K.K. Null/Chris Watson/Z’ev – Number One

Nature has been a frequent though unrewarded collaborator of many modern explorers in sound. Artists routinely gather field recordings like specimens to fractionate and microscopically alter into unrecognizable mutations. The East African location sounds gathered by Chris Watson for this recording, however, retain their original shapes and timbres, mostly. Instead they are used as elemental forces for this trio’s collaboration exploring the five part traditional Noh Theatre structure. What might appear overwrought or overreached in theory makes more sense in hearing the individual segments. Each of the five parts in Noh contains a character (celestial, man, woman, trickster, demon) as well as numerous natural, cosmologic and perceptive elements. Watson’s nature-based recordings are augmented by Null’s percussive electronics and varied acoustic recordings by Z’ev, who also assembled the final mix. So for the third movement, “Development,” for example, the figurative elements such as taste, earth, centrality etc. are represented by the sound of an elephant herd grazing and the movement through brush. These natural sounds are augmented by Null’s artificial thrum of earthen vibration and Z’ev’s wind-chime-like peals. Ultimately the result is an electro-acoustic experience that bares its strategies and pleases with a narrative well served.

(Touch)

Larsen - Seies

.....The mystery of Italian quartet Larsen begins with the tale of how Michael Gira (Swans/Angels of Light) came to produce their first album. The band sent him anonymous CD-Rs on the 1st and 21st of each month for a period before providing him the cash to travel to Italy and record them. In the 21 days they scheduled to create Rever (later released on Gira’s Young God label) they played from behind an opaque screen, never seeing or addressing Gira directly. Seies adopts the drone/crescendo structure of many contemporary bands then quickly outstrips them. The album is held within the ominous, feverish parentheses of “The Snow” and “Marzia,” the latter featuring Brian Williams (Lustmord). The central tracks are crystalline and towering but etched with such diverse fine detail that new facets reveal themselves with each slight repositioning. “Mother” is an elegant swoon in the face of uniformed martial rhythms while “Momi” contains a section of balladic duets for accordion and a laptop full of bees. A Swans connection is kept current via Jarboe’s, contribution of vocals and lyrics to a few songs. Whether or not Larsen ever peer out from behind their safety blanket is irrelevant so long as they continue to produce such wonderful works.

(Important Records)

Bird Show - Lightning Ghost

.....Ben Vida is one of those sleepless artists who seems to be everywhere you turn, whether it be as a core member of minimalists Town and Country, playing languid country folk with his brother Adam in Central Falls or as a contributing member of Terminal 4 and Pillow. Bird Show is his own personal sandbox full of buried toys. As with his previous Kranky release, Green Inferno, he creates unstable spaces overlaying various traditions of world music (African, Middle Eastern, Oriental) atop of electric/electronic drones and then wedges in song structures wherever possible. The results are spectacular, from the Konono #1 set free in Radio Shack of “Seeds” and “Beautiful Spring” to several pieces that resemble the trance-folk improvisations of Jackie-O Motherfucker or Sunburned Hand of the Man. While Inferno built up density beginning with a variety of field recordings Lightning Ghost creates its own context, one that is often much breathier despite a multiplicity of layers. An arsenal of percussive instruments such as mbira, qrareb and shakers encircle simple, single-note mantras issued as often by accordion and violin as laptop and synthesizer. Vida’s vocals are another element given more attention here, adding to the incantation or providing a melody.

(Kranky)

Steinbrüchel – Opaque (+RE)

.....Ralph Steinbrüchel is a Swiss electronics artist with a decade long resume of previous works and collaborations with other minimalists such as Frank Bretschneider and Kim Cascone. Opaque is essentially a ten minute piece composed for the Taktlos music festival in Berne, Switzerland as part of a surround sound experience in a special “listening” room where it played in a cycle with sounds from other artists. The track is a slow shimmering seesaw replete with textured trills, prayer bells and digital hiccups. The rest of the album consists of other artists given access to some of the original Opaque sound files and pointed in a specific direction for their alteration/combinations. Chris Abrahams (of The Necks) added clustered piano notes from the uppermost octave to duet with the sounds of tiny bells. Taylor Deupree opened up the track’s melody, giving it a resonant and richly glitchy digital finish. Both Oren Ambarchi and Toshiya Tsunoda found ways, with added guitar and field recordings, to make each of their efforts oddly menacing, a quality nowhere to be found in the original. In the end the album works exceptionally as both a single statement and a collection of the various artists.

