Sone Institute, the Radiophonic Workshop & Sea Devilling

Another remix of a Freq review....

This gives me the gargles. It reminds me a little of the tone behind James Ferraro’s Far Side Virtual (it doesn’t sound much like it at all) in that it’s like Roman has found himself unable to distance himself from the music he’s riffing on. This seems respectable, seems right, seems like these aural artefacts (I’m talking about library music, mostly) ought to have a little bit more respect in themselves, rather than simply as cultural signifiers or soundpools for discerning (pillaging) Hauntological hordes and wraiths but.. then we’re faced with the slightly uncomfortable question: do these sounds by themselves really offer us that much?

This album is great in parts and then in parts it’s (mere) library music. Maybe the ‘mere’ is snobbery; maybe there’s gems to be found in unadulterated library music (“after all, Tod Dockstader…” etc) but if there are gems in library music per se, why listen to something that isn’t library music and is intended (perhaps) for something quite different? This is an album, this isn’t (I think) simply intended as something to be used, as something by definition incidental. 

To some extent (actually, to the whole extent) this crosses over with my feelings re: the redevelopment of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in that it seems doomed to failure because the new artists will be continually looking over their shoulder expecting their incidental music to be acclaimed as something other than incidental music and thus will make music that isn't incidental per se, is focused on listening rather than helping the visuals elaborate, is readied for the CD boxset rather than the programme itself... 

I mean, I'm a long sugffering Doctor Who fanboy and I have several of the BBC soundtrack cassettes from the 70s/80s and the music doesn't sound at all like music, isn't at all structured in a way that makes sense in the kitchen... it makes sense only when I add in the visuals (the emerging Sea Devils, the flutter of a Sontaran landing) and then it gives that sense that some people seem to hear without having the original programme in mind... 

 I say it wasn't intended as music but that is a speaker, right?

I could be being snotty here: assuming that the music doesn't stand on its own, doesn't have power in itself without the heavy load of culture and memory (I was there; you can't hear it like I can hear it) but... it really doesn't have that power. Someone like Ekoplekz is much loved because he adds a musical sensibility (albeit via Cabaret Voltaire, Robert Rental et al) to a set of sounds not usually associated with music. He adds a skewed, er, pop (he'll hate me saying this) mentality that helps us along, that helps us treat the music qua music.

I'm digressing. I like this album. I like Sone Institute. He's doing something unusually tangled; introverted and outro-orientated. There’s undoubtedly a lot of skill here and a lot of real playing (and often playfulness) and many of the tracks, especially in the latter half of the album, find their own bouncing frequency but then there’s often a scything, cheesy guitar /organ sound to derail you and send you back to thinking: what if this were library music? Could we tell that it wasn’t? For this reason, the tracks work better alongside words; the spoken/sung passages help to clarify, even if they in fact lend a gauzy surrealism that matches the beautiful sleeve. I like the words. They make sense of this album and elevate it.

Ekoplekz - Scalectrikz & the New Radiophonic Workshop

The sound of two hands not clapping.

This is the latest monster release from the ever-prolific Ekoplekz, this time seeing him flip cassettes from selected live bits and bobs (more bobs than bits, judging from his live performances) to studio improvisations and back again. There’s a wealth of material here, unformed and fruity, mangled like he likes it (like we like it) Echo dominates, nothing goes unmodulated, sounds screwed out of wires, savaged by electrics and misfires (and miswires). It’s perhaps superfluous to focus on individual tracks because these work best in bunches of three to five, like fingers in a fist, with knuckles knotted by knob-twists (the boy’s gonna have arthritis at this rate). To my ears, a lot of this sounds like a return to the very first Ekoplekz releases (my fave is still the limited edition –tape he did at the very start of this journey, the one in the red sleeve), where he was gradually assimilating his influences – King Tubby via the Radiophonic Workshop via Cabaret Voltaire’s first few albums – and finding new paths at every turn. In fact, this release shows the accelerated nature of music these days; this is the kind of thing that would be released only after the band had run its course, when people wanted to return to the basis, when they wanted to see where this guy was coming from.

