Peter B, "Luteus" (2007, Resipiscent)

Peter B, Luteus
Resipiscent, 2007

Instrument builder Peter Blasser is a living legend in the homemade electronics and circuit-bending circles, and with good reason! His design schematics (which he'll apparently trade for floral specimens) are as innovative as the sounds his instruments produce are unpredictable. According to Resipiscent's press release, his "Din Datin Dudero, Tranoe, Ambrazier, and Rollable Synth behave differently depending on who plays them." Did you catch that?! Peter B's instruments don't play differently, they behave differently. Now, I don't mean to imply that any of his hand-crafted gadgets possess some sort of sentience, as fun as that might seem to an active imagination (namely, my own), but the point I mean to make is that these circuits slurp, gobble, chew up and spontaneously spit out some crazy curious soundforms. The result of Peter B going tête-à-tête with his Cocolases, Sidrassi Organs, Shinths ("the first synthesizer designed to be broken!") and who knows what else, is at once willfully self-indulgent, and undeniably whimsical. There is a strong sense of play at work on Luteus, and it's really refreshing to hear something this self-consciously sloppy sound as good as it does, as opposed to the leagues of lazy goons who erroneously assume that it's enough to make a noise without caring how it sounds as it strikes the eardrums.

Luteus features thirteen tracks, three of which were taken from a live set in 2004. Each of these tracks stand out individually due to the album's expressive, high-quality production values, one notable feature of which includes Peter B's great use of space in the recording. Often, Peter B's child-like babbling and lute strumming erupts into all manners of squiggly, blurting tones and sharp squelches and squeals, but the amount of space he gives each unpredictable sound to move within often causes his expanding and contracting oscillations to come across as almost organic. Even more impressive, is that while Peter B's homemade instruments can make a manic, Nautical Almanac-like racket, they can also be put to more traditional use.

There are several lighter moments on Luteus where Peter B shows off his latent indie-pop sensibility, performing actual songs. Many of these sing-songs are short, silly, and pleasant, and within this context, share an interesting dynamic when paired with the carefree dadaist electronics on display throughout Luteus's thirteen tracks. In fact, some of Luteus' more song-like moments are among the album's highlights, my favorite being the minimalist vocal call-and-response of "I'm your owl, what is your mystery?", which is based solely upon minimalist vocal call-and-response. That being said, personally I feel that Peter B is at his best when less focused on simplistic songcraft, and totally absorbed in provoking absurd reactions from his DIY contraptions.

Balancing it's erratic circuit-bent noise bits with a positive and playful execution, Peter B's Luteus is an album that defies easy categorization due to it's carefree mixture of pleasant sing-songs, occasional shards of high-frequency noise, senseless babbling, "crzy ass delusions", and queasy pulsating drones. Luteus comes packaged in a standard jewel-case, with an absolutely essential full-colour booklet that includes several portraits of Peter B's eclectic electro-acoustic instruments. The always reliable Resipiscent has scored once again with Luteus, a cd which freely experiments with form and flavor almost as much as the label that sought fit to release it.

Peter B's "Luteus" can be purchased at the Resipiscent records website. Peter B also performs in the trio Sejayno, whose vinyl release "Sedaity" is available from Shinkoyo, Heresee, Skulls of Heaven, BOC, and Ignivomous.

Hans Grusel's Krankenkabinet, "Happy As Pitch" cd (Crippled Intellect Productions, 2006)

Before getting into this review, my hugest thanks must go out to MP Lockwood, without whom this review would have been lost to the deepest, blackest depths of this porno-viewing utility we call the Internet. Moral of the story is: always keep a back-up copy! And now, onto the review!

Hans Grusel's Krankenkabinet, "Happy As Pitch" cd
(2006, Crippled Intellect Productions)

Without making too many broad generalizations and statements about my feelings towards the state of "noise" in 2007, I am willing to say this: more often than not, I like my noise peppered with a healthy dose of FUN. Now, I can get down with some shit-stained Michigan scum-crust. I'm a paying customer of Chocolate Monk, Hanson, and all the other fantastic dirtbag labels (and I mean that as the highest of compliments), and I'll eat up everything from To Live and Shave in L.A. to Fat Worm of Error to The Gerogerigegege to Gastric Female Reflex, but I cut my baby teeth on early Boredoms. Hearing Boredoms for the first time was akin to a spiritual awakening. They were at once the single most horrifying and incredible band I'd ever heard. Nearly everything I like about noise rock, noise music, art, performance, whatever, can be seen directly connected to my absolute appraisal of everything Boredoms-related. This is my bias. In the past year I've found that the noise that appeals to me the most, is the not the horror-obsessed paint-fume lurch rock, but the excited real gone ecstatic stuff that's most preoccupied with cooking up a juicy stew of some totally weird sound. Currently, at least on this continent, my money for the most alien sound-making goes directly to the Brutal Sound Fx community in San Francisco, California. A community of musicians and artists responsible for Caroliner Rainbow, Rubber 0 Cement, The Bran (...)Pos, Ecomorti, Tarantism, Commode Minstrels in Bullface, Spider Compass Good Crime Band, Diatric Puds & The Blobettes, anyone who's ever performed at a Godwaffle Noise Pancakes show, and of course, Hans Grusel's Krankenkabinet.

