CONCRETE COLORED PAINT “Through a Lens” (Orb Tapes)

Peter Kris looks through lots of lenses. The German Army conspirator has released under various monikers so many tapes and records and CDs about so many people, places, and things that the question “What lens is Peter Kris [and collaborator, if applicable] looking at the world through this time?” The answer on his recent Orb Tapes release is, “… a Lens.” Just, Through a Lens. We have to figure the type of lens out for ourselves, then, don’t we?

Fortunately we have Orb Tapes’s descriptive copy, and through it we find that Kris recorded the majority of the audio in Taiwan. So with the origin of the field recordings determined, we can picture at least where on the map we are, even if we haven’t ever been to Taiwan itself. Weirdly, Taiwanese daily life, including the rain, the wind in trees, and birdsong, etc., sounds awfully like what we’re used to here in the United States. Different language, sure, but oddly enough, people on the other side of the world are remarkably human, living remarkably similar lives to ours. Let that be a lesson to us, one that Depeche Mode once tried to hammer home: people are people; let’s treat each other nicely.

Kris grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, so Taiwan was always just a plane ride across the ocean for him, and he finally got a chance to get there. As Concrete Colored Paint, the moniker he uses for his more ambient releases, he takes us along with him as he wanders around the country, processing the sounds and incorporating synthesizer washes as accompaniment. It holds an even keel throughout, and even branches off into kosmische tangents at points. In the end, though, it’s another fascinating travelogue from the master of them.

https://www.discogs.com/artist/6254415-Concrete-Colored-Paint

https://www.discogs.com/artist/4042696-Peter-Kris

https://germanarmymusic.bandcamp.com/

https://orbtapes.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

CONCRETE COLORED PAINT “Linhas em terra” (Nostromo)

Concrete Colored Paint is not an easy listen, and that shouldn’t be a surprise to you. CCP is Peter Kris (German Army), who is legendary for unsettling listening experiences. Linhas em terra, recorded in Açores, Portugal, sounds like ghosts, voices from far away speaking into the haze of the afterlife. So what does Linhas em terra mean? “Ground lines.” We’re all connected.

We hear snippets of conversations, loops of live song, announcements, all underscored by the CCP drone-factory extravaganza. CCP is the perfect outlet for ratcheting up the tension underlying all elements of Portuguese life presented here. The tension arises when one realizes that the connection to all other people is tenuous, and we as humans are hellbent on severing it. This is just another document from the GeAr camp illustrating that everyone’s the same, despite the surface differences.

https://germanarmymusic.bandcamp.com/

https://nostromo1999.limitedrun.com/

--Ryan

CONCRETE COLORED PAINT “Free Association” C50 (Park 70)

Does this self-referential nom de plume ring any gongs? Get the feeling this is gonna prove something SERIOUS to get lost in? The liner notes stating “All songs recorded in Puerto Rico and Pomona” seal the deal; this project has GeAr DNA in it, and it’s guaranteed to be brilliant.

But, before we get into them guts, Park 70 (Knoxville, TN)’s packaging is KIL-LER and needs exalting. Check the austere O-card with elegant monochromatic embossing of dimensional warpage, weftage, and deconstruction. Peep the insert of same art, perhaps for the corner of your mirror or maybe to keep a houseplant company. Mesmerizing. All resources spent on the cover, Concrete Colored Paint’s tape shell is left practically naked, it’s only covering, a sexy li’l sticker across 1/3rd of the spine. Gorgeous! Finished judging the book by it’s cover, the innards prove equally enchanting…

I may or may not break into the local cemetery once every summer at dusk JUST to sit under some weeping willows and take in the raging crepuscular choir that is their pond-frog community. To hear bog and boreal chant always fills me to the brim with an ecstasy I’m fairly certain is unreasonable, and “Free Association” by CCP takes this bliss to the next level, coloring the natural calls and responses of amphibians, fowl, and insects with synthesized drones, pedal-delayed minimal key phrasings, and a nuanced mix/mastering of it all that creates an experience unobtainable anywhere else in the world, outside of this tape. 

There are a LOT of great things going on here, but I’d just like to highlight my favorite, being how each field recording can, not only be infused with a mood and, subsequently, a time of day, but that each one’s mood/time can be further augmented at the drop of a chord through shifting drone or subtle key-shift. This is psychoacoustic magic here, and I cannot fucking wait to hear more!

https://park70.bandcamp.com/album/free-association

— Jacob An Kittenplanj