These are basement tapes, pre-releases found on acetate. This is Ekoplekz forming and you can see the progression; the crackles turning into drones, the drones becoming less dense and turning into (almost) techno, or into a form of techno that didn’t really happen. Improvisation is key; nothing here but the recordings, no sense that he’s willing the music into certain directions – and this is the key to the music’s success; it just is and challenges you to accept it, as music, as suggestion, as unhidden potential*.

 Ekoplekz is the new exemplar of bedroom music; he’s a tiny little genre of one and he has an unique ability to make it seem like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Wonder-ful. *in fact, this is what I liked about the original Radiophonic Workshop - the idea that this was only just music for the home - and it's why I have slight reservations about the news that the Radiophonic Workshop is opening its doors again. I mean, the originals couldn't have known that their music was going to be treated as such; it was functional music, designed for visual company, designed to flitter around a story or flesh out a badly lurching set or monster. I can't help but think the new version and the people associated with it will inevitably come at their creations from a different angle, with half an eye on potential album sales, on the market itself. I hope not because listening to the original Doctor Who 'music' cassettes you get a real sense that this isn't for listening attentively at all and there's an alchemy at work from the listeners' POV, a certain activity required for the music to make any sense, shorn of context. That's the beauty of those nasty little analogue flicks and turns; the reason why those sounds are so revered... to purposively make the soundtrack listenable in itself seems to miss the point...

Ekoplekz – Dromilly Vale EP

A little sliver of electronic gargling from man of the moment, Ekoplekz. If you want to know which moment, you’ll perhaps have to remember that Dromilly Vale is Nick’s imaginary recording studio, a hybrid of King Tubby’s on Dromilly Ave, Kingston and the Radiophonic Workshop’s Maida Vale studio in London.

(there's an interview with Nick and an explanatory podcast here)

This is 1973 re-imagined uchronically; maybe Dick Mills and Lee Perry did hang out, swapping tape delays, pressing buttons that weren’t theirs; maybe John Baker just couldn’t stop putting some of his jazzy tangles all over Augustus Pablo’s melodica lines; maybe they swapped close-miked pocket protectors over Rum and Pineapple…

But if all that’s making you think this is just gonna lope along like a comedy walk then be prepared; this can get quite… noisy in places. “Jugglin' for Jesus” will frighten the cat inside your brain with its high pitches, sheer edges and aggressively gloopy style while “Dick Mills Blues” overdrives itself into trails and “Dromilly Vale” itself could easily have pitched up somewhere on Side 2 of Throbbing Gristle’s Second Annual Report.

Ekoplekz wears his influences on his table-top of wires and boxes but he’s got a singular vision and he’s tapped a rich seam. On this release, he’s attempting to find a groove in the heart of those Sea Devil whistles and he almost finds it. He’ll keep looking.

written for Freq



On Public Information Recordings though probably not anymore since I'm coming waaaay too late to the party here...

Snuglife(s)

Oh yes...

SNUG02 - Ekoplekz - So Allein replekz by snugliferecords

SNUG 02: Drvg Cvltvre - Like Cattle You Run by snugliferecords



Due on 7" single. Maybe now. Maybe soon. Dig it out, track it down...

Ekoclef Considered As A Review Of The City And The City

In China Mieville's wondrous The City And The City the city of Beszel exists in more or less the same space as the city of Ul Qoma. The cities interweave, crosshatch; citizens unsee their counterparts in the other city, buildings themselves merge but don't merge. Neighbours live next to each other but dutifully don't notice their proximity, in fact are forbidden from doing so by the mysterious Breach, which is both an action and a powerful agent of order. To see what is there is to breach. To breach is to invoke Breach.

The cities are post USSR, post-world. They share many of the same characteristics but remain absolutely, qualitively different. They are separated by language, by intention, by Kant's categories. It vaguely reminds me of that Wittgenstein quote about how, if a lion could speak our language, we still wouldn't be able to understand it.

