GALVANIzed review in Vital Weekly 1160

GALVANIzed is seriously fucked form of dance music

“During the 1870s Luigi Galvani performed experiments at the University of Bologna involving frogs. While cutting a frog’s leg, his zinc scalpel touched a brass hook that was keeping the leg in place. The leg twitched. WELL THE TIME HAS COME WE RETURN MR. GALVANI A FLYING KICK ON BEHALF OF Amphibian. Sincerely, Riccardo Balli” Yes, sometimes the information is that vague. I suspect behind DJ Balli and Amphibian we find Samule Maoloni and Luca Torasso who are thanked “for turning field-recordings into swamp-recording”. There are lots of musical genres that we might cover but actually not know a lot about. Modern classical music for instance. But also within the mighty scope of dance music there is quite a bit that make us scratch our heads. This release for instance. This is some seriously fucked form of dance music that holds between breakcore, drum n bass and gabber. If I am not mistaken, and surely might very well be mistaken.

As said I have very little knowledge of these matters, and to be honest breakcore, drum ‘n bass (as well as dubstep) are genres that I also not particularly care for. I do like hardcore gabber, but more those of the silly Dutch variety and perhaps I should not tell you that; guilty pleasures and all that. I quite enjoyed playing this record actually, even when I don’t ‘get’ it. The furious beats, the intense sounds, the brief pieces, seventeen in some twetny-five minutes, ade me chuckle and the free flow energy was much appreciated. What more can I say? I have no idea. If you want a speedy bump, right in the hearth, then try it out.

Reviewed by Frans de Waard / VitalWeekly

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[ / ] no. 44 | Makarov/Belorukov.Kostyrko

This split record by Makarov/Belorukov.Kostyrko is prepared by eleсtronic musicians Makarov/Belorukov.Kostyrko from Russia who works in the field of improvised music. One can find two different approaches here, free improvisation on modular synthesizers from Ilia Belorukov and Sergey Kostyrko who present the St. Petersburg music scene, and prepared improvisation based on designed software and diy […]

Makarov/Belorukov.Kostyrko | [ / ] no. 44

This split record by Makarov/Belorukov.Kostyrko

is prepared by eleсtronic musicians Makarov/Belorukov.Kostyrko from Russia who works in the field of improvised music. One can find two different approaches here, free improvisation on modular synthesizers from Ilia Belorukov and Sergey Kostyrko who present the St. Petersburg music scene, and prepared improvisation based on designed software and diy electronics from Oleg Makarov who presents Moscow scene.

Ilia Belorukov and Sergey Kostyrko

have been working on music together since the mid of 2000s when they played in a noisecore band called Benzolnye Mertvecy. However, their first duo concert was held in June 2014 when they opened a show of Polish electroacoustic composer Dariusz Mazurowski at Erarta museum in St. Petesburg. After that, they performed at a numerous events and published several albums including “Distrust One’s Own Eyes” released by the Mexican AmpRecs, “Etudes” that was recorded for their own cassette label Spina!Rec. and “Sacrifizio Incruento” presented at Zeromoon Netlabel from Washington DC area. At this moment, duo focuses on the improvisational approach to sound synthesis combining analogue and digital techniques. This album continues their experiments with the sound material and features of its perception. Here, two signals generated by their modular synthesizers were recorded simultaneously to right and left channels of tape recorder. After that, there was no editing or mixing, so a listener should ideally hear the sources how they were recorded. However, the final sonic picture is created by our auditory system and strongly depends on its physiological and psychological features. By feeding two different signals to left and right ear, we thereby violate the natural processes of decoding and localizing of spatial sounds which lead to a quite unique sound experience. Therefore, it is recommended to listen to this recording in headphones.

