Christian Marclay - "Records"

Records 1981-1989 is a fascinating collection of Marclay's work during the 1980s, the results of hours of home recordings -- using up to eight turntables and various other instruments of his own making -- plus many live performances (one track comes from a nationally televised appearance on the David Sanborn/Hal Willner program Night Music). Marclay did much more than just scratching and sampling for these tracks -- "One Thousand Cycles" uses an increasing variety of repeated samples and clicks to create a complex rhythm of its own, while "Pandora's Box" varies the speed on its array of plunderphonics. (Though the latter sounds like an easy contemporary of late-'90s major-label turntablist LPs, it was originally released on a 1984 avant-indie compilation from Sweden that also featured Sonic Youth and Live Skull.) ~ John Bush.

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Gert-Jan Prins - "Noise Capture"

The solo Prins CD is a different beast altogether and is somewhat an extension of his electronics work on "Is It Elm?". Prins' background is not only in free improvisation and electronics but in rock and industrial music as well. His first important group, Gorgonzola Legs, was an industrial/free-jazz hybrid and he still plays in the experimental rock group Analecta which he has been part of since the early 90's. The edge and raw quality of
these influences is present in 'Noise Capture' which is essentially an organization of electronic and percussive sounds. What begins with three minutes of electronic crackle turns into an intense ten minute repeating hocket of industrial sounds which contains complex and subtle variations similarly found in a Haino Keiji blowout.
And it goes on from there. Many of the patterns Prins creates repeat in a driving rhythmic pulse making a very musical and very full sound. Think David Tudor meets Trent Reznor. A very interesting CD and I'm sure glad someone else can add their name to list with Robert Ashley and Nam June Paik of people putting TV sets to good use!

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Noctum - "The Seance"

Uppsala seems to be just a perfectly normal Swedish city with roughly 130,000 inhabitants. But when it comes to Rock bands, there is nothing normal about Uppsala at all. It has been the number one breeding ground for great Metal bands over the last couple of years (and quite a few of those acts have been snatched up by High Roller Records). Noctum is the newest sensation from Uppsala, a brand new '70's Doom/Hardrock band of the highest calibre. I asked their bassist Tobias “Tobbe” Rosén why it is that so many great current Heavy bands are coming from Uppsala? He can't really explain the fact: "I can't give you a proper answer to this one. Each band represents itself and I don't really know why but loads of great music is created in our town." So is Uppsala the Rock capital of Sweden? Why are far bigger cities like Stockholm or Gothenburg lagging behind? In this case, Tobbe begs to differ: "I can't agree about this, in 'our' scene (the '70's Rock scene) I would say that Örebro and Gothenburg are the biggest ones but if you play/like Death Metal/Heavy Metal/Black Metal I think Uppsala is the best place and has a lot of bands to check out." So does Uppsala have a lot of great clubs, are there many rehearsal facilities? What's the secret of the city's phenomenal scene? Tobbe does not only play in his own band, he also supports the scene in another capacity: "I actually have my own club in Uppsala called Club Oblivion. Other than that I only pay attention to Club Digger which is a great club. Regarding the rehearsal facilities, I would say that we're lucky, there are loads of good rehearsal facilities and we receive support from our commune." Tobias' favourite band from his hometown is In Solitude. Noctum, on the other hand, are a really new band, they formed in September 2009. "The Seance" on High Roller Records is their first ever album.

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Maurizio Bianchi/M.B. - "Blut und Nebel"

This CD is a 'de-compilation' of Maurizio Bianchi's first 10 LPs from the early 1980s.
It is an excellent demonstration of Bianchi's skills at dadaistic collage, free-form improvisation and abstract soundsculpting, as accrued over twenty years of electronic manipulation.
Noise is employed like an electric guitar to produce solos of manic intensity.

Tracklist
1 Genocide - Symphonic Holocaust
2 Womenses - Instrumental Secretion
3 Neuro Moerder - Concrete Anamnesis
4 Regole - Physiologic Musicality
5 Mecptyo - Acoustic Contamination
6 Testamento - Electrophonic Ultimatum
7 Endometrium - Haematic Cacophony
8 Carcynosi - Minimal Metastasis
9 Truth - Mutant Sonorities
10 Har-Maghedon - Apocalyptic Dissonance

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Squadra Omega - "S/t"

Squadra Omega is a psych/avant/kraut rock collective with former and present members of the Mojomatics, With Love and Be Maledetto Now! devoted to free improvisation, psychedelic jams and mind blow ups.

It is said that all empires are built upon the ruins of previous empires. It is said that destruction breeds construction. In times of deadlocked aesthetics and stylistic stagnation the time is nigh for a destruction of the old and the construction of the new. From the rubble of a post-post modern world, Apollo is rising and he is accompanied by a tribe of psychedelic wasteland fellaheen – the Squadra Omega. The winds are shifting, the fog is lifting and a new age is a-coming. Spaceage Cubist-Free-Jazz clashes with Pygmy-Percussion-No Wave-Kraut Rock causing a sonic fusion leading to a complete derangement of the senses, an assault on the frontal lobe and permanent hallucination. This is music from the Third Eye.

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William Basinski - "The Garden of Brokenness"

'The Garden of Brokenness' takes a recently discovered tape loop from his piano and tape experiments (c.1979) then transforms it into a hauntingly hypnotic compisition that clocks in at 50 minutes and more than stands comprison with his 'Disintergration Loops' series. Trying to pin down what it is that makes Basinksi so special is nigh on impossible, but like all true innovators his vision and sound come together to produce something beyond the reach of a whole warehouse of adjectives, and in doing so subtly alter the way you view those things around you. Fervent bollocks you may think, but having submerged yourself in Basinki's beguiling fusion of bellicose aural clouds and distant piano, it's all to easy to become starry-eyed in admiration. Utterly essential.

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Carl Michael Von Hausswolff - "Rays of Beauty"

This record includes four rare compositions by CM von Hausswolff, published in the early '80s on limited- edition vinyls (originally released on vinyl by Radium between 1983 and 1986). They are in fact some of the first traces of ambient or dark ambient on records. Noted by Andrew McKenzie of The Hafler Trio as an early source of inspiration. McKenzie wrote a long moving piece of fiction text entitled "But Man is Stuffed with Gods" especially for this release (included in the booklet). These recordings are now, for the first time, fully avalaible on CD.

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