Author: 429harrowroad

Music journalist for Electronic Sound and occasional press release writer for VeryRecords. Father, husband, vegan. Co-founder of Mortality Tables - mortality-tables.com

Crumbling Apart In Slow Motion: An LA Diary

On By 429harrowroadIn Features1 Comment
The Los Angeles Theatre, Downtown LA (from Mortality Tables Instagram)

Went to Hollywood. Visited Amoeba Records and flicked through the CDs. Bought a Nick Cave / Mick Harvey / Blixa Bargeld soundtrack for $1. Found copies of the limited-edition reissues of Chorus and Erasure by Erasure and felt proud that the liner notes I’d written had made it all the way to Hollywood. Walked along Hollywood Boulevard and took pictures of the stars belonging to The Beatles and jazz musicians and looked at the Capitol Building, which is a lot shorter than it looks. Then again, Hollywood has made a business out of making things appear different to how they really are.

In North Hollywood, we visited the Iliad Bookshop on Cahuenga. Stroked the resident cats and bought a book about David Byrne and an old 1909 music dictionary, figuring that it might be helpful to learn some basic music knowledge as a music journalist. Good second-hand music book selection. Found a rare Charles Ives biography but it was too bulky to contemplate taking it back to the UK.

Went for brunch at Crossroads, a vegan restaurant on Melrose. Billed as fine dining and presented as a very smart dining room, but actually very casual. Lots of classic rock photos around the room – Devo, Guns n’ Roses, Freddie Mercury, Page / Plant etc – and great soundtrack playing at a volume loud enough to be interesting and low enough to allow conversation. Went there again for lunch twice; same vibe, different food, different soundtrack. Went for dinner at the Calabasas restaurant toward the end of the trip; different neighbourhood; same vibe; harsher aircon.

Took a drive to Hermosa Beach for jazz brunch at the Lighthouse, famed for its use in La La Land. Ate avocado toast, drank good coffee, listened to the Hafez Karimi Trio and enjoyed looking at the record sleeves on the walls. Walked onto the pier outside where Ryan Gosling sings ‘City Of Stars’ in the film. Felt very alive, momentarily. An enthusiastic young street musician was playing guitar while a very disinterested older lady filmed him. Noticing her attention, he started playing with his guitar behind his head. She didn’t show any more enthusiasm while he was performing for her. Staying with La La Land, later in the trip my wife and I took an early morning walk to Cathy’s Corner in Griffith Park, where Gosling and Emma Stone dance around a bench after a party.

Hafez Karimi Trio, The Lighthouse – July 7 2024

Checked into the Sunset Marquis. Famous for being a music industry haunt, but ultra-discrete. Massive Beyoncé poster hanging by the pool. Photos of rock musicians everywhere. Ordered a vodka and grapefruit because that’s what the main protagonist was drinking in The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis in the chapter I’d re-read a day before.

Walked along the Sunset Strip. Walked past the carpark of Mel’s Diner where Buffalo Springfield formed, Mark Mothersbaugh‘s ‘Chernobyl green’ Mutato Muzika studio complex, the old Tower Records (now a Supreme), the Viper Room, the Roxy. Stopped in at The Rainbow for dinner and drinks and, even though I’m not into most of the groups whose photos and memorabilia line the walls, there is something quite magical about being in a place so synonymous with the LA music scene. Ordered drinks from the outside bar, where Lemmy used to sit and play video games all night. Bumped into Jon D’Amico (“Okay, so watch” is the catchphrase he didn’t know he had) from Rock ‘N’ Walk Tours. Jon had walked us along the Sunset Strip when we were here last year and I cannot recommend his tours highly enough. He knows all of the secrets of the Strip. I had planned to publish an interview with him last year but never got around to it. I’ll try to fix that, Jon.

Mutato Muzika, Sunset Boulevard

Finished a long night on the Sunset Strip drinking whisky in a very dark bar at the front of the Sunset Marquis, its impenetrable, discrete, shadowy corners populated by more rock photos. Getting very drunk did not help, and I just felt like shit the next day. Apparently, the week after we were here, Keith Richards checked in while the Stones were playing California. During our stay I spoke at length to Logan Steppert, a bellhop who is also an electronic musician. His brilliantly atmospheric 2013 EP Bogenvia with Mike Gaydusek can be found here.

Went to the Whisky A Go-Go three times. My wife loves this venue. She came of age listening to countless bands who played here during the metal 1980s. The first show was an electronic rock trio called Love Stereo (tasting notes of Joy Division) – check out their debut single ‘Fool’ on Bandcamp here. They were followed by Rebel Star, a Bowie tribute band. Their version of ‘Heroes’ had me in floods.

The main draw of two of the Whisky shows was Fast Times, a quintet of Spicoli (Johnny Ventura – vocals, guitar), Kazzy Nova (Eddie Ayala – bass), Riff (Lance Turner – guitar), Crash Diamond (Matt Olofson – drums), and Squid (Sudwyn Munshi – keyboards) who play incendiary sets of 1980s classics, and who are named after the Cameron Crowe movie Fast Times At Ridgemont High. (Sean Penn’s character in the movie is called Spicoli.) We saw them twice last year and found ourselves completely besotted by what they do, hence wanting to see them again this year. Their versions of ‘Personal Jesus’, ‘Enjoy The Silence’, ‘Blue Monday’, ‘Shout’ and ‘Whip It!’ are absolute perfection. They play the Whisky every Monday and anyone with the remotest interest in 1980s music should check them out. My youngest daughter wound up plucking notes on Kazzy Nova’s bass on our second visit, and now wants to learn how to play. Thanks Kazzy.

Fast Times, Whisky A Go-Go – July 8 2024

Right at the end of the holiday we went to the Valley Relics Museum in Van Nuys, where they have loads of exhibits related to Fast Times At Ridgemont High, which was filmed in the area. They also have a Tower Records neon sign from the old La Brea store.

We listened to a lot of Weezer in the rental car on this trip. My wife is obsessed with Weezer. We walked down Montana Avenue in Santa Monica because Rivers Cuomo sings about taking a stroll past places like the Aero cinema in the song ‘Aloo Gobi’.

My Guns n’ Roses-loving wife got to see Gilby Clarke performed on our third and final trip to the Whisky. She wanted to marry him when she was 14 but ended up with me, and has been perpetually disappointed ever since. One of his support groups, Cinema Stereo, reminded me of a messy marriage between Pink Grease and The Hives, fronted by someone who effortlessly blends shades of Elton John, Mick Jagger and Freddie Mercury. Ones to watch. They will be huge one day.

Found ourselves on the old Route 66 a bunch of times, and consequently couldn’t get the song out of my head. Went on the 101 far too many times than was enjoyable, and it reminded me of the 1988 Depeche Mode film / concert of the same name every time I merged into the nail-bitingly stressful traffic. Went to the Pasadena Rose Bowl so my two daughters could go to the huge flea market there. Liked being at the place where 101 was recorded. A singer serenaded us with songs, including a whole section of Neil Diamond songs. My dad loved Neil Diamond.

The previous weekend we went to the Los Feliz flea, which is no longer in Los Feliz but in an old parking lot in Downtown. Bought a US CD copy of The White Room by The KLF from Rock & Sock, a husband and wife team – he sells music; she sells socks and cute cat hairgrips. Had a nice conversation with the husband about Bill Drummond, The KLF and music in general. I needed that. I’d lost my appetite for food before the flight to LA, and I’d simultaneously completely lost interest in music, something which has always given me support and comfort during difficult moments in my life. That conversation gently rekindled my interest in the latter. I don’t know his name, but I want him to know how important that conversation was.