Oleg Makarov

is a Moscow-based composer, sound and media artist who have a deep experience in the development of diy music instruments and interactive hardware-software systems. As a composer, he write across a broad range of styles of chamber, instrumental, vocal and electroacoustic music. His works are regularly performed at international festivals. He is a member of Theremin Centre for Electroacoustic Music at Moscow Conservatory as well as Moscow Laptop Cyber Orchestra. He is also known for sound design for theatrical productions presented in Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Stanislavsky Electrotheatre and Theatre of Nations both located in Moscow. In addition to his work as composer and sound designer, he have curated numerous media art exhibitions and events. He is a founder and co-curator of Floating Sound Gallery based at the New Stage of Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. His activity also include teaching courses at Rodchenko School of Photography and Media Art and The British Higher School of Art and Design. As a musician, Makarov focuses on live electronics using during concerts and studio sessions sound objects, developed musical instruments, laptop with Max/MSP and midi controllers. He is an active member of the Moscow improvised music scene performing solo and in collaborations with musicians like Kurt Liedwart, Alexey Sysoev, Brinstaar, Kira Weinstein, Alexandr Belousoff and many others. The tracks presented by him on this split were recorded during his recent solo performances based on exploration of connection between free improvisation and prepared sound structures.

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Releases 27th of December 2018

Unspoken Misanthropic Narrator review in Vital Weekly 1073

“UnspokenMisanthropic Narrator” comes in a nicely designed digipack

This might just be the first thing ever to be released by Slovak noise act Hlukar. Since neither the CD itself, nor the label’s bandcamp page gives me much to go on, I’ll just assume it is. “UnspokenMisanthropic Narrator” comes in a nicely designed digipack that ostentatiously flaunts Hlukar’s
fascination with the Lovecraftian pantheon, even more than some of the track titles already seemto give away. A pinch of satire was also added to the recipe however; so if you’re not sick of the seemingly obligatory dose of irony in every single bloody thing these days, please do read on.
Opener Innsmouthan Necrofunk is a nattering noise piece that is quite well endowed in the low end. Judging from the title one might expect something extremely ghastly and atmospheric (yet danceable?), but closing my eyes and allowing the sounds to cook up their own imagery in my mind, the only thing that pops up is some kind of knock-off R2D2 droid tumbling into a boiling tar pit. The second track “Satanic Colostomy of the Unholy Ulnar Nerve” takes a while to get its motor running, but then it definitely has me nodding along to the rhythm. It’s a decent industrial track, somewhat in the vain of Proyecto Mirage and Mlada Fronta. Indeed sailor, ‘vintage references’ and that does reflect on the music itself.

Hlukar cover art by Or Lock, Unspoken Misanthropic Narrator review — Hlukar cover art by Or Lock

Hlukar’s sound is very much reminiscent of that of a whole lot of classic Hands and Hymen acts – Mono no Aware, Asche, Morgenstern, Synapscape, Imminent – you get the picture. Also the third and fourth track shows Hlukar’s alignment with
the post-industrial pioneers. Filthy, syncopated beats with wayward excursions through spikes of IDM and grainy robot vomit. The fifth track (yeah, check out the torturous titles yourself and you’ll get why I can’t be arsed with the rest of them) dwells in Sonar territory and that one and the third track were easily my favourites on this mini album. If you, like me, (still) enjoy listening to a chunk of stomping post-industrial every now and then, this is an album to check out, even though the artwork might have you believe otherwise. Conversely; if you’re looking for a way to peer into the
abyss via a Lovecraft-inspired piece of sonic art, this will give you absolutely nothing. And finally, if you think Lovecraft was just a horror writer and abyssal fear is just a fictional trope he cultivated as a concept you can use to ironically refer to on you meta-modern blog that serves
as a showcase of your erudite, fragmented patchwork identity, then you clearly know nothing about ego death, and the existential fear that clings to it, at all. (PJN)

http://www.vitalweekly.net/1073.html

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Sickening digital rainbows reviewed by Ed Pinsent

