It's
quite a nice problem to have: as a consequence of my writings for
Documentary Evidence, I tend to find that once a week someone will
send me some music to listen to in the hope that I'll write a review.
With Documentary Evidence focussing on Mute, a lot of whose roster
produced electronic music of one form or another, the labels and
artists that contact me tend to also be electronic in nature. Two
recent additions to the inbox were from the Aposiopèse and Weyrd Son
Records labels, both of whom were promoting reissues of little-known
or ignored releases that deserve a bit more attention.
Julien
Beau's Reflet (Aposiopèse) was originally released in 2009 and has
been expanded for a new CD-R edition of just sixty copies with
several new pieces. Beau hails from Bordeaux where he studied
electroacoustic composition, as reflected on the seven tracks of
quiet, contemplative sound design presented here. Traditional
electroacoustic music, or musique concrète as it is also known, was
pioneered in France in the Fifties and Sixties by Pierre Henry and
Pierre Schaeffer, and could be viewed as a natural antecedent of the
sampling that is commonplace today; technology being what it was back
then, musique concrète compositions were generally achieved using
recorded tape loops of either traditional instruments or just general
sound, which would then be layered and manipulated into compositions.
Absorbing
though it might well be, Beau's collection of scratchy sounds,
fluff-on-stylus glitches, snatches of quotidian cafe conversations,
splintered piano motifs and randomised synth notes does feel a little
too studied, like a dry classroom realisation of what musique
concrete should sound like rather than evoking something altogether
more challenging. The only departure from a template built up from
concrete-by-numbers sounds comes when Beau's sonic palette is
augmented by woodwind and brass interventions, whereupon his
pieces take on a hue of modern composition rather than the assembled
collages of sound sources.
Like
all the best synth acts in history, Linea Aspera are a duo. Alison
Lewis and Ryan Ambridge hail from London and Linea Aspera II, the
three track EP that was released on 12" vinyl and download
earlier this week by Weyrd Son Records, was originally released as a
cassette. Across three distinct tracks they manage to throw in
detached punked-up female voices, pulsing 1981 drum machines and all
manner of grainy noise and electronic nastiness.
People
don't make music like this any longer; by which I mean the dark
electronic stuff that rose out of punk in the late Seventies through
industrial units like Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire and many
others. Factory Floor, who just delivered their debut album for James
'LCD Soundsystem' Murphy's DFA label are seen as the heirs to that
post-punk electronic fusion throne, but Linea Aspera sound like they
really should have existed thirty-two years ago. 'Vultures' may be
the most authentic, impressive, understated piece of noisy synth pop
I've heard in a long time. I'd go so far as to say it's so Mute it
hurts, right down to the edgy siren sound on 'Royal Straight' that
sounds like it was lifted directly from Fad Gadget's seminal 'Back To
Nature'. Their EP can be streamed here and below.
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