The KLF The White Room (from Mortality Tables Instagram)

I originally bought The White Room as a teenager from Music Junction in Stratford-upon-Avon, where I grew up. I remember that on the way back home from the shopping trip with my mum and sister where I bought that cassette, we were walking through Clopton Court, where we had lived in an apartment until 1984, when I was seven and my sister was three. We bumped into my dad as we walked along the road that fringed the squat, red brick apartment buildings. He looked stony-faced. We asked what had happened. He had reversed his new red, G-registration Toyota into a signpost at the leisure centre where he’d taught me to swim and was on his way to the Swinton Insurance office at the top of Henley Street to make a claim. It was the first new car he’d ever owned and he absolutely loved it. When I got home and played The White Room, it left me feeling a little disappointed. I can’t help thinking that my dad’s disappointment in having wrecked the car he cherished so much had something to do with that.

Went to Disneyland. Felt sad when I walked past the Sherman Brothers‘ door on Main Street. So many of their songs were part of my childhood, and my daughters’ childhoods. I am unashamedly a fan of Disney, and hoped it would give me some joy during a holiday where I generally felt numb. On our final night at Disneyland, I really enjoyed ‘It’s A Small World’, whose pretty theme tune was a Sherman Bros. composition; I’ve been on that ride countless times but this was the first time it really moved me.

Later in the trip we visited the Hollywood Museum, located in a genuine slice of old Hollywood, the Max Factor makeup building off Hollywood Boulevard. On the wall was a framed print from Disney’s ambitious Fantasia with the signatures of Walt Disney and Leopold Stowkowski beneath it, which took my breath away. I keep finding out interesting things about Stowkowski and his involvement with experimental music, something I hope to write about in the future. Went to the Hollywood Bowl to listen to 1980s and 1990s Disney songs played with a full orchestra, conducted by Sarah Hicks, who had been the conductor at the Rufus Wainwright Proms concerts I reviewed for Clash last year. The Disney concert was very special, in an absolutely incredible venue up in Griffith Park. My eldest daughter cried when she got to hear Susan Egan (Meg from Hercules) and Jodi Benson (Ariel from The Little Mermaid) perform on stage.

Dropped in to Highland Park for a few hours. Went to an incredible vinyl-only record store called Gimme Gimme Records. I didn’t buy anything – transporting vinyl on Transatlantic flights is something I’ve done before and it’s inordinately stressful – but I found a copy of Thomas Dolby’s The Flat Earth, whose Assorted iMaGes sleeve by Baker Dave I’d written about on the flight over. Found myself looking at Neil Diamond LPs. Visited Licorice Pizza in Studio City. Found myself looking at Neil Diamond LPs again.

Went to a hip place called Justine’s Wine Bar in Frogtown. Ate good vegan food and enjoyed a playlist curated by the guy at the bar consisting of late-70s / early-80s post-punk music – New Order, Wire etc. I recommended that he listen to Rema Rema and watch Marco Porsia’s documentary about them, What You Could Not Visualise. I admitted that I’m biased, as I’m in Marco’s film. He asked me if I was in “the industry” – a very Los Angeles term – which I suppose I am.

Checked into a beautiful 1920s Airbnb off Beachwood Drive. In the lounge were loads of interesting books, including Jon Wozencroft’s book on Neville Brody. It was a moment of complete coincidence, as Jon was one of a small number of collaborators I’d been messaging during the holiday. Although I was taking an enforced break from an intense period of Mortality Tables activities, I chose the holiday as the perfect time to revisit discussions with Jon about a Mortality Tables sound / visual project we’ve been working on for a while.

In Downtown LA, we visited The Last Bookstore. Looked through the second-hand vinyl and found more Assorted iMaGes sleeves I’ve written about, as well as some of Baker Dave’s designs for Phil Collins albums. More Neil Diamond LPs. Got mildly frustrated by the aisles of people taking photos of people looking at books to post on social media, and who then walked out the store without buying a single book. I also didn’t buy a book, but both of my daughters did.

Drove out to Laurel Canyon and stopped in on the Canyon Country Store. Bought coffee from the front porch and used the restroom, which is down in the basement in the stockroom. Mama Cass from Mamas And Papas used to live here when she had nowhere else to stay. Saw the apartment where Jim Morrison used to live, its balcony overlooking the store. He wrote ‘Love Street’ from Here Comes The Sun while living there, calling it the “store where the creatures meet”.

Toward the end of the holiday, my wife booked for us to visit Lake Shrine, an oasis of spiritual calm tucked away in a bend on Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades close to Santa Monic. George Harrison’s memorial service was held here, and they hold some of Gandhi’s ashes. My wife and daughters left me on my own for a while. I meditated, reflected, cried and listened. I read a message from my friend Gareth, who had offered me his typically accurate advice on how to approach grief. We checked into an Airbnb cabin high up in Topanga Canyon on the day we visited Lake Shrine. I spent a lot of time outside, just listening to sounds from across the canyon.

During the entire vacation I was often visited by hummingbirds and dragonflies. I fell in love with the sound of hummingbirds during my time in LA. I looked up the symbolism of both. I wasn’t surprised at all at why they featured so prominently during this trip, at this precise moment in my life.

///

My father passed away five days before we left for Los Angeles.

I spent a lot of the vacation in a state of raw numbness. I could feel no joy. Things that should have made me happy left me feeling nothing. My mood fluctuated ceaselessly but I couldn’t ever get myself out of this awful intermediate, middling place where nothing made me happy and nothing impressed me.

My father’s influence on my music taste was just one of the most significant and powerful things he unwittingly gave me, so I wasn’t surprised when I suddenly lost my appetite for listening to anything. I wouldn’t have ventured into music journalism without the seeds he planted at the start of the 1980s – watching Gary Numan on The Old Grey Whistle Test together while my mother was out at work waitressing and when I should have been in bed; listening to ‘Joan Of Arc’ and ‘Joan Of Arc (Maid Of Orleans)’ by OMD in the car on Saturday mornings while he worked his second job as a debt collector; him bringing home a VHS copy of Soft Cell’s Non-Stop Exotic Video Show VHS that he’d borrowed from a colleague at his day job in a factory and letting me watch something that was patently not suited to a five-year-old boy.

Later, he brought home a TDK cassette of The Innocents by Erasure and asked me if I liked them as he handed over the copy a friend had made. He was completely unaware of just how significant that transaction would prove to be in my life. I had the opportunity to tell him how transformative these moments were before Alzheimer’s fully ravaged his mind and took him further and further from us.

My mother and sister tasked me with creating a playlist for his funeral while we were on holiday. It was the mixtape I never thought I’d have to make and I found it extraordinarily painful to compile. It can be found here.

We wanted to include something from the 1950s. He grew up in the rock ‘n’ roll era and it felt appropriate to include something from that period, but I found myself panicking that I couldn’t think of a single song that he liked from that decade. I was at the Knott’s Berry Farm theme park at the time, walking by myself to a viewing platform. As I rounded a corner into a different themed area of the park, the music changed and Eddie Cochran’s ‘C’mon Everybody’ began playing. Dad loved that song. It somehow unlocked the entire playlist.

