Cyclic Defrost Magazine

Posted: 02 May 2009 04:00 AM PDT

Current 93’s forthcoming album Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain is likely to be one of the major releases of 2009. As a little taster, try this live concert recording from last year, posted on the excellent blog Because God Told Me To Do It. Get it while it’s hot.

Click here.

D’incise - Morsure Souffle/Cendre et Poudre (Test tube/Antisocial)

Posted: 02 May 2009 03:12 AM PDT

D’incise is Laurent Peter, quite an active, Swiss Musician working in the electronic /dub / free jazz / found / environmental sound general area. Combine that with an active political bent, perhaps overactive if the consideration of politics and music is other than a combination you wish to entertain. Or perhaps you think the question itself is a non sequitur only contemplated by the irrational. I only mention this as the many releases of D’incise are predominately available on creative commons licensed netlabels and Laurent Peter is part of Audioactivity a collective of artists based in Geneva with their associated netlabel Insubordinations.

Morsure Souffle , has all the audio hallmarks of a highly subtle sound collage. Released on Portugese netlabel Testube, it is at once found/environmental sound collected, collated and fused into shapes. Then moments of sound echo of improvisational jazz, or at least the stripped echoes of the oeuvre, or even semi-precise mimicry triggering found moments in the audience. Yet the action of extreme electronic manipulation is never far from the palette and the guise of nature as a backdrop to audio acoustic experimentation is as sensible a template as any. Even the sound of the chime, catching the wind, or the approximation of it combined with a sonic hum/purr and gently advancing triangle alarm is enough of a sound argument. Then there is the central track la Banquise living up to its name, a feast of noise terror, (a humorous notion in itself), mutating in to crisp audio action of imaginary violated string experiments on a vanquished piano; reason enough to display control and succinctness of digital prowess.

Cendre et Poudre is an earlier album released on Antisocial, however precisely demarcated in time is unsure. Even the sense of time is a precision of those implicit in a reminiscence of its construction, but that is another story. D’incise is a more structured entity here, with the modicum of sequenced sound objects laying distinct trails through pieces and warm undertones of spatial dub infusing the texture with a sonic body politeness that can be either taken as an indulgence or a delight depending on your disposition. I choose the latter, even in the knowledge of the insidious prison of the cushion. Ears attuned to glitch dub ambient will find their ears rewarded with a glistening sonic texture and scratched out sound moments hiding amongst oft glacier scapes and the presence of an acoustic instrument or two. Then there ersatz bass guitar and typewriter melody, backwards rendered sounds and warning tones and discrete harmonic tones. Perhaps it is best listened to in conjunction with the only accompanying release information:

“a still inhabited space meticulous archaeology,
on half-earased pages remained open books,
what others meant and nobody knew how to don’t tell,
silky mineral prints,
time put in flesh and bones,
notes without stave and rhythms without fasteners,
to the powder indifferent breath,
to the ash return cycle.”