Kemialliset Ystävät ‎– 'Ullakkopalo' (Fonal)

Hi there. It's been awhile; a month+ break taken for no particular reason except sometimes you just need a break. There were some dark days in between this and the last transmission, quite literally dark as recovering from a minor eye surgery led to some light sensitivity, which would have been the perfect time to just sit in the dark and listen to records. Yet, no, it didn't happen, and I actually blame the timing of Ullakkopalo being drawn next in this deck. This is a dense masterpiece, where Jan Anderzen has put together a zillion layers of strange interacting sounds to create a tapestry that is dizzying and awe-inspiring, if you can stay focused enough while listening for awe to form.  And I couldn't, which is why after years of technically loving this record, I rarely listen to it; I don't spend as much time as I'd like parsing through its various confounding movements. Sure, there's a lot of horsin' around, but it's all in the service of something complete. With a load of guest musicians, spread throughout the tracks in a manner where their contributions are pretty much impossible to distinguish from Anderzen's own fuckery, this is a real 'Who's Who' of the Finnish freak underground, except all blended together. I first heard Kemialliset Ystävät about five or six years before this, but that was another world entirely. Then, KY material was based around a loose thrashing about, with a lot of acoustic instruments, a lo-fi texture, and no particular hurry to get to any destination. But by this point (2010), it had become a symphony of precisely assembled sound matter, still based around weird experiments and uncertain tonal sources, but concerned with plot, not just feel. I'm reminded at times of Ennio Morricone scores, Albert Marcouer's great 70s art-pop, shoegaze textures and the Residents, but that's just a few points of reference. Really, this is such singular music that it does it a disservice to compare it to other artists. There are moments where the cheap synthesisers swirl around in a carnivalesque manner, but there's a clarity to it all, and as said above a precision, which hides behind the surface-level madness. Singling out tracks is difficult but a few weeks back a Pekko Käppi record was reviewed and even though they're pretty different in temperament, there's a similar sense of eclecticism to how it's all put together. And now that I've gotten here, reaching the end of this, it wasn't so hard after all to write something about, though I don't know if my words add much value to the listening experience.

Idea Fire Company - 'Anti-Natural' (Swill Radio)

This is a two-part manifesto, being both language and sound. All sound is a form of language of course and Anti-Natural is a clear example that even the most conservatory-trained traditionalist could understand. Karla Borecky and Scott Foust's synth interplay, accented with reedy guitar and tape loops, stakes out a universe that redefines musical concepts such as metre, pitch, and duration. With all of the tracks on Anti-Natural, it's really one complete work, the concept of the 'album' being probably the most traditional music-industry one being adhered to. Shorter tracks tease out pinching tones, a murky ambience that breathes and pulses, and these support the longer explorations, for example the 13-minute 'Magnetic Fields', which glows with an organic repetition that feels so attuned to the human body that while listening to it carefully, closely, I feel a change in my own breathing. This LP feels like a complete statement of intent even without the printed manifesto included, but that is an intense and I'd say recommended read, especially for me over today's morning coffee. No one in academic art history circles is even aware of the 'Anti-Natural' manifesto, a fact that serves to prove the manifesto's own points about the conspiratorial blanketing of capitalist commodification, Judeo-Christian morals and positivist scientific thought. It's a convincing work, one that should be taken seriously and applied to this and all future Idea Fire Company recordings, for it stakes out their aesthetic position and radicalises a music that should be already radical, were it not for the context of the music industry which de-radicalises by definition, and of course the LP (pressed and sold by IFCO themselves on the Swill Radio imprint) is a commercial product. Anti-Natural, not music you'd listen to with Grandma, is a vital document of sound exploration that forms around a much larger context than simple electroacoustic experimentalism. And thinking about this as an aesthetic, one that a younger version of me would have happily summarised as an 'alien' one, really raises the question about how to live our lives through art, uncompromising and true. Some of the shorter tracks have great titles like 'We Are Nothing and We Want to Be Everything' or 'On Your Toes, Intellectuals!', which could be seen as jokes or as serious provocations, and somehow I vote for the latter, though the Anti-Natural ideology doesn't feel heavy or dogmatic. The music is ultimately what matters and over the last 25 years or so, IFCO has tended towards lightness, with sounds that are lifting, expanding, and evolving, generating a sensation of a world to explore. It starts here for me (though there are a few earlier records that I haven't heard) and as a statement of purpose, it's marvellous.