Less than ten days before he passed away, my Mortality Tables collaborative project released The Engineer, which involved contributions from over thirty artists. It was loosely inspired by my father, who worked as a mechanical engineer for more or less all of his adult life. We deliberately released it on what would turn out to be my last Father’s Day with a father, and paid all profits to the Alzheimer’s Society.

I had been working on The Engineer for over ten years and was determined to release it this year. I now know why I was so driven to make that happen in 2024. The Engineer can be found here.

Words and photos: Mat Smith

Thanks to Logan Steppert, Jon Paul Gwozdz, Fast Times, Tommy Gelinas.

(c) 2024 Further.

Shots: Slow Clinic / Moray Newlands / Whettman Chelmets / Asher Levitas / Loula Yorke

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SLOW CLINIC – ACCEPT (Florina Cassettes)

Slow Clinic is a project of mastering engineer James Edward Armstrong. On the three pieces presented here, it’s self-evident that Armstrong has an exceptional ear for detail and nuance. ‘Accept’, ‘Hold’ and ‘Wander’ are all constructed from field recordings made in Farnham, Surrey using an old dictaphone, upon which Armstrong layers gentle, undulating guitar drones. These drones were built from a chain of effects pedals but were otherwise fully unprocessed after they’d been recorded. At times resonant, at others contemplative, there is an appreciable openness to these pieces, and, perhaps, a vulnerability: they are imperfect, in the sense that the base layer dictaphone recordings are bathed in a hissy white noise where you can almost hear the tape mechanism. Moments of clarity find their way through, but that lo-fi bed of static is a constant. And, in that sense, this is Armstrong at his most accepting. For someone so well-versed in addressing deficiencies and errors in other artists’ material, with this EP he doesn’t seek to address those that present themselves in his own work. One can only imagine that process was strangely freeing and cathartic for an artist usually drawn to the most macroscopic of details. Released 27 March 2024.

MORAY NEWLANDS – BUZZ BUZZ (Wormhole World)

The latest album from Dundee’s Moray Newlands acts as a tribute to The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks’ debut novel. Forty years on from the publication of The Wasp Factory, it remains a book that is fraught with controversy and whose unswerving violence and vivid, twisted narrative launched Banks as his generation’s Anthony Burgess. When I first read the book, sometime in the early 1990s, the violence wasn’t what gripped me; instead it was a sort of compassion for Frank, the 16-year-old protagonist. Not, I stress, because I felt some sort of nihilistic familiarity with his character, but because of how deeply troubled and disturbed he was. I don’t think I had read a book, up to that point, where I felt as much sorrow for the main character as I did disgust. It proved to be good practice for when I read American Psycho.

Newlands’ album is, then, appropriately balanced – empathetic in places but just as unflinchingly brutal as Banks’ narrative. The two opening pieces, ‘The Sacrifice Poles’ and ‘Snake Park’ are mournful, symphonic and curiously moving. So moving in fact that you don’t notice the creeping undertow of sibilant buzzing sounds and dark shadows, all of which are fully realised on ‘The Bunker’, where the sound of birds and softly squalling sounds act as metaphors for Frank’s torturous ways. Buzz Buzz is like the Bibliotapes cassette that somehow never got released, moving episodically through the book’s pivotal scenes and figures. Here we meet Saul, a dog that is purported to have inflicted a grievous injury on young Frank (‘Old Saul’s Skull’). We encounter his brother, Eric, forever changed by his grim experiences as a medical volunteer, one of the book’s most harrowing moments (‘What Happened To Eric’). In a moment of grim, fairground whimsy, we alight upon Frank’s cousin, ‘Esmerelda’, killed after he attached her to a large kite which takes her far out to sea. The motive? Because he’d killed too many boys and needed to create a semblance of evenhandedness.

Elsewhere, we hear the sonic embodiment of Frank’s wasp-destroying mechanism on the title track, a stew of clocks, wound-up cogs, struck matches, dubby pulses and angry – nay fearful – buzzing. Even now, when confronted with the idea of Frank’s Heath Robinson torture device, I find myself instead thinking about an episode of Bagpuss where his mice companions use a similarly ramshackle machine to make digestive biscuits. I think it is a device my teenage brain used to prevent me from being too impacted by Frank’s callous traits. Finally, we arrive at the album’s closing moment, ‘What Happened To Me’, the sonic portrayal of a pivotal confrontation between Frank and his father, wherein we learn a lot about Frank – or maybe, just maybe, nothing at all. Newlands depicts this in a searching, inquisitive, but ultimately unresolved electro-symphonic tearjerker, a droning, undulating voice sound reminding us of Frank’s hymenopteran prey.

This album is not for the faint-hearted. There are moments here that are exceptionally terrifying, much like The Wasp Factory itself. My overriding impression, however, like my first reading of the book, is one of compassion toward poor Frank, in no small part thanks to Newlands’ clever sound design and masterful use of emotional texture. A powerful work of arresting, complex detail. Digital edition released 24 May 2024. CD edition released 28 June 2024.

WHETTMAN CHELMETS – A NEW PLACE (Quiet Details)

A New Place began life as a song by Whettman Chelmets’ young daughter. You can hear that song in the first two minutes of ‘Prelude To A New Place’, the first of the three tracks which constitute this release. That voice, imperfect, untrained and innocent, lends these pieces a sense of nostalgic optimism, which I can only liken to the feelings that wash over me whenever I look at old photographs of my children. There is a thick blanket of gauzy texture draped over these three pieces through which fragmentary details and ideas appear – a guitar, resonant brass, strings, a half-melody, children’s voices, discordant buzzing, the click of a computer mouse. At different points, these interventions can appear almost impenetrable, often threateningly dissonant, but those moments, like all the segments here, evolve away rapidly. In the final judgment, A New Place is a wonderfully evocative album full of ceaseless motion, and one of the most beatific albums I’ve had the pleasure of listening to. A resounding, emotional achievement for Chelmets, and another fine release from the consistently-brilliant Quiet Details imprint. Released 29 May 2024.

ASHER LEVITAS – Above The Pale Green (Waxing Crescent)

This four-track EP from Asher Levitas is bordered by two tracks that occupy similar stylistic ground. Opener ‘Fence – Stream – River’ begins with the the sound of gently flowing water and a metal fence being stroked by a stick, out of which rises a soft and delicate tapestry of ambient pads that sit on the frontiers between wistful, nostalgic and hopeful. A brief swirl of gurgling analogue synth evokes the notion of a meandering stream. A similar combination of field recordings and elegiac textures occurs on the closing track, which gives this EP its name. Except that where the first piece offers  sense of optimism, ‘Above The Pale Green’ feels restless and uncertain.

If you only listened to those two tracks, you’d wind up with a completely unrepresentative impression of this EP. ‘Nowhere To Be’ is a woozy, slowly-evolving minimal synth pop cut overlaid with a haunting, wordless vocal and simple, pinprick melodies. It’s a lot like finding an early 1980s electronic demo tape in the loft of the house you’ve moved into, suitably draped in years of nostalgic fuzziness. If that wasn’t surprising enough, ‘You Don’t Have To’ is a further departure in the form of a plaintive, open and tender piano ballad. The keyboard sounds wonky and slightly imperfect and is augmented by subtle interventions off in the background. A grubby, dissonant melody, soaring textures and fragile rhythm in the middle eight usher in a more nuanced and layered conclusion. Having the bravery to fit three highly distinct and, on paper, incompatible styles together is a rare moment of daring, but Levitas executes it impeccably. Released 14 June 2024.

