Workshop sound

25th November 2012 12:00am - 05:00am

Working the decks and mixers, totally unassuming, an unbroken concentration all night from the Workshop label at ICAN Studios last night.

Tucked away in the back room there is a definite contrast as you step away from the rumbling jump-up jacking of Joy-O, who throws around recent epic tunes such as Blawan's "Why'd they hide..". All three sets built seamlessly from fragmented and intricate parts, nothing here hints at a build; the music is hypnotic and the pressure never lets up enough to let the mood drop. 

Even Tuell feels out the space, layering and tweaking sounds so as to craft a dreamy aura for his techno cuts.  There is never a feeling of spareness, yet the music never steps too far away from it's own framework so as to feel cluttered or over complicated. As Lowtec steps up the mood shifts almost indefinably; perhaps the tempo is slightly elevated. the kick-drum slightly punchier, but the feeling of unity remains between the two. The proceeding hour is hypnotic rolling techno, both original, challenging and yet unlike the preceeding 2. The differences between the sets are so hard to define and yet definitely there, Even Tuell deals in a slightly more laid back vibe and keeps his sound tightly married to the threaded techno samples, Lowtec drops in occasional nods to disco with threads of soulful groove. As we move past 3:00am Even Tuell drops back in and the two seem to dip in and out, moving back and forth between the decks, casually playing off of each other and blending the controlled styles of each into dubbed-out finale of simple, yet creative techno.

Later on Kassem Mosse's signature thump works the soundsystem hard, displaying his prominence and adding impact to the German label's controlled and immaculate sound; this element alone probably represents the reason for his legendary status, at least in the UK. As he steps up this gives the crowd what they are looking for, there is a noticeable increase in the energy on the floor, with the bass-heads suddenly relating and tuning in. Kassem drops in an at times bewildering array of samples, some half-vocals horribly clipped into an unrecognisable roar repeat over and over like the sounds of an early 90's PC game frozen in motion. There are sounds which hark at Kassem's Trilogy Tapes album with Mix Mup earlier this year, though nothing recognisable enough to be a direct drop. 

The Workshop label is a gem, delivering something refreshingly different from the "big tune" epicness of UK Bass whilst separating itself from the "big beat" thump of Berlin's driving techno sound. Each set tonight would warrant a beard-stroking analysis and deconstruction if it weren't for the fact that it's live energy were just too hypnotic to stop dancing.

Workshop 16 (Marcellis) - coming soon - Workshop Records

It stands to conceal

The foundations are all that's left, lined up board-game squares, uniform, brick rubble crumbling under the weight of political unrest.

Vatican Shadow deals in calculated repetition vs crushing noise; the project gained a bookend from the recent addition of Operation Neptune Spear - it reminded us of the heat that all that cold calculation was building to. The noisiest and harshest end of the Vatican Shadow spectrum actually offered respite; though probably taken to an extreme to serve a purpose - the live show - Neptune Spear was the endgame answer, the result of those rows of artillery and asymmetric warfare tactics.

 

 At the other end of the spectrum is the project's origin, and it is something almost more harrowing. This Vatican Shadow sound seems to drive almost entirely on repetition; atmospheric and entirely visceral, bound to militant imagery, binding and irrespirable. Though for something with such a unique and specific atmosphere, listening carefully highlights distinction. The tracks merge fragments into relatable realities, they offer immersion in a world that exists in news and on paper but also uncontrollably in so many people's lives.

 

 These three releases feel like a fractal shape spinning outwards as the global conflict gains scale - infantrymen who stumble across a wounded enemy, all bone and blood, feeling the cold touch of human empathy as the politics rages on around them. The real killer point of Vatican Shadow is its ability to highlight the abrasion of something uncontrollably rolling on, a feeling in human existence of being caught in something unstoppable, aligning ourselves simply by being. In times of covert control tactics you don't have to drive an Abrahams or even take to the street in support of a political leader to feel like you're taking sides. The grind of global conflicts and frictions echo in the people that are controlled and affected by them, and that's exactly what Vatican Shadow is all about.

Jordanian Decent serves two expansive pieces of grindingly repetitive tape loops, slowly evolving low-level-hums which seek progression slowly from minute flickers. Images of background conflict, conspiricy theories and a world-view scale of expansive atmospherics draw to a close mid-thought and beg to be left in a locked groove - the needle eventually degrading the sound to a fading crackle.

Atta's Apartment Slated for Demolition draws on the signiture Vatican Shadow sound of past releases, especially the Washington Buries.. series, investing in dark brooding scenes of small scale military intelligence and burning rubble in the aftermath of conflict. Here the sounds feel immersive rather than expansive - less abstract but just as degrading in their oppressive march.

Ghosts of Chechniya is a much more personal record, the relatively fragment-length tracks feel like glimpses on a human scale. Like the headlines and quotes from which their names derive, these are the personal stories of conflict, the newspaper cuttings from someone's personal war.