We heard harsh-noise computer pervo-maniac Venta Protesix in 2014 with his Anni Di Masturbazione album, which found a home on the UK label Adaadat with its grotesquely irritating racket themed on masturbation, sexual violence, and other anti-social topics…he’s here today with Sickening Digital Rainbows (URB037), this time appearing on Urbsounds, our favourite Slovakian label for contemporary beats and underground electronica. Venta Protesix – who may be Italian Itaro Belladonna from Salerno – continues to remain faithful to his “isolationist” stance, by which we mean he stands apart from all other forms of harsh digital noise and ploughs his own furrow, using his laptop as an extension of all his other organs (if you get my drift). This is meant by way of clarification in case you thought “isolationist” refers to that 1990s school of ambient music associated with Kevin Martin’s famed compilation for Virgin. He also dives freely into the worlds of internet porn and solitary self-gratification, every other title on the album referring directly to this questionable sport – ‘Futuristic Computer Sex’ being the most obvious one (and the most banal; not even J G Ballard would have stooped so low).

Sickening digital rainbows …and let the vomit flow!

Even without these trappings, Venta’s noise remains obnoxious and repellent, mainly due to the high trebley tones, the limited aural range; half the time it just sounds like a 1980s computer game going mad, which is probably the general idea. He also spews out each nonsensical madcap spree with virtually zero concern for composition, unless you count devices stuck on repeat play, endless inane looping, and nauseating digital tones sprayed everywhere like so much scattered ejaculate. “His one true goal,” the label blurb informs us, “is to design sounds with the specific, single-minded purpose of generating physical distress in his listeners.” In spite of all this, I’m still finding today’s spin great fun, a candy-coloured roller coaster ride through empty, vacuous non-music…one bonus might be the fact that he evidently doesn’t expect to be taken “seriously”, like say Merzbow or Zbigniew Karkowski or even Mattin, and his day-glo doodling can be enjoyed on a very superficial level without any of the trappings of “art”. Maybe I’m getting used to this stuff these days…or perhaps I need to play it louder. I think this came out in October 2017 but we got our copy on 27 February 2018. I mention this because the CD seems to be sold out already. No matter, stream it on Bandcamp…and let the vomit flow!

Sickening digital rainbows reviewed by Ed Pinsent/The Sound Projector

http://www.thesoundprojector.com/2018/10/27/sex-math-equation/

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Urbsounds label party

Urbsounds label party 10.11. 2018 @ Fuga/Bratislava

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Radical Rest reviewed by Frans de Waard/Vital Weekly

You don’t see a lot of equipment endorsement thanks on record sleeves but here, on the LP by Slovakia’s Urbanfailure, there is one and goes out to modular electronics producer Gotharman in Denmark. They create stuff that I have no idea how they work, and which are aksi beyond my budget. The previous release I heard by Urbanfailure (see Vital Weekly 1029) was all recorded live, but this time there is no such mention on the cover. There are thirteen pieces on this release, so one could conclude these pieces are rather short, which they are, and while short they owe much to the world of techno music. Raw techno music and never too long is what Urbanfailure does here. The music is dirty and loud. Apparently it is a combination of hardware synthesizers and granular synthesis, and Pan Sonic and everything that came beyond inspires it. Sometimes Urbanfailure’s music is much more techno than on other places, but throughout it is seriously fucked up music.

Urbanfailure - Radical Rest — Urbanfailure – Radical Rest

This is not something that would go down well on a dance floor I would think unless you would cut out a loop and keep that playing for a while. It’s too chaotic in its organization to be true dance music. Industrial music of the particular brand that uses a lot of harsh rhythms, Esplendor Geometrico or Le Syndicat spring to this particular mind is also a place that Urbanfailure touches upon. This is music that is best enjoyed when played loud, probably much louder than your neighbors would allow you to. There is some excellent energy vibing of this record, which refreshed me very much.

Original review Radical Rest reviewed by Frans de Waard of the Vital Weekly you will find here http://www.vitalweekly.net/1151.html

More about the Radical Rest by Urbanfailure you will find here.