LOULA YORKE – Speak, Thou Vast And Venerable Head (Quiet Details)

The second Quiet Details review in this round-up comes from Oram Award winner Loula Yorke, and arrives hot on the heels of her recent masterpiece Volta. Heard in the context of that album, which relied less on the rave-inspired modular improvisations of her earlier work in favour of conscious composition, Speak, Thou Vast And Venerable Head feels unhurried and unburdened by expectation. It’s as if Volta reset those expectations and allows a sense of levity and freedom to enter Yorke’s electronic structures. The central piece here is the 13-minute ‘Monolithic Undertow’, which shares its title with Harry Sword’s landmark book about drones. Again, Yorke upsets expectation with this piece. Rather than being a dense block of intensely wavering drones, ‘Monolithic Undertow’ extends out on a intricate web of dubby, restless bass arpeggios, over which Yorke layers gently modulating clouds of intangible electronic texture. These are pieces filled with vast, open landscapes of sound and a sense of constant, fluid motion. Released 19 June 2024.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2024 Further.

Various Artists – Spaces

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The latest release from the Dustopian Frequencies imprint is themed around the idea of space. Specifically, the ten artists invited to contribute were asked to identify with a space – whether real or imaginary – and bring it to life with a sound response. The result is a compilation that covers considerable ground, each track as different to the next and each one representing the artist’s complete freedom to express the characteristics of their spatial inspiration. 

Max Schreiber’s ‘Fox do Douro’ is a key piece. A sparse, developing track, ‘Fox do Douro’ is built from crashing waves of metallic sound, harsh breathing noises and what initially feels like minimal percussion that eventually becomes a recurring half-melody. I don’t know whether it’s the snatches of overheard conversation twisting around a thick bassline or an impenetrable nest of drones, but something in Schreiber’s piece manages to sound both empty and full simultaneously. It ultimately reveals an almost ghostly dimension, as if evoking a haunted space. 

Another highlight is Spongeboy’s ‘Dark Vapours (Fogwalking 2)’, wherein a creeping, expanding bass note and an overwhelmingly unsettling atmospheric quality creates a vaguely ‘Stranger Things’ vibe. Sweeping tones and a quickening pace heightens the tension as the track becomes louder and more forthright, while discordancy – delivered through competing drones and sibilant whispers – arrives around the halfway mark, leading this key track further into dark, sinister corners. A crisp, mechanical rhythm briefly appears toward the end, suggesting this could have developed into a far longer piece, with plenty more to explore. 

Soxsa Lab’s ‘Sublimity’ contains chiming tones that could be a stringed instrument subjected to deep distortion, creating a series of textures that are both calming and contemplative but also decisively unpredictable and fractured. There is an inner rhythm here that exist solely in the form of the clipped, echoing edges of a central loop, assuredly never faltering even as other sounds blur into a fog of dissonance. 

Elsewhere, Darinau offers rippling Morricone-esque guitar fragments set to white-noise-fringed textural loops and minimalist xylophone motifs on ‘Huset I Skogen’. Although undoubtedly subjected to electronic processing, stylistically augmenting this with other pieces on the album, this squarely leans into a more openly modern classical atmosphere. Another tangentially electronic piece comes in the form of Emanuele Ippopotami’s ‘One Step And I Fall’. The key focus here is a plucked guitar melody, set to a loped drone and odd non-percussion percussive interjections. This piece is characterised by vast open spaces, where every space is completely occupied. Distorted, heavy almost, death metal riffs expose themselves toward the end of the track, completely disrupting time (and space). 

We are never really told what the inspirational spaces actually are for each of these tracks, and I can well imagine that was deliberate. It leaves us speculating, forming our own images from the sounds we hear. There is one exception, in the form of Laura Mars’ ‘Dreaming In Cryo Chambers’. While that title instils the idea of some sort of futuristic lab, the sounds here feel like the were recorded outside a train station. The blurry presentation and processing employed by Mars approximates what it feels like to arrive at Euston to catch a train home after a particularly heavy night out, where the whole world seems to be spinning uncontrollably. By the end, any discernible sounds have been stretched out into long strands of fluctuating drones, offset by swirls of crisp white noise, representing a bold and visceral spatial exploration. 

Spaces was released May 25 2024 by Dustopian Frequencies. 

Words: Mat Smith 

(c) 2024 Further.  

Shots: Rae-Yen Song & Tommy Perman / D.J. VLK / Phil Dodds / Neu Gestalt / Kuma

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RAE-YEN SONG & TOMMY PERMAN – ○ SQUIGODA SONG CYCLE ● WATER~LAND~AIR ○

It may appear, at least in terms of its credits, that this is a duo recording between conceptual artist Rae-Yen Song and composer / sound designer Tommy Perman. There are, in fact, two other ‘players’ that contributed to this series of three soundscapes, created to accompany an exhibition (‘life-bestowing cadaverous soooooooooooooooooooot’) at Glasgow’s Centre For Contemporary Arts. The first is the sound of fermenting tea fungus – kombucha, to give it its more acceptable and hipster-marketable name – and the second is the environment itself, required to encourage the transformation process. 

The sounds of fermentation, recorded with contact mics, are readily audible as the trickling, bubbling, oozing noises that underpin ‘water’. Elsewhere, the ever-inventive Perman uses his sound design chops to deploy slowed-down, macroscopic clouds of ambient texture that approximate the sound of bubbles bursting on the surface of the liquid. Elsewhere, Song employs rudimentary instruments, including a drum made from a bacterial cellulose layer of skin recovered from the top of the tea fungus. That resonant tapping is what underpins the second piece here, ‘land’, creating a contemplative, barren wilderness of rhythmic pulses that remind me of sections from Midori Takada’s Through The Looking Glass. At times beatific, at others grotesque, these three pieces display an incredible unexpectedness that exists in an unparalleled, undocumented domain of close-up sonic investigation.  

Released 29 March 2024. Bandcamp: here. 

D.J. VLK – PASSION (Strategic Tape Reserve) 

Two wildly unpredictable, twenty-plus minute tracks, allegedly constructed by the completely untraceable D.J. VLK using only samples from a turn-of-the-millennium paranormal NBC TV show, ‘Passion’, of which there were – remarkably – 2051 episodes. That’s over five years of uninterrupted daily TV consumption, which our valiant DJ consumed while simultaneously consuming egg and cheese sandwiches from a local deli. That’s a lot of protein, and a lot of paranormal TV. 

Whether you believe the backstory or not (Strategic Tape Reserve have, after all, cornered the market in sonic obfuscation and music of dubious, yet deliciously enjoyable, provenance), there’s no denying the inventiveness on display here. A collage of disparate rhythms, speech samples and outwardly incompatible musical movements, the two long tracks comprising ‘Passion’ fizz and crackle with intense, dizzying energy and endless, endless juxtapositions: hip-hop one moment, lo-fi drum ‘n’ bass the next, backwards folk music á la boycalledcrow after that, all swiftly subsumed by a tapestry of sound art moments punctured by disparate snippets of out-of-place dialogue in the minutes that follow. Later, we hear a truly inspired sequence of vocodered voices over vaguely mediaeval sounds and psychedelic folk motifs. Truly bonkers, and all the proof that vegans need that too much egg and cheese will only bring about utter chaos in the world*. 

Released 26 April 2024. Please note, the writer is himself vegan, and is not in any way opposed to the consumption of egg and cheese. In fact, this release rather suggests to him that a return to vegetarianism at some point in the future wouldn’t be totally out of the question. Bandcamp: here. 