Disclaimer: I'm only half way through this book, it just turned out that I've been reading it now with the soundtrack (accidentally analogous) of the Bass Clef + Ekoplekz release, almost reviewed brilliantly here.

And

They

Are

The

Same.

Ekoplekz + Bass Clef doesn't sound like either artist; there are glimpses, unheard snips and wanes, but mostly the tape-swapping has birthed a new monster, one I think neither would have settled on independently.

The protagonist of The City And The City, Inspector Borlu, is vaguely doggged, vaguely determined but resolute in the laws of these non-twin cities; this is not (so far) about an unveiling of the truth behind these mysterious, space-rimmed cities... he doesn't intend to unpick the crosshatch to see the real cities; the hatching is as much a part of his reality, the psychic borders as real as empty spaces, as unmentionable...

And so with Ekoclef - you can listen to this and try to spot the joins. You can but you might miss the (twin) points. The crosshatch is the release, the medium is the massage... when it works it really works and you unhear the joins. Nick and Ralph speak different languages and when the two voices come together they form a supremely odd chorus. The effect is affecting.

Tape spools, unwind, pop and crackle.

Oh I dunno. Less driven than Some Truths, less slurring than Ekoplekz. 'I was a tree in the forest; they cut me down' has sounds that neither would use in their other guises: triballed yelps, flutes, singing... it could be a Vitamin K spoked Shpongle, shorn of its usual gentle mushroom gauze...http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

It doesn't all work; sometimes the joins are too obvious, too difficult to unhear, sometimes the crosshatching just muddies both city states, causes traffic chaos as they fail to swerve around each other and end up on top, like a pair of almost-merged naked wrestlers in a Francis Bacon painting...

(actually, those tracks sound better now I've read this as well)

But mostly this is dogged and delirious and, er, fun and you'll be wanting one.

Buy here maybe.

Buy The City And The City too (if it turns out to be crap in the second half I'll tell you) and play with them together. They make a curious sort of sense together.

God knows what they'd sound like apart.

Ekoplekz - Intrusive Incidentalz Vol 1

Okay, (non) pop psychoanalysis time again. Can't resist. I listen to an Ekoplekz release and these things just keep flooding.

I'm really sorry / not sorry at all.

When Memowrekz was nominated for The Uranus Music Prize 2011, I joked on twitter that it was the pop album on that list... well, this brooding, black stutter of a record is Nick aka Ekoplekz's response. This isn't pop. This makes a Mouse out of Maus.

The title is revealing: throwaway and heartfelt, this is certainly intrusive (this is not ambient, except in the sense of enveloping) and it is a little incidental*, a little sketchy in both senses of the word (cf everything else by Ekoplekz) but there's more to it than that. There's something else here. This is Nick unleashing his noise horde and the title might almost be read as a minor apology, a little note to the many fans out there that says: don't worry, this isn't the real Ekoplekz album, this is a sidetrack, an open note, a few preliminary dashes,

I can remember Coil, the pressure of following Love's Secret Domain crushing them, releasing the Black Light District album; Aphex Twin scurrying into evermore oblique identities and eyewinks; Global Communications doing the same...

This is conjecture, of course. I know Nick pretty well but I haven't spoken to him about this. I could be way off mark, it might even be offensive, though it's definitely not intended in that way. Maybe he doesn't give a shit or feel any kind of pressure but something makes me think that my pop comment pulled at a few wires that were already sticking out... this feels like a deliberate attempt to destabilise, to show us that we haven't got Ekoplekz yet... maybe he's worried that those scary hauntological folks will adopt him against his will like a Madonna child...

...and wrestling works well as a metaphor for how this album sounds as well. This is a suffocatingly intense album, leavened only the relatively short track times. It's maybe not as suffocatingly intense as say this little monster but it's still a great credit to PunchDrunk that they are releasing LPs as uncompromising as this one (and their earlier 12" was also a lot more difficult than the Memowrekz stuff or the earlier tapes/CDrs).

