Cyclic Defrost Magazine

Les Stances a Sophie (Soul Jazz/ Inertia)

Posted: 20 Mar 2009 06:24 AM PDT

Who knew that the obscure film behind the legendary Art Ensemble of Chicago soundtrack would actually turn out to be worthy of their eclectic mix of free-jazz, classical and improvised sounds? Whatever you expect though from hearing the music, this film is unlikely to be it. Rather it’s a late (1970) example of the French new wave, where Goddard and Truffaut, were getting a little playful with the film form, employing curious techniques like jump cuts and crossing the line. It was directed by French based Israeli Moshe Mizrahi and is somewhat of a feminist tale, perhaps a warning to women, with a free spirit marrying a rather uptight suit, compromising her ideals and struggling to assume the roles expected of her. In one of the swinging 70’s scenes our heroine, her discontent growing, is seduced by the best friend of her husband. Appearing to succumb she asks him to strip naked then makes him look in the mirror at himself before ridiculing his advances. It’s punishing. Art Ensemble of Chicago actually appear, playing live in the film, with our heroine ducking out to see one of their shows, later waxing with one of the members about sex and relationships. The scene is clunky as hell yet there’s no doubt it is the presence of the Art Ensemble of Chicago that provides the biggest draw card to this film. Mizarhi has thrown convention out the window in the style of pieces he uses and also how he places them within scenes. A sudden burst of freeform percussive heavy meanderings are accompanied by peculiar stills of the the couple naked lying on each other, the camera movements perfectly in sync with the mayhem of the music. It’s simultaneously jarring and seductive, yet I can’t recall a film ever using music in such a curious way.

Extra Features:
The 1 minute 15 excerpt of the Art Ensemble playing live culled straight from the film. Also a 27 minute interview with Ensemble member Joseph Jarman who talks of the history of the Ensemble and the Paris years. There’s also a booklet with a text interview with Mizrahi as well as some background information on the film.

Bob Baker Fish

Various Artists - Ritual and Education (Ghost Box)

Posted: 20 Mar 2009 05:30 AM PDT

This is a special budget priced download only compilation cd from the back catalogue of curious UK label Ghost Box. There’s a certain kitsch eeriness to the music here, from artists with names like The Advisory Circle, The Focus Group, or Mount Vernon Arts Lab. It sounds like library music from the 70’s, with traces of dark electronica and somehow this intangible British television quality. Much of it comes across as the perfect soundtrack to a 70’s TV show about a cult that’s sprang from the ashes of a defunct educational institution for troubled boys. The music is incredibly immersive, some are sound cues, others are almost instrumental songs, yet each feels like it opens up a new world. The label was formed in 2004 by Jim Jupp and Julian House, who has also designed the covers for Stereolab and Oasis records. There are some really experimental techniques at play, yet they never become harsh and are all integrated into a musical context. Perhaps most remarkable is the unity of approach between the various artists. There’s a definite label aesthetic, slightly reminiscent of the faded photograph feel of Boards of Canada, each piece sounding like a lost soundtrack to an obscure British occult thriller.

Bob Baker Fish

Christophe Bailleau – Lights out in the Ghosting Hour (Optical Sound)

Posted: 20 Mar 2009 05:18 AM PDT

A fine art Gallery/Record label combination is a particular combination of roles that when attended to as a sound event you may very well form a group show; artist as curator of album exhibition. Christophe Bailleau's album for Parisian Art Galley Optical Sound brings together American multi instrumentalist Neal Williams, Belguim/French multi disciplinary artist Phillippe Franck & Belguim singer songwriter Niko Hafkenscheid. In a sense the introduction opens the album as a room of discrete acts soundscapes on display, themes to engage with, questions of technical form and achievement, much the same as any gallery event.

Thus: Forgery, the clatter and the percussive dissonance behind simple melodic banjo and guitar loops, crowd sounds, building and morphed into an intangible sonic impression. A Night of Real Recognition leaves the electronic landscape, both as a form of dirge and sharp sonic violence as background to Neal Williams bright poetics and guitar, eventually overcoming the scene. Promised Land, Niko Hafkenscheid paean to a searching mind encapsulated in song, the quest and destiny, tinkering in the background fills out this theme. Bailleau adds his voice to Walk the Curse, interplaying traditional instrumentation with electronic manipulation in a rich peak experience. The ghosting hour, delivers a clear wall of sound interplay between sources, manipulation, poetic experience and clarity, before giving into sonic spatial play. Happy Death day is just out there, hard core (not stylistically) rough play with sound and the darkest of lyrics. I'll be there, a studied and controlled piece, displaying the mastery of the players over form.

Walking into this exhibition is a dangerously rewarding act, it displays all the sides, of these artists, the points at which they meld perfectly, the parts where voices and elements show discord and 'battle' for the sonic foreground. If all painting/music was, in this long overplayed analogy, merely what the painter/musician plonked in front is not the real point. The landscape it is the interplay of elements and the ideas revealed in the application of technique to the subject which is conversely just a device. The poetic grace resides not just in the form poetics when Williams or Hafkenscheid enter the picture but also in the sound manipulation whose buried language whispers the programmer's mantra, 'code is poetry', structure and its products are brimming with wonder.

Innerversitysound

10-20 - Self-titled (Highpoint Lowlife)

Posted: 20 Mar 2009 02:12 AM PDT

Dubstep’s codes have had an equally significant influence upon IDM bedrooms as they have the dancefloors of the ‘hardcore continuum’. The manner in which these practices are taken by artists working outside of dubstep’s - indeed, music’s - ’standard’ settings offers even greater diversity. The London Highpoint Lowlife label have actively monitored these developments, among numerous others (twee pop, noise, drones, post-rock, etc.), maintaining a near buy-on-site level of quality control, not disappointed by this breathtaking debut by newcomer 10-20.

It’s easy to use geography as a prism through which to view an artist’s output, and 10-20’s Devon locale throws up a whole new range of signifiers. His is a fisherman’s 2-step, the cavernous bass from bunkers in London and Bristol emerging salty and dry, mnml even. In opener ‘Milvus’, this is paired with a glittering backdrop of bejewelled pings and glassy clinks reminiscent of Heartthrob or Troy Pierce, yet without the pernickitiness, more like flotsam. Familar pulses and synth shudders also rear their heads, but they’re windswept and ghostly compared to their urban cousins.

The thread that binds 10-20 is the dense web of sound lurking behind each track, a shimmering tapestry of machine noise, circuit hum and coastal field recording. In ‘jjuvxszla’ and ‘wdtrhjvelgrad’, for example, pointilistic shards dance and twitter like clinical Mille-Plateaux experiments, smeared into a dubbed-out haze. The aptly titled ‘Arcadeagle’ beautifully fuses ‘real’ and synthetic sources, delayed arcade blare awash in confused static, while the rhythm swoons like Wolfgang Voigt. 10-20 offers plenty for attentive listeners, and those keen on more skewed dancefloors.

Joshua Meggitt