(Room40)

Wayne B - Night of the Hunter

.....A future film noir vibe permeates this solo album by Calla drummer/sample gatherer Wayne B. Magruder. A dark ambiance that’s half music half weather pattern blankets the sound. The atmosphere is much damper and expansive than Calla’s sometimes arid, hermetic work. Rather than choosing purely rhythmic bases for his pieces, Magruder gives special attention to the texture of tracks. Enlisting the vocal talents of not one but two torch singers, (Jana Plewa of Kat Cosm and Daphne Gannon of Mercova) songs like “Souvenir” and “Oak (in the Small Hours)” reshape and update the slow burn electro-jazz of Morcheeba and Remote Viewers with a skeletal twist. The action in the instrumental tracks is filled with off-screen tapping and heartbeat pulses all pulled together by warm acoustic guitar and crickety electronics. Details shift and mild unease makes moments flicker from placid to purple and back again. This is music for slowly drawn back curtains and half-ajar cellar doors. It is sultry and suggestive; teasing but never fully revealing.

(Quatermass)

Midaircondo - Shopping for Images

.....Bjork is often cited for being at the forefront of experimental pop music, having taken elements of electronic (dance), hip hop and jazz production into the popular form. Early on she enlisted producers like Nellee Hooper, Howie B and Tricky and later studio/live collaborators Matmos, Zeena Parkins and others. Cynical types could see these moves to be as much trend spotting (a la Madonna) as it is artistic trend setting. After all if anyone had enough money to hire avant garde artists to play on their albums…. Swedish trio midaircondo come on like a group with three Bjorks plus all her collaborators rolled up in one. Shopping for Images also goes a few steps further into modern realms occupied by artists as diverse as AGF, Mitchell Akiyama and Sylvain Chauveau. What makes them even more potent is their ability to produce above average pop songs, such as “Serenade” and Bjork-like “Perfect Spot,” then shift over to organic sound experiments like “Coffeeshop/Sorry.” Lisa Nordstrom, Lisen Rylander and Malin Dahlstrom each bring layers of musical talent to the show: woodwinds, brass, laptops and three voices. Rather than overstuff their work with processing and trickery they tend to prefer a spare yet strong centre around which sound details flow, eddy and vanish. Likewise their vocal approach is warm and restrained, at times well below the surface or completely absent. If there is indeed a forefront of experimental pop music midaircondo could well be standard bearers.

(Type)

Boduf Songs - S/T

.....The world of art is made better by the participation of eccentric Englishmen. Mat Sweet is one such oddity. In a Robert Pollard-worthy pre-history Sweet has released multiple CD-R recordings on his own Baby Blue Recordings under a catalogue's worth of different names, including Four Man Ghost, Pistols at Dawn With Afterglow and of course, Boduf Songs. There is a little Syd Barrett, but just as much Roger Waters in Sweet's heredity, especially in his more traditional acoustic guitar style. On a track like "Claimant Reclaimed" you can almost, "(h)ear the lark and harken to the barking of the dog fox /Gone to ground" of Waters' "Grantchester Meadows." This tradition is refurbished with touches of noise and anachronistic tape effects as well as flourishes of bells and bowed cymbals to add occasional punctuation. The album's brevity and tone mark it as a close, more sombre relative to the also-recently-released Songs of Green Pheasant on Fat Cat Records (see review below). Both artists flout the current tendency toward folk music as free flowing improvisation and concentrate on songcraft which is solid but strange, and still canonical. Boduf Songs are apparently soft and unhurried, with hints of distress and decay which poke up and out into titles like "Puke A Pitch Black Rainbow To The Sun." It is to Sweet's credit that Kranky thought the original tapes so accomplished they re-released the album with no additional edits. Any impulse to change lanes may be witnessed upon recording the follow-up slated for release on Kranky sometime in 2006.