This is a project which manages to touch on conflict on every scale; so remarkable for its uniform and uncompromising approach to sound. Dominick Fernow always knew the most marketable material he would release under the guise was actually the noise elements, not exactly what you would expect, but his alignment with an industrial-sound revival (see: recent live shows w/ Blackest Ever Black) ensured a captive audience. Despite that, I can't help but think this collection is the defining release of one of the most captive musical projects out there.

It Stands to Conceal will be released come the end of the year on Hospital Productions, pressed to 911 copies on vinyl (pre-orders are here and here) 

All are available now on digital as individual releases (here).

listen here

unearthing something curious

Unearthing something curious.

The Von Archives website explains itself fully. Under INFO:

VON is a label interested in releasing experiments in contemporary visual and sound arts.
VON is interested in the intersection of the visual and sound arts
VON releases limited and special editions.
VON is run by artists.

The collection of mystifying faces presented under RELEASES.

Labels are barely required to provide any information about themselves, generally the music speaks for itself, people are left to gather the pieces from interviews and string an idea together from the sounds and artwork. This is usually plenty; more than most would consider necessary from a listener, but somehow it doesn't feel enough for Von. Under each face is a video, or a track, and a description of the backdrop to the release, the website feels like a carnival of oddities and despite some relatively well-known names; Aaron Dilloway, Prurient, Thomas Köner, Ghedalia Tazartes, also like an unfathomable puzzle.

There is such a strong feeling of unification from the artwork and images that it is hard to accept the variation in styles of music, to the point that links start to form where there are none. The image sticks with such clarity and such reality, the photographs that adorn the sleeves are so far away from abstract expression, that it is almost hard to accept the musical variety presented here. Like uncovering an old family album with no two subjects the same.

Many of these trailers have tempted me into multiple viewings, and I feel like this will draw a lot of my attention in the coming weeks.

Exerpt from Von017

Thomas Köner 

Futurist Manifesto

Soundtrack to a Morphine Dream (The Music of Green Wing)

Having spent the last couple of weeks in a kind of time-stasis, focusing all my energies towards job and future, and stepping well away from hard listening time, I'm about to write a little bit about something I've re-invested all my down energies to.

Green Wing is a sort-of hypnotic flow; stream of consciousness sitcom set in a hospital ward & occasionally outside it. The scenes are like individual sketches that meld together to form a coherent storyline; characters cross from one room to another on their daily rounds with personalities ranging from mildly over-the-top to completely bent out of shape mental.

Wiki it.

The absolutely gripping qualities that Green Wing possesses are without doubt the way it is shot and, more importantly, the soundtrack, which mirrors so many qualities of the show. The music occasionally reaches song snippets, but on the whole is a warped blend of electronic ambiance which creates a seamless flow to the scenes through mimicking the visual remixes and chop-ups of the edit.

All the way through the show, the music frames the visuals like a pink-tinted haze; you feel like the wandering patient, drugged-up to the eyes and wandering aimlessly through the hospital, creating your own characters for the doctors and admin staff you see day-in-day-out. Somehow without the music, the ridiculous element would swallow up some of the credibility of the storylines, and void  the emotional attachment you build with the characters as the show goes on.

The effect is like a half-reality, in which everything in the character build is emphasised, and emotions become amplified to the point that every inflection feels like profound insight. The trauma of the hospital environment is left to one side, with nods towards outside realities being touched on in barely sobering moments and always juxtaposed with humor. Instead, relations between the staff are built and dropped steadily over the course of two seasons, again the music always book-ending the peaks and troughs of created and failed relationships before it all melts away into a final bittersweet dream.

.. it's not how I imagined it would be, 

I suppose when I pictured it there was music 

 sort of, sad music ..

 

The music was mostly composed specially for the show, by an artist named Johnathon Whitehead, under the guise of Trellis, Whitehead has written soundtracks to some of the best British sitcoms of the last 20 years, but his work on Green Wing is undoubtedly his most enthralling. It was released as a soundtrack which is still available to buy, but really, like any great soundtrack, it just doesn't have the same edge without the story in the background. This is a meticulously composed and refined entity which is woven into Green Wing and makes it into a hypnotic and emotionally charged story. By the way, it's also brilliantly funny.

John Wynne: Blurred Boundaries

Installation no. 2 for high and low frequencies. 

The corner of Lower Clapton Road and Urswick Road. It's 12:30pm and the sun is beaming the outside world inside. The visual contrast between the whitewash walls of the Angus Hughes interior and the streams of red buses and trailing cars at the traffic lights outside is striking; but add sound into the equation and the lines begin to blur.

By gathering and manipulating the external sound, John Wynne has crafted a recording which works with the internal space; it is so finely tuned to the specifics of this room that the sound system is able to create feedback from the walls and windows. There is a feeling of full integration and after a few minutes you begin to totally lose a feeling of the barrier between intended and incidental sound.

The really compelling thing about this installation is the way it is innately tied to the room. The experience is diminished by losing the visual connection with the space. Something has been woven into the architecture of the building, the tremors from the windows and door give the feeling of a pulse and the outside floods the inside with an intensity that is totally lost without the sound.