Dead Janitor – Medusa | [ / ] no. 45

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Urbanfailure – Radical Rest | [ / ] no. 42 (Red vinyl)

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Ritual Protest Music reviewed by Jim Haynes/The Wire issue 413

Dave Phillips Ritual Protest Music
Urbsounds DL/LP

The ceaseless activities of Dave Phillips can be characterised as gleeful acts of punk detonation. Light the fuse. Anticipate the explosion. Bathe in the thrill of its aftermath.

Philips first shaped that raw energy through grindcore tactics as the bassist/vocalist in Fear Of God in the mid 1980s and later harnessed a similar volatility of noise aktionism through his ongoing role as a principal in the notorious Schimpfluch Gruppe. It’s one thing to ignite one thing after another. It’s another to plunge into an existential dialectic on the role of the self in a consumerist society, even if the self as a conscientious objector must navigate that landscape.
Such has been the framework for Phillips’s muscular constructions. Like last year’s scalding Rise set, Ritual Protest Music is an unrelenting album of telescoped details. He offers hyperreality as one vantage point from which to experience this work. In the barrage of chair crashes, body punches and door slamming as on the punishing “Morphic Field” Phillips thrusts the listener into a wooden room that is splintering from the inside out. Even without the parallels of the amplified body being pummelled, Ritual Protest Music recalls Einstürzende Neubauten at their most claustrophobic
and infernal. The organised chaos that Neubauten channel through aggressively controlled rhythm is replaced with a far more organic, almost textural approach to composition.

Grunts of man turned beast, toxic insect chorales and Penderecki-like cello striation orbit a complex network of sickening loops, sonic tendrils and malignant rhizomes. Amid all of this brute strength, Phillips buries spoken texts in German and English that vary in decipherability. Both the rational utterance and the guttural bellow have a place in articulating and purging rage. He sees the world as a closed system of violence, but there is agency that humanity can take even as the fleeting potential for enlightenment is under threat from technology, dominion and commerce.
Hardly pleasant, but bold and necessary.

Ritual Protest Music reviewed Jim Haynes Wire issue 413

<a href="http://urbsounds.bandcamp.com/album/ritual-protest-music-no-40">Ritual Protest Music | [/] no. 40 by Dave Phillips</a>

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Endless Incapacitating Discomfort reviewed by Frans de Waard/Vital Weekly

That is one helluva strange guy, Venta Protesix, also known as Italo Belladonna, from Italy, with his sexual obsessions and loud noise. Noise that he produces, so I would think, in a very digital manner. Most of the times it is a screaming harsh wall of cold noise, of sounds stuck in a washing
machine, the shortest, tiniest sound particles on loop, but spinning around through an endless line of software packages running amok and into each other. Sometimes, such as in ‘Post-Masturbatory Suicide’ it seems like there is a truly fucked up rhythm at work, dancing at 500 bpm if not more.
However, and that is probably the most curious thing, there is long, almost ambient intro of ‘Her Keyboard Drowned In Tears’, which continues once the noise kicks in. Unlike the composers of harsh noise wall music, Venta Protesix knows how to add a bit of variation to the proceedings.
Chaos is something he seems to be enjoying to quite an extent, which is something that is also different from the wall noise brigade. There are nine tracks here and it lasts thirty-six minutes.
After that you’d want some peace and quiet. I know I did. (FdW)

http://www.vitalweekly.net/1148.html

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[ / ] no. 43 | Dj Balli and Amphibian – Galvanized

During the 1870s Luigi Galvani performed experiments at the University of Bologna involving frogs. While cutting a frog’s leg, his zinc scalpel touched a brass hook that was keeping the leg in place. The leg twitched. WELL THE TIME HAS COME WE RETURN MR. GALVANI A FLYING KICK ON BEHALF OF Amphibian. Sincerely, Riccardo Balli […]

During the 1870s Luigi Galvani performed experiments at the University of Bologna involving frogs. While cutting a frog’s leg, his zinc scalpel touched a brass hook that was keeping the leg in place. The leg twitched. WELL THE TIME HAS COME WE RETURN MR. GALVANI A FLYING KICK ON BEHALF OF Amphibian. Sincerely, Riccardo Balli