(Kranky)

Lichens - The Psychic Nature of Being

.....Robert Lowe, singer/bassist in 90 Day Men and sometimes TV On The Radio collaborator, is getting at something. As Lichens he generates lengthy, softly ululating chants which are simultaneously without antecedent yet hinting at connections to spiritual/mystical sources numerous but undelineated. A distant cousin of Double Leopards' wall of noise approach to the vocal drone, his sound is a primitive futurism akin to a UFO full of Tibetan Monks crashing into the LaBrea tar pits. It is a wordless blues pulse that pushes us adrift in the wilderness with hellhounds trailing and the tunnel of light up ahead. And then there is the acoustic guitar. It hides until you've forgotten it then rings out as a kind of beacon in the mist. Lowe's mode of play hovers nearest to Eastern raga-like styles. On "You Are Excrement..." his rhythmic technique is so seductively sitar-like that the ear strains to hear tablas which never appear. The same track features real physical sounds of preparation: a guitar case opening or bumping against a chair leg, the air in the room an empty space waiting. All of it reinforces the ceremonial sense of the piece. Like any good service it features gradual changes and complications; homilies; the introduction of bells; sackclothed ladies at the back smelling of incense. Well maybe that's stretching perception a little, but it is a reverberating effect of the recording. By its conclusion we have joined Lichens' digging in the dirt for... something which remains ineffable.

(Kranky)

Lappetites - Before the libretto

.....Born of a 2001 event at the Tonic in New York curated by Kaffe Matthews, The Lappetites is billed not as a group but a “…forum, meeting place, a concept within which to make and exchange new music....” For the purposes of this recording the meeting place welcomes a cross-generational group of women in the field of electronics and improvisation. Matthews herself is joined by electroacousic pioneer Eliane Radigue who studied with Pierre Shaeffer and Pierre Henry. Antye Greie, alias AGF lends her poetry and electronic cutup style to the project. Youngest member Ryoko Kuwajima, like Matthews, is a real-time sound gatherer/manipulator. “Before the libretto” is a surprisingly balanced affair, expertly combining all of the artists’ modus operandi into a fascinating, teetering but ultimately stable environment. A dynamic mix captures the many simultaneous sound events that whirl like the head of Janus on a lazy susan. By combining live playing with sharing of digital data over time and space, the foursome are able to disseminate the best moments of the experiment and present the evidence in these thirteen startling tracks.

(Quecksilber)

alva noto/ryuichi sakamoto - insen

.....The second collaboration from this meeting of minimalists across the acoustic/electronic divide is every bit as lovely an accomplishment as their opener, “vrioon.” As with the first release, which topped Wire Magazine’s 2004 list of electronic releases, Noto (Carsten Nicolai) was given a series of sketches by Sakamoto and left to shape them into a finalized format. Unlike the work on “vrioon” which consisted mainly of applying a sine-wave tapestry to the piano parts, here Noto microscopically dissects the piano notes themselves and rebuilds the music from the inside out. Sakamoto’s original themes are of the sentimental but sturdy school occupied by Erik Satie, Gavin Bryars and others. This sturdiness is only enhanced by Noto’s surgery. His signature pallet of pulses, clicks and beeps weave around the piano chords connective tissue, strong but delicate. It is where the altered notes and electronic rhythms fuse that progress is achieved. The primary/secondary order of which artist leads and which one supports is stripped away as the piano becomes rhythm to the electronics’ melody, then vice versa. A meditative calm suffuses the entire album, though not in an ambient way where the sound becomes transparent, but in a way that gives reason to pause; stop; listen; enjoy; become momentarily serene.

(Raster-Noton)

Back from Flatline

After a brief power outage we are back in business... all links should be operational once again. Thanks to MD.

Tujiko Noriko-Blurred in My Mirror

.....Recent times have seen a return of the human voice as an important element in experimental music, both in song and spoken word. Artists like Valerie Trebeljahr of Lali Puna, Antye Greie of AGF and Swedish trio Midaircondo have been producing affecting and forward-looking work. With previous and soon-to-be-released albums on prestigious labels like Mego, Fat Cat and Tom Lab Tujiko Noriko’s output has been on par with the best of these. Joined on this release by Australian composer and multimedia artist (and Room40 label boss) Lawrence English, Noriko straddles the genres of pop, folk and electro-acoustic composition. Tracks like the opener, “Niagara Hospital,” are the kind of speak-sing performances pioneered by Laurie Anderson’s work in the 80s. Next up “Tablet for Memory” more closely resembles the jazz/lounge noir of Portishead. The Japanese language pieces are the most exploratory, binding abstract sound combinations to acoustic guitar and near-atonal chants. English’s electronic soundscape is the seat of strength and adaptation throughout. It is a barrage of tones and textures that shifts ceaselessly, yet somehow manages to stay neatly concealed beneath Noriko’s breathy voice. And a compelling voice it is.
(Room40)

