Tracklist:

1/1 • 2/1 • 1/2 • 2/2

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There is nothing to do And there is nowhere to go There is nothing to be And there is no one to know...

Jérôme Noetinger & SEC_ - Le Chateau Est Une Oreille From Jérôme Noetinger & SEC_ - La Cave Des Étendards (Mikroton, 2018)

Deceit, This Heat (1981)

In two-and-a-bit records, This Heat contributed an astonishing amount to the histories of both rock and experimental music. Deceit saw the group more roundly attempt accessibility, though in actuality they simply more directly communicated their own anxieties. As such, not only is Deceit as agile a rock record as anything, prone to total and confounding transformation, but, in its jittery disquiet and thorough unease, it’s an unnervingly effective, angsty critical document of Cold War propaganda and 1980s consumerism, too.

Pick: ‘Paper Hats’

PomPom Trim Ribbon 1.2CM Pom Pom Ball Vintage Embroidered Fringe Ribbons Crafts Lace DIY Sewing Accessories Decor Supplies

Just uploaded:

In this space 5 tape recorders are placed - each play a tape with sounds from the archives of Les Horribles Travailleurs. A space can be redefined. A presence can be realised. A fusion of sound and space.

9 oct 2023 Les Horribles Travailleurs

De ouwe van GInkel

Nieuwe Kade 2, Arnhem

Klara Lewis - Live In Montreal 2018

(2021, full live album)

[Ambient, Tape Music, Sound Collage, Drone, Noise, Choral, Dark Ambient]

190: White Noise // An Electric Storm

An Electric Storm White Noise 1969, Island

I’ve read a decent amount on how White Noise’s An Electric Storm was made over the course of a year of painstakingly splicing tape by hand in a London flat, but not why they decided to make their pioneering electronic music opus so ooky-spooky. I guess when you coop up folks whose day job is making Dalek noises, you’re going to get something a bit deranged. The opening side’s psych pop is jaunty enough, though there’s often something vacant-eyed in its whimsy, like a carnival in a Stephen King story: your ear is drawn to the incongruous details that hint at some darker working behind the cutesiness. It prepares you well for the flip, where across its 11-minute runtime “The Visitation” opens multiple echo chambers full of sobs, previews the next decade of horror film title themes, and digs pits of gurgling electronic unease that spored whole genres of dark ambient music still evolving to this day. The album ends on a literal (well, fake literal) Satanic ritual in the form of “Black Mass: An Electric Storm in Hell,” which turns jazz drummer Paul Lytton into the Jacob’s Ladder poster. Leader David Vorhaus likes to wryly shake his head recalling how the A&R people at Island Records didn’t “get it” when he turned in the LP, but even as someone who does “get it” I uh get why they didn’t!

An Electric Storm is chiefly discussed for the means of its production, and that’s fair: despite digital advances in recording technology that make the most advanced techniques found here (phasing, flanging, looping) virtually effortless, it is uncanny hearing them deployed so extensively on music of this vintage. It’s the equivalent of watching a film from the ‘60s and seeing effects that look like The Terminator. The music rarely goes more than a few bars before melting into some other shape (a melodic phrase begun on one instrument is spliced so it resolves on another; the music drops out entirely, replaced by a collage of ratcheting noises, electronic bloops and choking cries somewhere between anguish and laughter). By turning over a third of “My Game of Loving” to cringey orgasm sounds, they even initiate the nascent electronic pop genre into the elite fraternity of styles that are a little too eager to prove they fuck.

The lyrics won’t win any prizes, but I do take issue with how dismissive some writers have been of these songs as songs. An Electric Storm is steeped in the psychedelic tropes of the day, but it doesn’t sound like the work of avid fans of like the Electric Prunes or whatever. One senses that Vorhaus and BBC Radiophonic Workshop regulars Delia Derbyshire and Hodgson have a general but disinterested notion of what the kids are into, and they feed it back to us through the filter of their own predilections. Derbyshire’s two co-writes in particular are anything but generic. The rippling transformations of “Love Without Sound” are as wondrous and eerie as a Winsor McCay Little Nemo strip, but it’s the opiated vocal by the otherwise unknown John Whitman and the strolling melody that ebbs in and out of the collage that give it a dreamy logic. “Firebird” has a Beach Boys-y bounce and gorgeously arranged harmonies to go with an array of synth tones so solid and colourful I want to play with them like toy blocks.

Though it didn’t set the charts ablaze, An Electric Storm developed a reputation as a tripper classic, and I was pretty psyched to find a copy in not too battered condition for a reasonable price at a shop this summer. I’m glad to have it on the shelf, and with the exception of the 45 seconds that makes my neighbours think I’m listening to weird and bad porn, I always enjoy the adventure when I get it on the table.

190/365

album

Tracklist:

Discreet Music • Three Variations on 'The Canon In D Major' by Johann Pachelbel: Fullness Of Wind; French Catalogues; Brutal Ardour

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BRIAN ENO

Extremely experimental for 1965, especialy the second half of the track

Bob James Trio - Wolfman from: Bob James Trio - Explosions (ESP Disk, 1965)