A couple of tracks (mine's a white label, I don't know which track is which) sound like a human kidnap victim struggling inside a deep metal coffin, just audible, almost giving up on ever being rescued; some of the rest sound like electronic instruments being scraped across the floor, followed by a Copicat. On one track, the levels flip all over the place, causing a minor neuro-headache as I tried to follow. Throbbing Gristle's 2nd Annual Report is also referenced extensively here and in some of my favourite tracks there's a groove of real, degraded menace and a definite feel of being recorded on a condenser mic somewhere across the room...

There's one track which is lighter than the others and I wonder if this'll be the next Ekoplekz direction**. This one could almost be something off Aphex's second album; loops rolling and slipping off one another, slowly sliding in and out of phase... and it's especially interesting, I think, that the next track sawtooths these gentle melodies off at the neck... a vicious assault, worthy of Maldoror.

If you liked the previous Ekoplekz releases you'll probably like this one too, unless you haven't really been listening too closely; the signature sounds are all there, just a little more corroded, even less beat driven and definitely murkier and more difficult than its predecessors (which are now definitely pop by comparison). There's still the odd beautiful, simple, melody in here but this time they aren't foregrounded and are forced to struggle their way to the surface. Sometimes they don't get there. I like that.

((((((((( NOTE: I've just re-read my first Ekoplekz review (may be the first Ekoplekz review! I'm an early adopter) and I've already mentioned a lot of the stuff I've been on about here; this is just like a bigger, slightly uglier cousin, a cousin attacked by viruses in utero... )))))))))

Finally...

The cover tells you a lot about whether you want this or not. Look at it, decide at that moment. You won't be disappointed, either way.

*incidental, of course, also relates to emerging Sea Devils and Silurians and the kind of screeches they documented on The Stone Tape

**this won't happen; the next release will be noisier still, will be powerelectronics via Suicide organdrawlsssssss

Moonlicking, Ekoplekzing

Image stolen from the mad mentals of R.K.Sloane

In the middle of a mini-renaissance of new music listening at the moment, mostly a result of moonlicking as a reviewer at Freq, the evergood fulcrum loined from Richard Fontenoy - a guy it turns out is good friends with some old Yeovil buddies and who I've also probably met way back in the times when I'd hump up the road to that London to watch The Revolting Cocks or whoever... small small world - ironically, I'd sent a chance email because I figured my own little Twitter/Blog circuit had become a little self reverential and I fancied dipping into another circle, only to find there are several tendrils coming this way and that way, like some terrible cross-haired Nyarlotho-step beat beast...

Anyway, my first 2 contributions are up at the Freq site now:

1) a doe-eyed Kraut's Corpuscle take on the new Mist album (c'mon... it's the guy from Emeralds, you know...)

and

2) a gulping shudder at the electronic pastoralism and arcane (device) buzz of John Chantler's The Luminous Ground

I've just got a bunch of other goodies through the post to review as well, including what is shaping up to be a Hawkwind-tastic classic by a Pikacyu from Afrirampo and Kawabata Makoto from Acid Mothers...



Finally, a slightly smeared lump of white vinyl goodness in the form of Ekoplekz's Live At Dubloaded album came and I've been listening to it while typing... sounds more restrained than other stuff I've got from Nick, not a million miles off the gentlest Throbbing Gristle stuff... the backside of In The Shadow Of The Sun...

...some great textures though, and some odd squeaks and whistles, some bent shapes in there, Nikolai, some way bent shapes...

I'm one side in, so far...probably should accumulate more thoughts before really committing to the page but... since, my first Ekoplekz review was real-time blagging/free-associating...

...these gulps and electronic groans seem like Nick's consciously trying to play himself out of a psychic corner; not give in to the pulse that I'll bet anything he can feel himself resisting... he's an old rave guy at heart and you can feel him holding back on the beats, conscious that he's always just a light teckstep to the left from balls-to-the-wall techno and wants to rein those tendencies the fuck in...