The installation is free and runs from 6th - 29th April 2012 at the Angus Hughes Gallery, Hackney.

John Wynne
Angus Hughs Gallery 

Blueprint techno / Basic house: Sensate Focus 10

Intricate house patterns.

However many tracks this release actually consists of is questionable but not really relevant; the listening experience as seamless as any I've heard. Despite multiple and often abrupt changes to the tempo and structure of the track(s) this could be broken down in many different ways. There is a such a spatial awareness involved in its creation, the sounds fit together seamlessly, beats changing tempo and washes of background colour meld in the mix as it morphs, passing a series of distinct points. The result is a hypnotic epic which changes on repeat listens as you are drawn to different minutiae of the overall sound. Elements seemingly move in all directions, like eddies in a flowing stream, never losing the overall direction but never expressing the streamlined consistency of traditional house.

It might sound about as uplifting as the iTunes visualiser, but this is club music, though destined for only select dance floors it takes all its elements from classic house sounds. As Peter Rehberg of Editions Mego puts it:

" ..liked the keyboard sounds from early House music, but had got bored of the rhythms. We did not want to throw the baby away with the bathwater, so decided to keep some things. So we kept the water and threw the baby away. "

And the name. Sensate Focus clearly chosen as the focal descriptor here, despite the big name - Mark Fell - there is no indication of an artist and tracks remain untitled in plain white sleeve. This really works; this is all the pleasure of house music without the feeling of an inevitable climax. Instead it deals with pleasure points and works from nothing (no artwork, no title) to frame a new take on the genre. The reference to joining points echoed in the inclusion of a pencil (?) though let's be honest, this is an unnecessary but slightly humerus inclusion.

The whole label seems to be making the statement: This is a blank sheet. Taking house music back to nothing and constructing something from the parts that we already have, but with none of the constraints of an archetype. This definitely requires a degree of intrigue from the listener, but it builds everything from there on in, rewarding curiosity and a little patience.

What comes next will be interesting, whether this label is to be home to a family of well-established names as an outlet for a specific type of new house music, or something a little more unpredictable is unsure. For me, the way this music works to a new set of rules using the same components is the most intriguing aspect, everything else seems to have been left to one side for the time being.

Livity Sound 004 - Preview

So these just landed!

Check out some previews for Livity004:

Kowton - More Games


Kowton - Jam01

Blueprint techno / Basic house: Livity Sound

Slowly, a new movement of house and techno mutations is building. All that this generation learned from dubstep has been distilled to it's basic elements and then refined to make bastardised interpretations of house and techno.

- Asusu on Livity Sound

It really struck me straight up. This statement, which I read a long time after hearing the music on Livity Sound, describes exactly my feelings about the label. From the off there was this stark, draughtsman-like quality to the tracks which laid the music bare. The elements present themselves in minute detail, they are defined, dimensioned and meticulous and the beauty of their complexity lies in their innate simplicity. The label's basic philosophy seems to be rooted in their ability to be just that; basic. To break apart the elements of electronic music and rearrange them in a way which showcases them as a collection of individual sounds. 
 
The label's first release hits this point exactly. Kowton and Pev take on the same track, not as one mix and a reinterpretation, but as two takes on the same basic structure, like two different models constructed from the same parts. Somehow this gives a whole new feel to the release, not bound by the confines of one dominant artist, the tracks seem to reflect two separate ideas whilst remaining true to a single form. The elements of the track are the focal points, sounds moving in and out of audio-space but never getting lost in the overall sound. Kowton's take on the A moves stealthy and metallic, mechanically driven and bleakly technoid, you get the feeling of some complex machine at work. Pev's take on the B jitters and pumps, sounding something equally physical but more organism than machine. The tracks are unmistakably the same beast, and yet unmistakably different forms. You can hear all those tweaks and shifts in the sounds which have been crafted and worked to give the overall form; each individual hit honed and moved through the L-R space, giving these tracks some weighty ambiance.

You can hear this right through the second and third releases. Asusu's 'Too much time has passed' in particular, is a minimalist dubstep echo chamber; it harks to something like those first couple of tracks Martyn released on Apple Pips, but pitched way down to give the sounds time to breathe and be heard. 'Salt Water' is a skewed dancfloor tune, skitting frantically between laid-back ambiance and speedfreak rhythm but staying fully in control all the time. There's confidence here, enough to let the music speak, and speak clear and raw, it shows that you don't need to rely on layering tracks to the point where they jump out to you; tunes can be innately danceable and also very basic, even stark.  

What Asusu says about learning from a generation of Dubstep is showcased here over just three 12s; something important. This label, along with the now relatively well established Workshop, are showing what you can do with a lot of honing and relatively few but well-chosen sounds. This is not about some new sound or scene, it's a fresh way of looking at what electronic music has to offer, and producing the purest mixes possible.

Livity Sound showcase mix

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