PHIL DODDS – MANY MOONS AGO (Waxing Crescent) 

The occasion of turning 40 earlier this year prompted Waxing Crescent label founder Phil Dodds to blow the cobwebs off some old USB drives and release some of his own music, all made back in 2009 and 2010. I honestly don’t know why he waited so long. The pieces here are infused with a sort of Sweatson Klank-style electronic hip-hop nous, all chunky machine rhythms, fat bass sounds, spiralling synths that occasionally veer toward the psychedelic and a continual sense of lurking, latent energy. 

‘Marsh Of Decay’ stands out, its restless, lo-fi dubby framework continually dancing on a precipice of firming up into something harder but staying resolutely fractured and in a state of flux right until it reaches a hard stop. ‘Seven Up’, a collaboration with Propa, is another highlight. This feels like two artists in ceaseless conflict with each other, where the way that the sounds are presented suggest that they’re being rapidly erased almost as soon as they first appear. Another collaboration, ‘Lifted’ (with Qman1) is a high-grade, low-key masterpiece, featuring a detuned breakbeat and amorphous clouds of swirling, ephemeral textures. ‘Many Moons’ is an unexpected, illuminating collection that feels a million miles from the material Dodds normally curates and presents through Waxing Crescent.  

Released 26 April 2024. Bandcamp: here.

NEU GESTALT – DREAMING SERPENTS (Alex Tronic) 

For his fifth Neu Gestalt album, and his first since 2019, Edinburgh’s Les Scott used a series of vintage Akai samplers to process his own bass and electric guitar playing, both played with a variety of techniques including the use of an EBow. That approach gives these ambient pieces a lyrical fluidity and distinctive texture but also a recognisably electronic edge, while the addition of crisp but unobtrusive beats and occasional vocal samples provide delicate framing for Scott’s guitar. 

Opening track ‘On Darker Days’ is one of the most arresting pieces here, featuring splintering sounds and a melodic, maudlin guitar hook that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Depeche Mode song. ‘Restless Universe’ is another highlight, wherein squalls of fuzzy clouds of guitar texture and pin-prick melodies yield a tense, hypnotic piece. ‘Difference Engines’ begins with a truly beautiful, if sorrowful, sequence of guitar notes that’s when layered, are nothing short of heart-wrenching. This writer’s personal favourite piece is the sparse ‘Flickering Diodes’, whose elliptical, reverb-soaked melody recalls Coil at their most inquisitive and mysterious. A masterful return for the imaginative Scott. 

Released 17 April 2024. Spotify: here. 

KUMA – I GREW UP IN SPECTRAL PLACES (Frosti) 

For this third album for Thomas Ragsdale’s Frosti imprint, Kuma is credited with ‘tapes, voice, synth, ghosts, coffee, low end theory’. Let’s stop there for a moment and look at that. ‘Ghosts’ and ‘coffee’. The inclusion of those two sources immediately tell you that this collection of nine pieces points in a resolutely different direction. The fact that Kuma says it was ‘invoked’, not ‘recorded’ is another clue to what these pieces sound like. 

On one level, pieces like ‘Peacocks Have Very Mean Little Eyes’ and ‘Eden But With The Snakes Let In’ (top marks for digging into titles that sound like quotes from Welcome To Night Vale) have a textural levity that ties Kuma’s work to the broader reaches of ambient music but listen closely and the dependency on looped voices adds a chilling, unpredictable, from-the-beyond-the-grave spookiness. On that title track, the sort of grey, smothering quality that exists elsewhere is replaced by layers and spinning cycles of voices that appear to howl loudly into your ear canal, suggesting that perhaps Kuma invoked a particularly pissed-off, angry restless spirit during the sessions that begat the album’s central moment. 

Released 29 May 2024. 

Words: Mat Smith 

(c) 2024 Further.  

Shots: Luce Mawdsley / Leaving / Xqui

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LUCE MAWDSLEY – NORTHWEST & NEBULOUS (Pure O)

Luce Mawdsley is a Liverpool-based composer and multi-instrumentalist. Their latest album was recorded in the city’s Scandinavian Church and found Mawdsley playing guitar, organ and percussion alongside Nicholas Branton (clarinets) and Rachel Nicholas (viola). Describing their music as part of a journey, the title of the album focuses in on the starting point of Mawdsley’s own journey in Formby, a town in the North-West of England; the nebulousness refers to where they find themselves arriving today, as a non-binary, neurodivergent artist.

There is a sense of grace and harmony here, infused with expansive atmospheres inspired by Western cinema soundtracks. Pieces like the title track bounce and sway with a melodic levity, the three musicians weaving in and out of another like converging tributaries of water. Elsewhere, ‘The Growing Rooms’ has a devastating, heart-wrenching quality, its reverberating slide guitar reminding this writer of a motif running through Francis Lai’s ‘Love Story’ or sections of Mark Knopfler’s music from ‘Local Hero’. On many of these pieces, including the plaintive opening piece ‘Latex Feather’, Mawdsley is content for Nicholas’ viola to act as the music’s focal point, offering questing, searching, swooning, lyrical reflections of Mawdsley’s ceaseless curiosity.

Released 29 March 2024. Bandcamp: here

XQUI – GITHERMENTS AND THE MRI (Human Geography)

Prompted by a harrowing trip to A&E amid a breakdown, Githerments And The MRI represents an astonishing release in the catalogue of prolific and consistently inventive sound artist Xqui, wherein the recorded sounds of an MRI scanner become central characters in his idiosyncratic sound world.

Noisy, complex and nuanced, this is Xqui at his most terrifying – and this comes from the perspective of a writer who has interviewed him, where the mask that he wears when he decides to come out of the shadows left me with endless nightmares. This is often so terrifying that if you’re about to go for an MRI scan, listening to this slab of caustic sound art may prompt you to cancel. There are, however, plenty of moments here that poke their way through the industrial atmospherics dominating these two twenty-minute pieces. Dub rhythms occasional emerge from the threatening whir of the scanner; a ticking clock fashions itself into a springy King Tubby mixing desk cast-off; a brief sample of Erik Satie offers a much-needed sense of respite; effusive backwards melodies offer a mournful moment of reflection. While these pieces might sit as complete polar opposites to more ethereal Xqui works like Hymns For Terry Francis, they add new and fascinating insights into the mind of this prolific creator.

Released 21 April 2024. Bandcamp: here

LEAVING – HIDDEN VIEW (Moon Glyph)

Leaving is the alias of Perth’s Rupert Thomas, who first came to my attention as one half of the duo Erasers, whose Constant Connection album was a personal highlight from 2022. For Hidden View, Thomas’s second solo album, he explores fragile, sparse arrangements that evoke a sense of emotional trepidation and the wild naturalistic environments surrounding his home.

Usually consisting of off-kilter rhythms, minimal effects and haunted, enquiring synth melodies, pieces like the standout ‘Mirrored Feeling’ offer a sense of restlessness and unease; at first glance, they are bathed in beatific, enveloping ambient texture and persuasive layers of undulating melodies, but listen closely and those emotive gestures are gently punctured by a pinprick of doubt and darkness. Elsewhere, on the subtle widescreen atmospherics of key track ‘Hidden Dreams’ he assiduously evokes those brief moments spent in the weird interzone between wakefulness and sleep. Thomas has a seemingly innate ability to produce synth passages that imprint themselves devastatingly into your consciousness, making for an instrumental album with a low-key expressive depth.

