amidst the grainy buzz and swirl of the electronics. Birds fly about a ghostly factory, morse code is sent into the void, and synthesizers squeal over noisy drones that seem to fold in upon themselves. Perhaps the least expected of Birds + Machines’ inclusions are “Shoot Me Down” and “Treat the Hell Out of It,” which lays Montgomery’s distorted voice over jagged rhythms with an aggressive swagger that’s more than a little reminiscent of Suicide’s preindustrial clamor.
Montgomery’s capable of captivating cacophony (see 1999’s “The Aquarium Fishtank Symphony”), but it’s the more focused and patient of this album’s work that tends to be its best. With Cage-ian attention, Montgomery has spent decades utilizing an ear for the music in the most mundane of moments. Birds + Machines opts for more involved rearrangements of these unexpected sound sources, making for some dynamic soundplay, but often obscuring the inventiveness that is Montgomery’s strongest asset. This dark disc offers a look into a heretofore underexposed corner of Ken Montgomery’s career, but the neophyte (and there are many) would be best served exploring elsewhere first. - Adam Strohm


Gen Ken & Equipment (no label, 1981) cassette/ CD-R

Gen Ken & Equipment
Let us commence our musical march -- focused this time on cassettes --- with the debut release of sound artist Ken Montgomery (aka Gen Ken, aka Egnekn). A testament to Montgomery's roots in Conrad Schnitzler--style electronics and minimal-synth-y new wave, 1981's Gen Ken & Equipment originally came out only on cassette, but was reissued on CD-R a number of years back. Incidentally, not too long after the release of this first cassette, Montgomery went on to collaborate with Schnitzler -- who, in case you don't know him, was an early member of Tangerine Dream and has since been the most consistently experimental and interesting practitioner of Berlin School electronics. For his part, Montgomery in later years has largely left Berlin-style electronics behind in favor of more conceptual sound art pieces. Longtime New Yorkers may also be interested to know that he was once the owner/operator of one of the city's best-ever record shops: Generator -- which lives on as a label, Web site, and concept. - blog.wfmu.org/


 

Drilling Holes in The Wall, Monochrome Vision-CD, Russia 2007

Archive materials from one of the most mysterious musicians in electronic underground, dating from 1988 to 1991. Each piece composed by Gen Ken Montgomery is the result of domestic alchemy, transforming some ugliest environmental sounds into artistic images of impressive beauty. His in- struments are just prepared toy synth, but also from time to time laminator, icebreaker, radiator, film projector and so on. These recordings were made in Conrad Schnizler studio in West Berlin, and also live on stage there, in time of Germany reunion.  

PondFloorSampleDuetsTwenty-Third Street
Elm,Elm,ElmFabio's Muffler
Gen Ken
Greatest Hits
Balls
Beyond My KenDrone Skip Click LoopEGNEKEN's Fridge8 Track Magic I8 Track Magic II
Ice BreakerLetter PressLifeless GuitarSounds of SilenceBlue Vinyl Project
Gen ConLaminator Unplugged


PRESS

Drilling Holes in the Wall - the Sound Project 18th Issue 2010
Zeit Zum Horen 7/15/99 (German) - CD vs the 8 Track
Neural - Pond Floor Sample Review (Italian)
Signal to Noise - Pond Floor Sample Review (English)
Run That by Me Again - David Myers & Gen Ken Montgomery - Ear Magazine
Gen.R.8 - Time Out New York
In Their Own Words - NYFA INTERACTIVE
Lamination Rituals - The Sound Projector #17
Music That Others Would Call Noise - The Sound Projector #10
The Sound of Lamination - Kring,Musik (Swedish)
Stairway t0 8 Track Heaven - New York Press 12/26/2000
Ken Montgomery, Camera Eye - Notes From the Underground 2/90
Montgomery Continues to Avoid Questions
Gen Ken Montgomery - Chop Shop Fragment 4
Generator Sound Art - Folk Music for the '90's
Generator - A New Sound Wave - The Rutgers Review 11/20/1990
Gen Ken Montgomery - Birds + Machines - SCALA TYMPANI (Italian)



Lamination Ritual As a Virtual Metaphor
Lamination Ritual celebrates the transformation of the mundane into the realms of OFFICIALDOM, of ordinary into extraordinary. Lamination is completely participatory and accessible to everyone. Lamination is versatile. It can be an object of utility or whimsical extravagance. It can warm the body and open the mind. Lamination preserves, brightens and protects indiscriminately. Lamination counters our increasingly fast paced world by virtually slowing down the entropy process. Lamination provides a way to preserve for years fragile and transient items which would otherwise be lost or discarded in a few days or even seconds. And finally, every lamination has its own unique sound. The Sound of Lamination is the sound of anticipation, of the great process of life.
 The Ministry of Lamination is just one of Ken Montgomery's projects, for information on others...