The Drift - Noumena

.....Sticking with an increasingly thinly stretched strand of a genre as instrumental rock is the musical equivalent of playing chicken… no one wants to miss the jump off point. The Drift is a San Francisco band made up from ex-members of Tarentel, Furniture and Halifax Pier, but their sound only holds sideways references to those bands. By siphoning off a little of the gas from the orch-rock machinery and going to more of an acoustic set up with trumpet, drums, electric guitar and upright bass, they manage to find a kind of jazz/fusion breakdown lane. Indeed, at moments they verge upon the Tortoise territory which occasionally fetishized Miles Davis’ 70s bridge building efforts. Their attention to groove and atmosphere over articulation also allies them with some of the more forward of the jam band brethren. So do they avoid colliding with onrushing obsolescence? Yes. Noumena, as in its Kantian origin, is an album onto itself, escaping the mope rock gravity well of the mind. The Drift drives over ground that is far from uncharted, but at least not completely stripmalled. Best to steer even farther clear next time.

(Temporary Residence)

Folie - Eyepennies

.....Stefan Thor follows up his critically acclaimed first disc, “Misspass,” with an equally laudable work, apparently built from sounds generated by his two year old daughter. Circuitry marries the minimal pop trance of (Mitek label boss) Mikael Stavöstrand with the decaying dub experiments of Pole or Deadbeat. The result sounds a little like a microHouse hangover. Like Stavöstrand, Thor manages to unerringly work out the point where too little morphs into just enough in beat oriented electronics. By marrying a pregnant melody line to the trance-derived repetition of dry rhythm a highly kinetic space for the many and varied intermediate sounds is created. The familiar clicks, pops and beat-trailing echoes are present with subtle and slight genetic mutation detected. Those who mourn the passing of Mille Plateaux and Force Inc. will be able to put away their sackcloth and ashes for a while.

(Mitek)

Christopher Bissonnette - Periphery

.....Just as you can make diamonds out of coal with enough time and pressure so too can you generate warmth from cold zeroes and ones. Christopher Bissonnette's work is not simply the end result but also the sound of the transformative process. "in Accordance" introduces the listener to the album with a simple assurance in the form of repeating and evolving piano notes, that there was music at the beginning and it continues, though at times subliminally. At other intervals he allows digital sound waves stripped nearly bare to approximate what fish trapped below pond ice might hear in the crisscrossing sweeps of skaters. Bissonnette leaves in sound "mistakes" which occur during editing, such as the clicks of abrupt track slicing and the digital "wow and flutter" of over-amplification which gives the effect of breath-like expansion and contraction. Each track elucidates a particular sensation yet still connects with the others for a genetic flow. "Comfortable Expectations" evokes watching a great sleeping body's slow rising and falling, while the follower, "Substrata," suggests the tingling anticipation of life set to spring up from just below the surface of... well, you pick. Other tracks, like "Travelling Light," are more musical but just as calm in their slow progression, with the rise and fall of a few organ notes bathed in static and gradually overtaken by their stutteringly altered digital doppelgangers. "Pellucidity" caps the album with a slight return to its opening theme, but is it an ending or the beginning of a new cycle in sound?

(Kranky)

TG Mauss - Mechanical Eye

.....On his first solo outing Torsten Mauss, previously one half of electro duo Tonetraeger, seems to be pulled in two directions: whether to present a vocal pop album or instrumental electro experiment. Tonally the album is cohesive, with a healthy balance of played strings, sampled instruments, soft electronics and found sounds. Mauss’ vocals are airily thin but, as in “Real,” effectively wed to the delicate layers of plucked bass notes, harpsichord keys and soft synth sounds. Ironically this track is complex and compelling regardless of the vocal, whereas instrumental tracks like “Pacific” meander without destination beyond a point where they’d be heard as interludes. In the post-Postal Service world of electro such a hook-free song feels unfinished. Luckily these missteps are few. Mauss’ taste in sublime sound combinations gently drives the album along. If full-blown pop songs tell stories these pieces are the equivalent of postcards: brief, heartfelt, scenic and atmospheric and with only the most ear catching details provided.