Released 26 April 2024. Bandcamp: here

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2024 Further.

Mortality Tables: boycalledcrow – Kullu

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an audio travelogue of sound artist Carl M Knott’s travels in India

released May 3 2024 in digital and limited cassette edition of 25 copies

mortalitytables.bandcamp.com

Watch the video for ‘Milk And Honey’ here:

“Eventually found a guesthouse. Not very nice: a park-bench bed with two blankets for a mattress, stone walls and a shared squat toilet, but it had an ashram ambience and great acoustics for the guitar. I could really feel those bass notes.

Spent the evening understanding the layout of the city, eating and playing the guitar. I met the devil in New Delhi railway station and sold my soul for his guitar tunings. Robert Johnson is taking over my fingers.” 

– Carl M Knott, January 26 2006 

Kullu is the new album from electronic musician and former folk artist boycalledcrow, the alias of Chester’s Carl M Knott.

The album is an audio travelogue of Knott’s travels through India in 2005 and 2006, just after he’d graduated. That journey was part of Knott’s concerted efforts to overcome the intense feelings of stress and anxiety that had gnawed away at him throughout his adolescence. Along the way, he documented his travels in a blog and accumulated countless memory cards of photos and videos. He stayed in basic accommodation and made numerous fast friends from around the world, one of whom, an artist called James, provides the album’s sleeve image.

Knott made copious field recordings during his travels, and this diary-like library of sounds forms the basis of the ten tracks on Kullu. We hear busy, vibrant towns from the back of an auto rickshaw, rapturous tabla rhythms, blurred chanting and tanpura drones, as well as Knott’s own playing, made using a guitar bought in Dehradun for £27.

Knott took these foundational sounds, then augmented and processed them in the style that he has developed on albums such as // M E L O D Y_M A N (Waxing Crescent, 2023) and Mystic Scally (Wormhole World, 2020). These pieces roam freely between the engaging and unpredictable; joyous yet reflective; uplifting yet inquisitive. They are pieces filled with constant motion; taken as a whole, these pieces allow the listener to follow Knott’s journey through the remote Kullu Valley and along the Beas river that bisects the Himalayas.

This is an album of intense discovery, of new sounds and new atmospheres, and a sense of healing and catharsis. Knott wrote in his blog about trying to avoid being drawn into the well-worm paths of mediation and yoga, unlike most of the travellers he met between New Delhi railway station and his time in the Kullu Valley.

Instead, the pieces on Kullu find someone acutely listening to the turning of the world around him. It represented an awakening of Knott’s approach to documenting the sounds he is drawn to, fused with a distinctive, emotive and original compositional style. 

1. Charas
2. Pretty In The Sun
3. Joy
4. Vipassana
5. Tuktuk
6. Milk And Honey
7. Golden City
8. Kanashi
9. Sadhu
10. Kali

Music and production by Carl M Knott.  
Mastered by Antony Ryan at RedRedPaw.  
All field recordings and photographs by Carl M Knott, India, 2006. 
Design by Neil Coe. 
Video editing by Neu Gestalt.

Digital edition and limited cassette edition of 25 copies released May 3 2024 through mortalitytables.bandcamp.com


All proceeds from sales of Kullu will go to CHUMS. CHUMS provides mental health and emotional wellbeing support for children, young people and their families.  

chums.uk.com

A Mortality Tables Product
MTP29

ABOUT BOYCALLEDCROW

boycalledcrow is the alias of Chester-based sound artist Carl M Knott (Wonderful Beasts, Spacelab). Knott, a former folk musician, uses his myriad acoustic influences to create unique, strange and beautiful compositions. 

boycalledcrow.bandcamp.com

(c) 2024 Mortality Tables

Shots: Simon James / Found Object / Jess Brett / Gvantsa Narim / The Night Monitor / Sermons By The Devil

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SIMON JAMES – CATHEDRAL CAVE

The latest release from Brighton sound artist Simon James was recorded at Cathedral Quarry in the Lake District. Its first four pieces are essentially unadorned field recordings made in a cave, full of chilly atmospherics and incessantly dripping water, evoking a sense of vast space but also a macroscopic focus on miniature events. The final piece, ‘Exquisite Friction (Binaural)’, was made with a double mid-side microphone and transforms the cave ambience to trace outlines and alien textures, blending metallic tones and watery subterranean depth. Released 20 March 2024. 

Simon James recently worked with local residents to create Neolithic Cannibals, a multidisciplinary arts initiative taking place at Brighton’s Lighthouse Project Space between 4 and 19 May – visit www.lighthouse.org.uk for more details. 

FOUND OBJECT – EVERY SILVER LINING

Found Object is the alias of Pete Allen, a former drummer who makes rhythmic instrumental electronic music that nods squarely in the direction of a certain legendary Düsseldorf quartet while also isolating the emotive melodic qualities of early 1980s synth pop. Not for Allen banks of vintage gear – all of the tracks here made using the iPhone Beatwave app. Tracks like the astute and moving ‘Silver Lining’ carry a rhythmic firmness and emotional turbulence of Depeche Mode’s ‘Nothing To Fear’, while ‘Mephisto’ (this writer’s personal favourite) stacks cyclical layers of icicle-sharp hooks on top of an unswerving beat that offers a sense of perpetual movement through the murky, neon-lit quarters of a thriving metropolis in the early hours. 

Allen is also a frequent collaborator with powerful Kidderminster vocalist and electronic musician Jess Brett. Their ode to Berlin’s stately Unter den Linden thoroughfare is a triumphant pop moment for both artists. 

Every Silver Lining was released 6 March 2024. Unter den Linden with Jess Brett was released 25 March 2024. 

GVANTSA NARIM – CRUEL NATURE (Cruel Nature) 

The latest album from Georgian sound artist Gvantsa Narimanidze derives its name from the label releasing it. Split into two long tracks, each lasting around twenty-five minutes, the album finds Narimanidze in deeply reflective mode. ‘Cruel’ offers a sort of sonic dualism, with drifting, ethereal, ascending tones occupying the upper registers and an unsettling, undulating drone and outline of a bass-heavy pulse operating as a foundation layer. ‘Nature’ adopts a similar pose, only its high end shapes are less uniformly soothing and its underpinning dronescape is more intensely restless. Released 29 March 2024. 

THE NIGHT MONITOR – HORROR OF THE HEXHAM HEADS (Fonolith / Library Of The Occult) 

Neil Scrivin has truly cornered the market in freaky electronic music inspired by unexplained phenomena and paranormal activity. His first collaboration with Library Of The Occult is inspired by two carved stone faces that appeared, inexplicably, in a Northumberland family garden in 1971, foreshadowing a bunch of strange activities that I’m far too disturbed by to search for on the internet. Scrivin has assuredly outdone himself this time, stripping his compositions back to almost skeletal forms. ‘The Witch’, one of my favourite pieces, pairs rich and resonant synth sweeps with scratchy, nails-on-glass screeching that had me glancing at the window to make sure nothing was trying to break in (and, for context, I was in a plane flying at 35,000 feet in the air at the time). The shortest interlude here, ‘How Does Your Garden Glow’, is one of the collection’s finest moments. It might last barely a minute but its edgy, metronomic pacing and unwinding, slowly-writhing melody is – no pun intended – wonderfully haunting. Released 5 April 2024. 