Henry Cow - 'Unrest' (Virgin)

Maybe their best record, Unrest takes the sock and darkens the hue, which the music mostly does too. Once again, the Cow (with Lindsay Cooper replacing Geoff Leigh) structure their album with the more open, improvisatory bits on side two and the tight, strident rock songs first. 'Ruins' is the highlight of side 1, a long Frith composition that has become one of their signature tunes, but I also love the piano playing at the beginning of 'Half Asleep; Half Awake'. I assume it's Greaves tinkling the ivories (though it's heavy on the black keys – somehow evoking the Paul Bley side of jazz without sounding of that genre at all) since he composed the piece. The piano that closes out the album, a distant yearning underneath some even more distant vocals on 'Deluge' might be Frith, since they're both credited. The more 'out' sounds on side two are really what drives me crazy though; 'Linguaphonie' I've listened to multiple times, trying to make sense of it. It's the Cow at their most electroacoustic, Frith almost stealing the show with the amplifier hum, heavy use of effects pedals, and radio static guitar which sounds almost completely alien; but Cutler is also a force here. It again hints at a jazz without fully committing, ending in a free cacophony that is the perfect lead in to 'Upon Entering the Hotel Adlon', a work so frantic you could tell me that it was a Skin Graft Records outtake from 20 years later and I'd believe you. Cutler is still kicking ass here, showing his hellacious attacking style that is usually hidden behind his spectacled, tea-and-biscuits appearance. This is also the next step in the too-obvious progression through politics that Henry Cow make; here things turn darker, realising the struggle of the intellectual improvisation-friendly progressive musician against a dying European post-war culture. Things get a lot more red soon (quite literally if we're talking about cover socks), and culminate in their last album which actually has hammers and fucking sickles on the cover. My politics mostly line up with these guys and I'm sure, certain actually, that Jeremy Corbyn has a copy of this record. I hope he uses the sprightly progressive bounce of 'Bittern Storm Over Ulm' to motivate his people to the polls next month. I met Cutler briefly when I was an undergraduate, after seeing him give a workshop about sampling, copyright and intellectual property. When we chatted afterwards and I told him how I was just getting into his back catalogue, he told me to avoid the East Side Digital CD reissues of Henry Cow, warning that they were mastered badly and to buy (of course) the ReR issues. I've heard Henry Cow on CD and yes, it did sound thin (though I don't know which version it was, and all CDs sound thin if you're a vinyl snob); but here on original Virgin wax, Unrest sounds fucking thundering. I know I probably go on too much here about how great and resonant these records sound on my Rega, but one of the reasons I kept listening to this over the past few days is just how pleasureable it sounded. The guitars have a real fire to them, but the sax and reeds of Hodgkinson and Cooper are perky and brisk, and give this a really complete, satisfying dynamic range.

James Twig Harper ‎– 'Intuitive American Esoteric Vol. 2' ( American Tapes/Ecstatic Peace!/Gods Of Tundra/Heresee/Slowtoe)

Another multi-label collaboration (and you gotta hand it to Harper for his vision), this one contains far fewer liner notes - none at all, apart from a now-faded gold sticker on the cover - and is split into two side-long pieces, with no label on the LP and an etching on one side saying to play at any speed. I chose 33 because I was too lazy to lift my turntable's glass platter; I started with the etched side, which is almost entirely locked groves so it's particularly difficult to listen to. It's fun to watch my Rega Bias cartridge skid all over the place trying to grab onto something, though I worry if it's damaging, so I'm glad to play this now before upgrading to a new cart. I'm reminded, of course, of all those Brinkmann records I never listen to, which are also joys of physical groove mastering. There's a similar skittiness here, though the materials feel more analogue and the beats more like byproducts. I'm not sure how many grooves I missed while going through this so it's probably safe to say I heard 70% of this at best.  It's the other, 'normal' side of Intuitive American Esoteric vol. 2 which is the real doozy. Here, Harper goes through just about everything in his toolbox, and while it has a fairly tighter 'electronic' soundbase than vol. 1 (meaning: there are less obviously acoustic tones that aren't processed into something space-aged), it really moved through a lot of territory. And it's LONG - I wasn't timing but it felt like it went on for about a half-hour. There's parts that sound like they are underwater, parts that are out-and-out aggressive percussive noise, and parts that pull in eight different directions at once. There's so much motion here that it would be insane to try to follow all of the parts, and everything collages together as it's happening so it's a dense psychedelic journey, for sure. I think the sense of movement and composition here is more accomplished than volume 1, though the fidelity is not quite as high and the range of pitches and sound-hues starts to congeal about halfway through. That's not to say there isn't plenty of space here - Harper is not a 'wall of noise' artist - but it's busy even within the spaces, if that makes any sense. Volume 3 happened but I haven't heard it; the completist part of me wants to seek it out, however.