 Lamination Rituals
A Lamination Ritual is a people-participatory activity and sonic listening experience which stimulates the mind and body in-the-moment, while producing an original, tangible, transformed personal object which will last... almost forever.
A lamination station is set up with all the supplies needed. A form is designed specific to the event. Contact microphones attached to the laminator amplify the sound of lamination through loudspeakers facing the user.


The public is invited to engage their imagination to embellish, objectify and officialize the form by adding personal elements and permanently sealing them with the laminator. Enhanced by The Sound of Lamination, the process becomes ritualistic and the artist/laminator takes away a documentation/souvenir of this heightened moment. The Sound of Lamination creates a neurological memory to associate the ritual with the "officialized" document/souvenir.



Historical Perspective
Lamination Ritual is the current development initiated by a Make Life Not Art campaign propagated in 1989 by my studio-turned store/gallery/network/hub, Generator. Originally located in the East Village of New York City, Generator was an open call for intermedia experimentation, while continuing a personal preoccupation I had with sound/noise/music and listening experiences.

The evolution of Generator - from studio to record store to concert hall to exhibition space to archive to traveling show - often followed a logic akin to "stream of consciousness". By refusing to take the steps necessary to become commercially viable or to enter the arena of public funding, Generator was to remain completely flexible and as spontaneous and broke. Transformations, evolutions, openings and closings became an integral part of Generator as well as the offshoots down unknown and sometimes seemingly unrelated paths.

These "seemingly unrelated paths" are as unmistakenly mysterious as is the existence of "haphazard". One of these paths was the use of the laminator in my work/life.
I supported Generator by working in a photo lab where laminating services were also provided. Each day I took discarded photographs out of the trash, cut them up and laminated them. Originally it was a kind of therapy-against-boredom, but it evolved into an obsession and source of inspiration. I decided Generator should have a self-service lamination station for the public to experiment and play with. People often associate lamination with the common place, practical objects such as: identification cards, menus, driver's license, etc. etc. (most people carry a laminated card with them all the time). But when people have the chance to experiment with making their own laminations the results are inspiring. Somehow the do-it-yourself trends found in more technically advanced mediums bypassed laminating. So Generator became the cutting edge Lamination Headquarters in New York City. (among its other functions.)
At Generator I became increasingly more involved with organized sound and consequently lost interest in "music" oriented traditions such as "music" concerts and "music" instruments. In my own work I began using ordinary objects to create sound experiences, in total darkness or in very stimulating environments such as La La Lalandia 2077 events. I used a film projector (Keystone Model 16 CC), an ice crusher (ICE-O-MATIC) and a laminator. Meanwhile I discovered that laminating at Generator had a big impact on people. Among them were Canadian artists Gordon Monahan and Laura Kikauka who invited me to laminate in a Bauhütte Klangzeit 2000 event at Gargoyle Mechanique in 1990 (New York City).

After many years as a noiscian struggling to make the transition into the art/life process, I was delighted to be invited to laminate. Laminated objects from that event are still carried by people who attended it. This is a testament to the lasting impact of Lamination Rituals. For me it marked the beginning of a series of life process events, often with the laminator close at hand. I have found no end to the variety of objects that can be laminated and no end to the enthusiasm, interest, confusion and fun people have shown when they are confronted with re-thinking lamination. Among items laminated during Lamination Rituals in the past are: monkey hairs, keys, rubber bands, rice noodles, razor blades, bubble gum, pubic hair, sponge fragments, paper clips, leeks, foil. torn fabric, wok cooked chili peppers, hash, spit, sprouts, leaves, bubble-wrap, french fries, pancakes, web cam stills, wax, dust, rubber and vinyl.