SERMONS BY THE DEVIL – BAPTISM OF DESIRE

The latest album from New Jersey’s Sermons By The Devil arrives with a manifesto of sorts: “If free will is the last battleground of youth, then dancing is the most rebellious thing that can be done as humans.” These pieces are indeed danceable, though I found myself moving almost involuntarily to each one, leaving me wondering what free will I had in the face of these persuasive moments. Each of these tracks rely on subtle shifts and intense repetition. You will find tasting notes of Micro-phonies-era Cabaret Voltaire soundtracking a pagan muzak rave. The two opening tracks are among the best. ‘Black Magik’ carries itself on a low-slung, nagging bass-heavy rhythm with a sort of heavy, ritualistic intent. Swirling spirals of brooding synths act as an offset but this is a grubby, minimalistic and insistent track. Meanwhile, ‘Fetishes And Sacrifice’ mines a chunky electro beat overlaid with ground-out bass synths and intensely-worked, restless sweeps. At almost nine minutes it is an intense and often disorienting highlight, relentless and urgent In spite of its slow tempo. A wonderfully dark collection from the self-styled ‘official house band of the apocalypse.’ Released 11 April 2024. 

Words: Mat Smith 

(c) 2024 Further. 

Mortality Tables – Central Park: A Picture-In-Sounds

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Mortality Tables – Central Park: A Picture-In-Sounds (Performance #2)

Earlier today, The Moderns played ‘Central Park: A Picture-In-Sounds (Performance #2)’ by my Mortality Tables project as part of their latest episode. 

themoderns.blog/2024/03/31/the-moderns-ep-308/

To celebrate that, here are some 50% discount codes which can be used at the checkout at mortalitytables.bandcamp.com:

Performance #1 – ivesone
Performance #2 – ivestwo

I feel like this piece requires some explanation. 

On face value, ‘Central Park: A Picture-In-Sounds’ is just an eight-and-a-half minute field recording from Central Park in New York, beautifully mastered by Alex from the quiet details label. There’s more to it than meets the ear, and its development has occupied me almost ceaselessly since 2021. 

The location of the recording isn’t random. It is derived from your age and your life expectancy in 1874. I made a special map of Central Park divided up into areas corresponding to those life expectancies, and the ‘performer’ makes the recording in that area. 

Why 1874? That was the year that the American radical composer Charles Ives was born. One of his compositions was ‘Central Park In The Dark’ (1906), with which Ives intended to evoke the sounds of the park that he heard while sat on a bench not far from his apartment on Central Park West. Incidentally, Ives is the guy with the beard in the illustration by Savage Pencil that gave Mortality Tables its entire visual identity. 

Savage Pencil – Mortality Tables illustration (detail)

Why life expectancies? That’s because being a composer wasn’t Ives’s main occupation. For the majority of his working life, Ives worked in life insurance, way Downtown on Nassau Street, near Wall Street.

Why eight-and-a-half minutes? Because that’s how long the first recorded version of ‘Central Park In The Dark’ (made in 1951) lasted. 

Mortality Tables – Central Park: A Picture-In-Sounds (Performance #1)

The intention is to publish the instructions for making a performance / recording of ‘Central Park: A Picture-In-Sounds’, along with more details about Ives and his work in both music and insurance, in October of this year.

A couple of other explanations, maybe. A list of life expectancies is called a mortality table. You may now see where the name Mortality Tables comes from. And my main occupation involves working with insurance companies. That’s why Ives is important to me, as an inspiration, and as a role model.

– Mat

(c) 2024 Mortality Tables / Further.

A Visit To Dream House

On By 429harrowroadIn Installations1 Comment

You arrive at a nondescript doorway on Church St, near the triangular intersection with 6th Avenue.

Photo: Mat Smith

Behind a glass pane lined with black diagonal veins is tacked a piece of paper advertising Dream House. A scrappy note taped next to a buzzer on the left of the door gives you instructions to press button 3 for access, and advises that you might have to wait. It also expressly asks you not to press button 2 as it is a private residence. That private residence belongs to La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, who have lived here since 1963, and who installed Dream House, in the third floor loft above their apartment, following its installation in other locations since it was first developed in 1969.

You ring the buzzer and wait. Nothing happens. You ring again. Still nothing happens. You phone a number on the poster and a laconic female voice eventually answers in a quiet, measured tone, there’s an abrupt mechanical buzz accompanied by a click and the door is unlocked.

As you enter the narrow stairwell, you become aware of an intense, oppressive, tantalising, seductive bass-heavy sound. It feels like you’ve entered a nightclub. There is a feeling of energy. Of promise. Of excitement. Of things about to happen. The sound seems to draw you in. You can’t make out the details fully, almost as if the sounds have been intentionally shrouded or obfuscated.

You ascend the stairs to floor 3 and make small talk with the monitor whose gently musical voice was your key to being permitted entry. She notices your English accent and informs you that there’s a version of Dream House in Germany. You take off your shoes, put $10 in a receptacle that the monitor points at wordlessly, and enter a white-painted door near the top of the stairs.

As you open the door, you first notice the intensity of the volume. It is so immediately overpowering that your body feels both repelled and attracted by its force. As the door closes softly behind you, you feel completely enveloped. You turn left, toward a square room at the end of the passageway. A multicoloured neon sign on the ceiling bears the words ‘Dream House’. This is Zazeela’s Dream House Variation I light sculpture.

A fellow guest, seated on a cushion in the main gallery, turns her head as you approach, even though your shoeless movements are barely detectable. You softly pad along the carpeted corridor to the square room and seat yourself against the wall immediately to the left of the entry way.

La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, Jung Hee Choi, Dream House, MELA Foundation, New York City, 2023
Photo: Jung Hee Choi.  Copyright © La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, Jung Hee Choi 2023.

The whole room is bathed in a pink light and infused with the smell of incense. Spiralling crescent shapes are suspended from the ceiling, swaying gently and imperceptibly and bathed in lights from a series of spotlights. Together, the mobiles and lights form Zazeela’s Imagic Light, while the atmospheric pink lighting is itself another Zazeela artwork, Magenta Day / Magenta Night.

Between the two covered windows is a freestanding rectangular object containing a pattern that seems to move elusively as you try to decode it, comprising tiny details picked out with either LEDs or which reflect the coloured lights on the ceiling. Sometimes the pattern looks like a bear. Other times it is formless, spiralling, elusive shapes that writhe and twist like the crescent mobiles above. This is Jung Hee Choi’s Light Point Drawings Nos. 27, 28, 29 and 30 with still lights. A framed photograph of Pandit Pran Nath, Young’s and Zazeela’s guru, hangs on the opposite side of the room, next to the entrance. A bowl beneath it on a table may or may not contain the incense you can smell. Elsewhere, there is a photograph of Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan, a singer and teacher, whose students included Nath.

There are four tall white rectangular columns, each one occupying a corner of the room, with a large speaker placed on its top. The speakers are trained diagonally toward the centre of the carpet. It is from these that the intense sound is projected. The sound piece is Young’s The Base 9:7:4 Symmetry In Prime Time. Or, to give it it’s full title, The Base 9:7:4 Symmetry in Prime Time When Centered above and below The Lowest Term Primes in The Range 288 to 224 with The Addition of 279 and 261 in Which The Half of The Symmetric Division Mapped above and Including 288 Consists of The Powers of 2 Multiplied by The Primes within The Ranges of 144 to 128, 72 to 64 and 36 to 32 Which Are Symmetrical to Those Primes in Lowest Terms in The Half of The Symmetric Division Mapped below and Including 224 within The Ranges 126 to 112, 63 to 56 and 31.5 to 28 with The Addition of 119.