Now here's the skinny: Hans Grusel's Krankenkabinet have a great bio (which you can read here) full of a lot of made-up comical nonsense, they perform in costumes with cardboard German houses on their heads, and they make a freakishly atmospheric racket that only members of the Caroliner Rainbow Extended Ergot-Poisoned Singing-Bull of the 1800's Family Tree could. Imagine yourself in a pre-WWI German village where wooden children with mekanikal insides have taken over as they conspire to concoct the most demented Moog-driven kling-klang you've ever heard in your livenlife. "Okay...so they're like a Germanic Caroliner Rainbow, right?" Wrong. Hans Grusel's Krankenkabinet take the sonic blueprints already conjured up on the more instrumental Caroliner albums ("Toodoos," for example), but make it their own special brand of brutal sound effects with a heavier emphasis on orchestration, vintage analog electronics (they'll make you moo "MOOOOOOOOG") and a subtler approach to the sensory overload aesthetic first pioneered by the Caroliner Rainbow costume crew.

Featuring three multi-part kompositions spread out over 13 tracks, Hans Grusel and co. krank out some delightfully strange electro-acoustic music on "Happy As Pitch." Where one song will be heavily based on original compositions for the Moog System 15 synthesizer, the next track will find the group goofing around with electronically manipulated trumpet and violin, or performing a bizarre song and dance number in waltz-time. Each individual piece of the album sounds different from the next, with tracks being drawn out just long enough to leave you wanting more, while never boring you with repetitious passages or ill-conceived improvisations.

More and more these days it seems to me that the greater majority of electronic musicians are wont to follow whatever trend flies within view of their gnat-like attention span (Digital Hardcore today, Harsh Noise tomorrow...), thankfully Hans Grusel's Krankenkabinet avoid the typical trappings of genre entirely. Instead, these "Germans" have gone and carved out a kooky niche utterly unto themselves, while at the same time acknowledging the influence of the artistic community from which their semi-organic limbs came a sproutin'. Although it may be over a year old now, but "Happy As Pitch" is absolutely worth repeated visits. Their recent appearance at the 2006 No Fun Fest was one of the festival's highlights (so I've heard) , and I expect to be more material from them to be arriving very shortly (I see they've got a "Filmworks" box-set due on Resipiscent Records).

If you've never been exposed to Caroliner Rainbow, Rubber 0 Cement, or any of the San Francisco noise artists I've mentioned, I'd recommend that you immediately drop your pants and direct yourself to the Brutal Sound Effects and Resipiscent sites and familiarize yourself with the fantastic world of high-energy electronics, cardboard-clad performance artists, and outright awesome sound.

"Happy As Pitch" was released through Crippled Intellect Productions. I purchased my copy through Forced Exposure, and I highly recommend you do the same (and while you're at it, gribben-grab a copy of their ultra-limited, Ultra Eczema-released lp, "Another Miserable Day").

Porest, "Mood Noose" cd (Resipiscent) & "Tourrorists!" cd (Abduction)

Continuing my seasonal descent into a crazed, credit-card fueled froth, I now present yet another semi-recent find from beyond the margins.

Porest.

Porest is the moniker of producer and musician Mark Gergis, creator of some of the most intelligent, hilarious, and incendiary music of the post-9/11 age. Gergis' music is thoroughly saturated with thought-provoking, point-blank politics that take deadly aim at many of the orthodox institutions that North Americans take for granted as "our way of life." Marriage, misinformation by major media corporations, domesticity, passivity, tourism, terrorism, the wholesale slaughter and exploitation of the so-called 'Third-World' by the U.S.A. and their allies (which includes us, unfortunately): nothing is safe from Porest's oft-hilarious, always accurate scorn. Which isn't to say that you won't disagree with me when you first hear his music, in fact, this music might just piss you right off, but I find it hard to believe that someone who isn't a complete sociopath couldn't be provoked, for better or worse, by something they heard on any of his albums.