 http://www.generatorsoundart.org/index2.html



Sons of God
(Sweden)
noise and performance
Egnekn Montgomery
(New York)
Lamination Rituals
Joachim Nordwall
(Sweden, member of Skull Defekts)
electronics
*preceded by a panel discussion on KREV, moderated by Thomas Bey William Bailey,
(author of "Micro Bionic: Radical Electronic Music And Sound Art In The 21st Century")

Return appearance from these Swedish faves!  If you missed Sons of God last time they were in Philadelphia, or at the No Fun Festival, you may have heard bemused and be-wondered tales of their theatrical, ritualistic movements and scenes, set to bone-rattling noise.  And if you did catch them, you know just what kind of miraculous transformations to expect.   This time, Leif and Kent will be joined by two prominent citizens of the Royal Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland to present us the rites and rituals of their foreign land, founded by Leif Elggren and CM von Hausswolff in 1992.

"The Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland [KREV] were proclaimed in 1992 and consist of all Border Territories: Geographical, Mental & Digital.

Elgaland-Vargaland is the largest – and most populous realm on Earth, incorporating all boundaries between other nations as well as Digital Territory and other states of existence. Every time you travel somewhere, and every time you enter another form, such as the dream state, you visit Elgaland-Vargaland."

Read the KREV constitution.

For this special diplomatic mission to Philadelphia, KREV founder and King Leif Elggren and Minister of Revelations Kent Tankred will perform a miracle as Sons of God.  Rumor has it they may also be joined by
Lary 7, KREV Minister of Audiology and pilot of KREVAIR.  They will also bring us some of the paraphernalia of their native land to show, possibly including applications for citizenship.  Prepare to doff your hats if the national anthem of KREV is played in one of its many versions.

Also appearing is KREV Minister of Lamination
Egnekn Montgomery, peforming lamination rituals (see below) in honor of his countrymen.
KREV citizen and Skull Defekts member Joachim Nordwall opens with a solo set of electronics.
*The evening will begin with a panel discussion on KREV,  hosted by author Thomas Bey William Bailey.  He tells us to expect
"an intimate discussion on the past, present, and future of Elgaland-Vargaland: how has the project influenced the individual artworks of its respective citizens, and vice versa?  Why is its unique criticism of prevailing power structures becoming more relevant in our 'post-everything' 21st century? What does one stand to gain by joining the Elgaland-Vargaland citizenry? All these questions, and more, will be answered by our panel of experts."



 

Massimo Ricci - muzički blog Touching Extremes






Ricci održava izvrstan blog (bez ilustracija, čisti tekst) o muzici kakvu i mi ovdje ponekad pratimo, no tip je radikalni elitist (svi drugi su glupi itd.), što je super jer povećava vjerojatnost da su mu uvidi relevantni. Ima i općih razmišljanja usuprot mainstreamu: ljudski jezik je antievolucijsko sredstvo komunikacije, jezik povećava a ne smanjuje razumijevanje, omogućuje ljudima da umisle da nešto "poznaju" a zapravo nemaju pojma o čemu govore...




