NYMPHOMANIA and PLANET QUESTION MARK have joined forces to create a wild, hallucinatory, unbelievably complex 9 minute IDM epic inspired by the vicious virtuosity of Aaron Funk and Autechre. When together, they use the name DISCO HOSPITAL. This track is from the forthcoming release SNARL OF WINTER. Stay tuned for more news.
Archive for December, 2009
Having just acquired some seriously nice studio monitors for christmas, I thought I’d christen them by listening again to COH’s 2007 limited release “Super Suprematism” (only 33 copies!). I’ve heard this album many times, but it has a certain quality many noise albums have, which is that they are enjoyable when playing, but very hard to recall after the fact. Not to say this is noise - COH’s trademark blips clicks, delicately textured synths and subtle spacial atmospherics and panning are still arranged into rhythms, beats and song structures, but it’s true that they’ve gotten more abstract. The title seems to apply not specifically to the album but to COH’s style in general; I wouldn’t say the change in direction is a particularly more ’suprematist’ one. COH has recently been diversifying and actually become more accessible, a word few would apply to any group on the Raster Noton roster.. 2006’s “Above Air” was an ambient departure, much less cold and mechanical than previous work. 2007’s “Strings” delves into acoustic instrument sounds, processed through Pavlov’s unique methods. Much like 2006’s “Patherns” EP, “Super Suprematism” represents the perfection and maturation of his older ideas, and thus is not in the least bit accessible. Still, if you found any of his work to have beautiful textures and a soundworld pleasing in how starkly empty, clean and perfect it is, you will likely enjoy this album.
More than past albums, “Super Suprematism” demands silence and patience. It sounds like Pavlov is taking cues from his one time collaborator Richard Chartier (see 2005’s “Chessmachine”) or label mate Ryoji Ikeda. Pavlov seems to have tired of the simple, metric pulses that dominated his earlier work. Rhythm seems spontaneous and subconscious… It is not consistent enough to say there is a ‘tempo’. The buzzing energy and life found in much of his early work is not here. It could not be played as a noise record. It might piss someone off, but there is no aggression. Where past work would sometimes disorient the mind with chaotic density, this album gently and slowly drags you into an ordered yet truly bizarre world. The transitions and movements of the songs are slower. 2005’s “Post-pop” was already moving in this direction.
One gets the impression that the placement of each sine wave drone, bell and sub bass wash is more perfect than ever. It evokes surfaces and worlds impossibly smooth, clean and polished like the sounds themselves. The drones still possess the familiar warmth that made his piece for Raster Noton’s “20′ to 2000″ series, “Into Memories of S-tone”, so great. “08″ is a perfect example of this.
Certain human emotions have a way of creeping their way into COH, despite it being the purest of avant garde. Anticipation is one. Other albums contain fear, sadness, loneliness, blissful peace, calm. On this album, though, a sensation of emptyness, clearness and stillness, which is not exactly ‘emotion’, seems to be the real point.
The final track “10″ or “Super Suprematism”, is the only catchy song on the record. It has an interesting processed vocal part repeating the title, and something you might call a chord progression or bassline. The sound here is beefed up with enough different frequencies to almost pass as some sort of processed instrument, and yet one knows it is not. For a few short minutes, the album almost ‘rocks’. It’s a great track, one of Pavlov’s most likeable.
In conclusion, I am glad that while COH breaks ground and attempts new styles with other releases, he still stops to make releases like this. It’s not the most listenable COH album, but it’s an absolutely solid addition to the catalogue. COH is always a mind-expanding experience, and remains my favorite Raster Noton artist. 4 stars.
The modestly titled “Untitled 1-3″ seems to have been majorly overlooked and allowed to pass into obscurity. It’s a shame; this is a truly epic ambient collaboration in the grand tradition of Robert Rich and Lustmord’s “Stalker”.
Before hearing this record, both of those artists were at least somewhat familiar to me. I can handle Chartier’s completely unlistenable ultra-minimalism in incredible small doses, provided I have the time, hi-fi gear and truly complete silence required. My girlfriend once commented, “it sounds like dog whistles”. I can’t argue. I find the presence of collaborators often improve and balances his work, as they’re most often working in the realms of sound actually loud enough to be audible and closer to typical frequency ranges. Chartier’s contributions are forced to be a little less uncompromising. I enjoyed his “Chessmachine” with COH, and ended up quite impressed with “Untitled 1-3″.
This is certainly no Raster Noton-styled exercise in academic, mathematical forms of composition using basic waveforms and the like; rather, it brings ideas from such music into (slightly) more accessible arenas. The sounds on this album were clearly made to sound beautiful (indeed they do), and the overall structure and sound is similar to the dark space ambient of Lustmord and Lull, putting this album more in line with Basinski’s work. I’m so far only familiar with his also very minimal Disintegration Loops set, but judging from that set I can tell he puts a lot of emphasis on texture and aesthetics, and paints with nearly as subtle a brush as Chartier. His music is emotional, evocative and moves in the patterns of the subconscious mind.
“Untitled 1-3″ is colder, most spacious, more static than all but the most empty feeling space ambient. It clearly benefits from the influence of the Raster Noton school, as it strives for supreme, exact attention to detail and succeeds with flying colors. Any audiophile or deep listening will find hours of enjoyment with this album. Furthermore, as is common with the basic waveform school of artists, nothing here is exactly recognizable as a “synthesizer”. These are artists who frolic comfortably in the infinitely blank canvas of electronic synthesis and create sound for sounds sake, and yet end up with something quite thematic. It’s a perfect compliment to the abstract wash of color on the cover.
The first track begins with a warm bass drone, pulsing in subtle rhythm. Layering builds and eventually an arctic whitewash howls an ode to loneliness. It could be the wind, it could be the wails of living creatures. The perfectly engineered sounds will keep you wondering for the 20 minute duration.
The second track is the most melodic of the set, as well as the longest. Glassy, nearly-harsh higher frequency melodic resonances haunting fade in and out of the mix, sometimes building into chords. There is little soul in these tones, however… they sound as if they could be the product of a natural phenomenon, ancient and unsympathetic. Something like wind is again present, but here it is more faintly heard. We could be in a cave of ice, even under the surface of the ice in a slow moving subterranean flow….
The third track is shortest and oddly enough most active of the three. Airy, whirring midrange reverberation is the name of the game here, sweeping in and out in blissed out gusts. This track has more warmth and zen feeling, and may be my favorite on the disk. Again, these drones recall the wind. Glitches, clicks and other more abrupt sounds are somehow placed in the mix in such a way as to not be jarring in the slightest. The resonance from the previous track appear on occasion, but seem less threatening and alien.
In summary, this is a challenging ambient masterpiece. There is little human warmth to be found, and those inexperienced with the genre of space ambient will find it hard to detect the changes in the pieces. I found arctic images to describe the music, but these are merely interpretation, and in truth this kind of synthesis is close to being sound without association, as you may guess from the pieces and album being nameless. Having said that, this is one of the most complete, aesthetically engaging and immersive sound worlds I’ve experienced, and sadly underrated. 5 stars.