It is many things all at once. There is an obvious droning quality to the sound, but it is impossible to detect any distinct, discrete layers. You try to hear the intersections and anticipate the microtonal collisions, but it is impossible. You settle into the sound. You breathe deeply and listen both intently but also lightly.

After a while, it seems that distinct motifs appear within the sound. A sort of metallic, industrial ringing emerges out of the otherwise impenetrable bass envelopes, which you begin to recognise as a rapidly oscillating pulse rather than a block of held tones. You move your head slightly and the whole sonic image shifts and changes. Now a repeated, drum-like rhythm reveals itself. You move your head again, shift your position against the wall and it vanishes, leading you to conclude it possibly wasn’t ever there. You turn your head again and a new rhythmic device seems to appear. New frequencies which you’re sure weren’t there before seem to scream loudly.

Outwardly, nothing about this is serene. The sound rings uncomfortably in your ears. The relentless bass sits on your chest like a heavy weight. As I lean against the wall I can feel the vibrations in my spine. One of the other temporary residents of Dream House stands up, gathers her belongings and walks past you toward either the door or the smaller room at the other end of the corridor, which contains another light installation, Color (CNN/Twitch): live realization v.2, and a sound piece, The Tone-field: perceptible arithmetical relations in a cycle of eight Indian raga scale permutations, 23 IX 23 – 24 VI 20, New York, both by Choi.

Jung Hee Choi, Color (CNN / Twitch): live realization v. 2 (2013, 2023); Installation view, mixed media: incense, CNN/Twitch live streams, video projectors, wood, acrylic sheets, colored gel. Dream House, MELA Foundation, New York, 2023.
Photo: Jung Hee Choi. Copyright © Jung Hee Choi 2023.

As she moves past you, the departing temporary resident seems to abruptly cause the sound to change, as if she has disrupted the entire balance of the air hosting the sound waves as they cluster tightly in the centre of the room. Someone else decides to leave. The same thing happens again. You now know why your arrival prompted someone to turn their head: you have unintentionally created an interruption and, whether illusory or not, the sound seems to have adjusted itself to another surface to be both absorbed and deflected by.

And yet, while its intensity might be, at all times, cloying and extreme, you find yourself strangely comforted by it. I stayed there for around an hour. I was becalmed and also changed, in ways that I have only ever felt through meditation, experiencing a particularly visceral piece of art, or when I’ve performed John Cage’s 4’33”. My senses seemed suddenly sharper. Details that I hadn’t noticed before became more pronounced. Everything seemed at once more vivid, more colourful, more real. In short, I felt completely and utterly alive.

You leave the loft, pausing in at Choi’s works in the smaller East Gallery. The discordant collision – or maybe symbiosis – between Choi’s The Tone-field and Young’s The Base 9:7:4 Symmetry In Prime Time is discomfiting and unsettling, but also energising.

You descend the narrow stairs with the post-nightclub throb ebbing away behind you, and push the door open onto Church Street. You half expect to be suddenly drowned out by the harsh sonic savagery of Downtown Manhattan as Friday evening gets underway. You are reminded of a quote about New York from Giovanni’s Dream by James Baldwin: “There’s such power there – everything is in such movement.”

Except that it wasn’t like that at all. New York seemed strangely muted, its volume dulled, its lurid lightshow dimmed manifestly. It was as if Dream House had out-intensified New York’s intensity, either through force, volume, or more than likely just the way it had given you an enlarged and heightened sense of perspective.

As you walk down Church toward Canal, you stop, turn and glance back at the nondescript doorway and the building that it sits within. There is nothing remarkable there. It is an elegant loft building among many elegant loft buildings, barely distinguishable and possibly illusory. You look for the covered windows on the third floor but can’t make out anything obvious at all. The hum of traffic, sirens and conversations hide any trace of the sound uncoiling ceaselessly and so intensely behind that doorway. People walk past, fully oblivious, unaware, unbothered.

As you head back uptown, dealing with the serial interruptions of mistimed traffic intersections and Baldwin’s depiction of power and movement, you start to doubt that you were ever actually there. But then you notice echoes of Dream House sounds everywhere, wherever you turn, as if it was simply an amplified version of everything you experience every day in New York.

You smile, breathe, and walk on.

With thanks to Jung Hee Choi. This visit to Dream House took place on 9 February 2024.

For more information and to visit Dream House go to www.melafoundation.org

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2024 Further.

Rupert Lally – Sculptures

On By 429harrowroadIn Album reviewsLeave a comment

Geographically, Sculptures, the latest album from Switzerland-based electronic musician Rupert Lally, can be grouped together with his 2022 album Wanderweg. Both albums are sonic evocations of the area around where Lally lives, between Bremgarten and Wohlen. Through walks and rambles with his dog, the area has proven to be a major source of inspiration for Lally, something that gave Wanderweg a gentle, naturalistic sound that leaned into a pastoral, folk music dimension.

Stylistically, Sculptures exists in a very different space to Wanderweg. Inspired by sculptures in the area around his home, these tracks have a darker, more mysterious, more turbulent edge that links the album to his recent works of fiction (particularly last year’s Teenage Wildlife). A number of these tracks feature Lally playing electric guitar in a style which is filled with a jazzy inquisitiveness and occasionally Latin-inflected sense of freedom. That interplay between guitar and electronics is not remotely unfamiliar territory for Lally, but rarely has he used the combination in the way that he has with Sculptures.

There is a narrative quality to these pieces, which again connects to Lally’s novels. Except that here the story isn’t self-evident, but shrouded and secretive. It’s almost as if Lally composed these pieces while staring at the sculptures, feeling inspired by their construction, and constructing his own sonic response at the same time. Beyond interpreting the titles for ourselves, we can only imagine what that story is, and what was going through his mind as he composed these pieces.

‘Dwarf In The Mirror’ is one of the most engaging tracks in this collection. Beginning with slowly-forming spirals of ethereal sound, ‘Dwarf In The Mirror’ moves at a languid, dreamy pace, its brittle synth shards offsetting emotive guitar melodies. It fully occupies that zone of magical mystery that infiltrates many of the best moments here. ‘Big Shoes To Fill’ firmly places a spotlight on Lally’s guitar, subjected to an echo effect that gives the piece a gentle, questing vibe. The introduction of a quiet synth passage seems to encircle his guitar, flickering its way elusively between light and dark.

Lally has, for many years, worked as a sound designer for theatre. You hear that awareness of time, space and dramaturgy on ‘Hexenmusik’. It is a moment of pure texture, with layers of buzzing synths and unfurling, criss-crossing tones that together create brooding, turbulent atmospherics. Final track ‘The Burning Man’ begins with a similarly-structured sense of consciously oblique menace, before rapidly evolving into a stew of brittle, skeletal beats, off-kilter bass pulses and a dense web of restless electronics.

I’ve championed Lally’s creative works for many years, but his most recent sequence of albums have cemented Lally’s position as a master craftsman, one who is endlessly imaginative and continually searching for new things to be inspired by. Sculptures is thus both a departure from his many previous releases and also entirely in keeping with the spirit of adventure that has made his entire body of work so consistently engaging.

Sculptures by Rupert Lally is released February 9 2024 by Modern Aviation. Thanks to Will.

Words: Mat Smith

(c) 2024 Further.