Born March 5, 1964, Massimo Ricci is a self-taught multi-instrumentalist improviser and composer, yet he’s worldwide known as an independent writer specializing in non-commercial music.
His website Touching Extremes - described in the New York Times as a valuable read for “finding out about recordings of music that transcend the predictable” by influential composer Glenn Branca
is a no-frills, text-only source for reviews of improvisation, avantgarde, electronica, contemporary jazz and atypical genres, principally aiming to widen the difference between “significant” (or at least worthy of consideration) and “forgettable” in the overcrowded world of new music. In that sense, Ricci is generally willing to avoid negative reviews, convinced that “they usually sparkle a pseudo-cultural debate about something that ideally should be ignored”. In keeping with a strictly anti-intellectual stance his writings encourage new listening methods, analysis of sound-related physical reactions and ironic sociological commentary in opposition to vacuous criticism and pompous exposure of presumed “knowledge”. Started in 2001 as a sort of irregular web bulletin featuring - in the author's words - "short descriptions of records that I bought and liked to be shared with cats and donkeys”, today Touching Extremes receives an average of 70/80 releases per month from artists and labels, "and I still listen very carefully to each one of them - even the utmost shit, which of course goes straight into the trashcan”.
Ricci's vision defines the average human brain as basically unfit to decode unusual frequencies and understand rhythms different from binary or ternary, hence most listeners’ inevitable tendency to accept what’s dispatched as “good music” (not necessarily by an “establishment”, but also by stupid friends or colleagues) without a real evaluation of what they receive, their a priori refusal of dissonance and complex metres and - as far as many “self-proclaimed artists” are concerned - the growing abuse of the D(rone) word as a screen hiding their inadequacy. “There are also morons who believe to be depositaries of the Verb only because they play with - or stick their tongues up the ass of - someone with a name”.
Coherently with an admittedly hopeless struggle against superficiality, commonplace and low-budget spiritualism, he’s a firm non-believer in any concept of school, philosophy, psychology, official history, mass media and, above all, “desperation-induced social gathering”. According to Ricci, “either people are naturally gifted with a capacity - be it music, art, language, sport - or they’re not, and developing those features depends exclusively on the individual's intelligence and mental strength. If one doesn’t possess the ability to vibrate, then pretending to vibrate is utterly pathetic. What really counts for this kind of subjects - more or less 95% of an average population, with a tendency to increase - is looking for a quick way to make money, being somehow “recognized” for something they did (most probably stolen from someone much brighter) and, last but not least, get laid - possibly trying to harass someone else’s tranquillity in the meantime”.
Touching Extremes' motto "Sounds determine whether one's an idiot"- while obviously strictly linked with these concepts - should not be easily dismissed as a taunt. It’s rather the concise manifesto for a deeply rooted series of long-time sonic and environmental experiences (Ricci started experimenting with different ways of manipulating his childhood’s records - thus obtaining the “most absurdly beautiful sounds” - at the age of 3) that can't actually be translated into words. “It would be a waste of time anyway, given that the majority of the so-called experts is depressingly illiterate despite their ambitious curricula”, he says
As a matter of fact, Ricci considers human language as an anti-evolutive means of communication and a ceaseless source of incomprehension and ego-derived stupid behaviours, the icing on a cake of constantly spreading absence of reason. Over the years I’ve been greatly amused by the inverse proportionality between all this hubbub about “evolution” and the concrete lack of it. People read a couple of articles on a magazine, a book’s introduction at best, then start walking around acting like know-it-all jerks, teaching this, preaching that. But, for example, when it comes down to music everybody is ready to supinely acknowledge the most elementary rhythms and melodies as “celestial” or “genial”, obviously because they can’t understand what comes after the ABC, or even the A... Basically, we’re dealing with that kind of out-and-out retards who need to join large groups to survive, otherwise they’d probably commit suicide after a week or so. These people will never get nowhere, whatever the official result of their life. The eternal illusion goes on. The problem at large is that the bulk of mankind feels entitled to declare themselves “masters” of something, without actually having a clue of what they’re talking about: an inconclusive versatility whose dramatic effects are mostly felt by the ones who have a real experience and follow the right direction, the effective prime movers, who work for themselves but also for those chumps who can only copy and reproduce at best. It happens all the time, in every field. One wonders about the incidence of degrees and diplomas in relation to the consumption of psychotropic drugs.
At the beginning of 2005, Ricci was invited by composer and journalist Dan Warburton to contribute to Paris Transatlantic, one of the world's leading websites for contemporary music.
Also in 2005, his writings were featured in sound artist Keith Berry’s landmark recording The Ear That Was Sold To A Fish (Crouton), nominated among the “albums of the year” by The Wire. Ricci is credited with “memory flashes morphed into words”, his short prose poems - rapidly sketched in an instinctive reaction to a series of photos that Berry sent him - as the source of the composition’s titles.
He is particularly interested in bringing to a wider attention the hard-to-fathom complexities in the work of unjustly overlooked artists, such as Roland Kayn and Alfred Harth.
Composer Darren Tate has subtitled his CD Trees Kissing Trees “for Massimo Ricci” as a friendly homage to the writer’s work.
Despite decades of instrumental research and recording experimentation, Ricci has not been interested in releasing his music in any format until now. He does not consider this as a priority, “but it could happen sooner or later, and I will accept the consequences”, he says. “At the end of the day, playing or listening to music which is able to affect our systems should ideally remain an intimate act. But egocentrism always claims its food, and I do my best to keep it on a pretty strict diet”. - Max Stachelschwein, 2007.