I'm guessing wildly here, it's just an impression... maybe this is partly a consequence of playing somewhere so bass and beaty, big and bouncy as Dubloaded? Maybe there's a need to counterpoint, or else just a desire to move away from the early CDrs and tapes (which Cabbed it up with all those neat washes and wah-wahed drum patterns and organ tinkles)...

...whatever the wresting and hand-wringing Ekoplekz has been up to (maybe none at all, maybe he's in the zone, is oblivious to even the rush of his own blood), he's pushing his machines in interesting directions... not resting on laurels, hardly resting at all... he's poured an awful lot out into the records he's released so far... the well must be getting dry... and it's interesting that, so far, ever release has been distinct, despite the relative sparseness of his raw materials...

where's he gonna go next?

is he gonna give in?

Ekoplekzing All Over The House

Many thanks to PunchDrunk records via Nick for sending me a white label of the inaugural Ekoplekz 12". It's great stuff... perhaps showing off Nick's (Basic) Channelling influences rather than his motorik or Cabs side... sounds great coming through the floor... digs deep, lurches, crackles...lovely release and now I guess I'm gonna have to fork out for the fullcover version when it comes out, especially since it's minimal splatter design is by our boy 2ndFade, purveyor of the finest Kierkegaard in the East...

While we're here, all the fuss and vinyl fetishism has caused the second Ekoplekz CDR to be a little pushed under the carpet... it's called, gulp, Volume 2 and way worth picking up if you're after a longer fix or you can't negotiate your way into one of the limited 12"s...



It's a kin to Volume 1, with perhaps added squiggle... it still sounds haunted (actually harassed) by the Radiophonics (and you'd want it to be...) but now Nick is fighting back, pulling things sideways, letting the subsystems of electronica (even, um, triphop in places?) through...

A bargain.

Ekoplekz and Hacker Farm live on Resonance FM

Bottom row, extreme left - Farmer Glitch, second from left - Ekolad, extreme right - Loki, second from right - 2ndFade; middle row, second from right - Kek-W, extreme left - Bob; top row, extreme left - Time Attendant, second from left - John Eden, third from right - Mugwump, extreme right - Cybore. We don't know who the other guys were, or why they turned up in near-identical outfits. Embarrassing.

...


...great live show, Ekoplekz almost early-Aphex Hard, Hacker Farm more ambient than I've seen them before (though ambient like an acid rush, ambient like an accidental theramin, ambient like the beats have gone round the back to meet the children of the night...)

.... whooosh; fizz ... thudddddd ... flick flick ... crackle crackle crack-le... fizzzzzzzzzz ...

scatter scatter scatter drummmmmm ... scatter scatter scatter drummmmmmm ...

Pics, audio, etc here...

Johnny Mugwump was a brilliant host; putting up with the liggers and the hangers-on (i.e. me) and generally being gutsuckingly charming... lovely to meet you Johnny!

....

...and on that note, wonderful to see John Eden and Woebot / Hollow Earth / Cybore / in the flesh too... (cheers for the drink, Matt)... John especially I've had a lot of dealings with over the years. I say dealings, I mean mostly just envy-ridden seethings over the gigs he got to see in the 80s / 90s which me and my Yeovil mates were often trying to get to as well, only somehow getting derailed by falling car doors, exotic illness, bad tidings, fleshfalls, cold readings and non-specific Chaos Magick (in roughly that order - I'm serious: a car door falling off on the motorway stopped us getting to two different gigs)

...

and, almost forgot that the equally charming Bob from West Norwood Cassette Library was also in attendance... as was Time Attendant, who jammed along with the West Country boys in their final flings... Monotron a go go...

... truly a great Blogger meeting of minds... though by then mine was a little, er, aft via Red Wine and Gin and Mojitos

... still, didn't bite anyone...