Eno - 'Here Come the Warm Jets' (Island)

Here come a run of records that will be hard to write about because I've listened to them to death and there's not much new to say. In fact, when I listen now, I have to struggle to hear new things, which is not to say I am in any way 'bored' with Here Come the Warm Jets. But certainly, the iconic cuts have been played to death, so I no longer have much to say about 'Needles in the Camel's Eye' or 'Baby's on Fire' except that when I hear them played in public places (a bar, restaurant, club, or dentist's office) then I'm delighted to know said establishment has good taste. The more disturbing and edgy tracks are the ones I enjoy the most - 'Driving Me Backwards' is possibly Eno's greatest achievement, as it feels like a metaphor that can apply to so many zillions of scenarios - the 1970s British economy, the pressures of creative inspiration - or maybe it's just about nothing. The jets of the title track and 'On Some Faraway Beach' are indeed warm, dragging me into a murky, pleasant sound bath, with genteel melodies circling around some undefined dynamo. 'Blank Frank' is like the evil version of the Beach Boys' SMiLE - psychedelic, sure, but it's all bad vibes and menace, with just as much invention in the studio. These records, especially Another Green World, somehow get away with guitar tones that would sound horrendous in most other contexts. 'Blank Frank's solo sounds more like a paper shredder, yet I wouldn't call it proto-industrial. I have a thing for 'Some of them are Old' and 'Put A Straw Under Baby' (on Tiger Mt.) because I love Eno's pure melodicism; the songs are like nursery-rhymes with bizarre, intangible lyrics and stick in my head deeper than the rockers ('It will follow you, it will follow you...'). The breakdown on 'Some of Them are Old', with it's weird slide guitar arpeggios and buzzsaw/tabla contradicitons, is among the most sublime passages on any Eno recording I've heard, and the reverb-drenched church bell coda is an oft-overlooked island of calm. I'm an unabashed Eno fan, but also a shitty one that doesn't stick with his recent material (recent meaning, oh, the last 25 years or so). A Year with Swollen Appendices, his book from 1995, is maybe his greatest gift to the creative world (even more than the Oblique Strategies) but when viewed holistically, his career somehow maintains a consistent approach to exploration throughout - there's never anything that feels like it wasn't worth trying.

Michel Dintrich / Philippe Drogoz ‎– 'La Guitare Au-Delà...' (Classic)

The acoustic guitar is hereby reinvented; played in totality, an osteopathic approach to a sound instrument. Side A finds Dintrich tapping, wobbling, and breathing through his guitar. The strings are an essential component of a guitar, sure, but here they are not the only one. I'm reminded of Tetuzi Akiyama, who shares a similar sparse, minimal approach, but Dintrich is more woody, earthy; with deep reverb and bending harmonics, he stakes out a language of his own. On the flip is a collaboration, I think - it appears to be Dintrich on a 10-string guitar, performing a composition by Philippe Drogoz, though Drogoz is not credited on the front of the record and the whole thing confuses me. Here is some true dark yoga; Drogoz's tape work is sometimes screeching, sometimes plotting, and always a thick counter to Dintrich. In the middle of it all, things decelerate to nothing and then slowly build up again, based around an ever-so-creeping Drogoz drone. Dintrich here is going mad - thrusting backhands against the stringboard, scraping, bending, plucking errant notes out of the air and then receding back to nothing. It's a duo interplay unlike any other, a battle royale, but Drogoz's whirring wins out. Or does it? This was recorded in 1970 which is freaking amazing to think about, as it's so contemporary (or maybe contemporary is just so retro). An eBay search turns up some other work that seems to be straight classical guitar pieces, which I'd love to hear after this gem.