(Quatermass)

Songs of Green Pheasant - S/T

.....If the Nuggets box set were a compendium of near-forgotten 60s and 70s British folk songs, music by Songs of Green Pheasant would fit seamlessly. Despite being recorded in 2002 in a kitchen on a 4 track by Duncan Sumpner, an artist and teacher from Sheffield in England, the songs have a “just-unearthed” quality of breathy distance. The sound is more tapped-in than tacked-on to a tradition of metaphysical song cycles which stretches from madrigal to Garfunkel (and Simon). The more current elements, such as the drum machine rhythm and shimmering drone of “The Wraith of Loving,” are soon assimilated and bathed in the same atmosphere that sustains Sumpner’s echoing vocal harmonies. A subtle psychedelic current supports the acoustic foreground with recorder and hushed electric guitar tones providing elemental space. Sumpner is slated to collaborate next with Adam Davenport of Vibracathedral Orchestra, likely stretching further beyond these traditional boundaries. But these songs are perfect for imagining endless spring fields outside farmhouse windows and star-filled nights out on windy plains. As an introductory musical statement, Songs of Green Pheasant is pure without being purist (or puerile).

(FatCat)

Sanso-xtro - Sentimentalist

.....The thing about learning a second language is that your range of expression can become drastically limited from what you’re used to. Verb tense becomes slippery and actions in the present suddenly slide into the past with an omitted accent or extra consonant. Melissa Agate’s first language is drumming and percussion, but on Sentimentalist she attempts to speak through a more processed iteration which uses analogue synthesizers, guitar, ukulele, kalimba, bells and other delicate sound sources. Although she is perhaps not fluent in these new instruments her approximate translations yield striking new expressions that outweigh any more “proper” approach. The opener “the last leaf” is the sound of a slightly tipsy, burping analogue synth backing out of a room of cymbals and snares. Elsewhere, as on “zlumber… talkinmysleep” and “minus_ecki,” she plays her stringed instruments as percussive loops in a double entendre of melody and hollow bodied echoes. The combination of sounds yields music that is neither ambient drifting nor the structured verse/chorus of pop but a synthesis of these… not unlike a recombination of early works by Pan.American and experiments by Steve Roden. It is music that doesn’t tell a whole story, but describes moments in colourful detail and from peculiar points of view across many languages. Very expressive and definitely not limited.

(Type)

Away, but close

Sorry things have been stagnant for the last while... I've been away from home base for a few weeks and it's made keeping up with "production" a little tricky. I have July's shows just about ready to archive, probably do that over the weekend... It's been nice seeing mail starting to come in addressed to Surgery instead of the old perMUTATIONS moniker, though that name is still dear to our hearts, yes?

Expect to see reviews of these recent arrivals in the next little while as well.

The other thing which has been (pre) occupying my time is getting ready for a show in Ottawa upcoming on August 12th... part of a festival presented on July/August weekends put on by Artengine.

Gathering and mucking about with new sounds is fun, but it can be time consuming and impractical if you're doing it away from your own usual gear. We'll see.
If you're in the Ottawa area come on out and see us.

'Til then.

Now We're Really On.

Hi

The first seven shows are now archived and ready to download in .aif and .mp3 format from the links to your right--->

Soon there'll be more content in the form of reviews, interviews, exclusive tracks... but for now... a bit of background for the as yet uninformed.

The current show has its beginning back in 1999 when I started doing a weekly experimental music radio show on CHSR-FM 97.9 in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. I had been involved with the radio station during the late 80s and early 90s but hadn't done anything until this new show which was, at first called The "Y2K-Mart." After the big bad Millennium passed I changed the show's name to perMUTATIONS "from vegetative silence to carnivorous noise" and continued until the end of Summer last year.

I like the idea of adapting the show to it's current format, one hour long... commentary-free mixes... accessible to anyone who wants to play/listen to it either on air or at home. It seemed to fit better with my other jobbies (job+hobbies) which include managing a record store and writing reviews for Exclaim! magazine (you'll find links to both on the right as well). This way I can comment on the music in a variety of different ways from play to review to interview to overview all the way to sales... ideally.

So... thanks to all the labels and artists who supported the show from its beginnings to the present... hopefully you'll continue and be joined by your peers... but for now...

On with the shows.