He's had his Myspace page shut down at least once by American Zionists who didn't take kindly to his apt criticism of the state of Israel; its continuing oppression of Palestine, involvement in the so-called War on Terror, and insidious partnership with its equally malignant benefactor, the good 'ol U.S.A. Though I guess we shouldn't count on Myspace to uphold the U.S. constitutional rights for it's American users when Rupert Murdoch pulls the strings, now should we?

Porest asks questions that evade easy answers, and rather than spoon-feed you with safe reassurances, he pulls the rug out from under you and kicks the skeletons out of an Imperialist, late-capitalist nation's collective closet. This is music made in the hopes that it will cause a stir in people, get them asking questions, or at the very least, maybe wake them the fuck up.


















Mood Noose cd (Respiscent, 2006)

Porest's third full-length album, released on Resipiscent Records (one of my favorite new label discoveries of the past few months), is a densely layered exercise in drawing a number of scenes and compositions detailing some of the darker undercurrents of American life. Of course, as any trip you're likely to take with Mark Gergis, and twists and turns are what make this cd special. You see, Gergis is an accomplished field-recorder as well as a musician. As result of this, his music is unfortunately frequently described as Negativland-styled plunderphonics as it is grouped into the ghettoized genre of *shudder to think* World Music. Rather, Gergis' compositions take on their own unique forms, and on Mood Noose, this means that where one song might comprise of thick, sample-filled sound-collage ("Lady Surinam," "Cartoons Aren't Funny"), the next track might have Porest doing a Residents meets Iraqi Pop song and dance routine ("The Highest Order," "Kabar Yetse Poniskyo").

Mood Noose is less tightly wound around a conceptual framework than Tourrorists!, which was released just a few months afterwards on the Sun City Girls' label, Abduction Records, but as with the rest of the Resipiscent releases I've been exposed to, its quality is impeccable. The cd is held within your standard jewel case, with not much of an insert to speak of, but overall the art and packaging has a slick, slightly home-made feel to it that speaks of real artist' work, and not the careless manufacturing of a major label release. Also of interest to fans of SF Bay Area music, Liz Allbee (who rumor has it is in Hans Grusel's Krankenkabinet) lends her trumpet to "The Mother of All Mistakes." If you've never been exposed to Porest before, Tourrorists! is probably a better place to start, but don't miss out on Mood Noose if you find yourself satisfied and wanting more, like any good capitalist piggy should.

Tourrorists! cd (Abduction Records, 2006)

There is no doubt in my mind, Tourrorists! is the definitive artistic statement on America's so-called War on Terror. Both musically and conceptually, this is Mark Gergis' money-shot on the face of the U.S.A. Before I really get into this, however, let me get something off my chest. Generally, I feel that music and politics rarely make good bedfellows. More often than not, the ideas pushed by today's musicians proclaiming themselves as "Political" or, even worse, "Punk Rock," either lack the intelligence to generate a real dialectic, are entirely hypocritical when one examines their lifestyles and ties to major multinationals, or simply continue to beat a dead horse that doesn't interest me in the slightest. What's important to know though, was that much of the music I cut my baby teeth on was entirely mixed up in politics, and so I do sympathize with those artists who simply aren't satisfied with burying their heads in the sand and saturating themselves in blind escapist fantasy. Contrary to what most college-age youth tend to think (that I've encountered), Dada as a movement was driven by politics, and the desire to change the status-quo. Art that appeared to have no actual meaning, was in fact fueled with a radical intent to transform society. Free Jazz, another hot term liberally applied to much "experimental" music, was likewise driven by a intensely devotional spirituality, and a desire to see change take place.

My point is this, most of the music being made today seeks only to entertain, which is fine in and of itself, but where is the artist who would rather make himself a martyr than a minstrel show? The artist willing to be interrogated, hounded, and hated for asking the wrong questions, for saying what noone wants to hear? Mark Gergis is that kind of artist. The album art alone is enough to send shivers up the spine of any overly patriotic conservative: an explosive device inside of a suitcase is revealed when you remove the cd from it's jewel case, a picture of Gergis standing beside a Hezbollah soldier in Lebanon, a photo collage contrasting racist rendering of red Indians behind a meat grinder, and the large text that reads "God Bless the Terrorists and Their Families."

Rather than describe the music at length, I'd like to say that if you're still with me on this so far, please just spend the money and buy this album right now, or at least test the waters by purchasing the awesome "Eye of the Leopard" on iTunes. It may confuse you, make you angry, or make you laugh, but I can say with total certainty that it will grab your attention like two towers in the New World Mordor who shall remain nameless and ringless.

Peace