OBSEQUIES / THE ELECTRIC NATURE “Obsequies / The Electric Nature” C20 (Lurker Bias)

Talk about polar opposites. Obsequies fill their half of this tape, “Blood on Metal,” with heavily echoed and mournful vocals, accompanied only by what sounds like a guitar pick scratching strings and other diffuse warbles. At times chanted, at times ethereal, “Blood on Metal” really does get past the epidermis and threatens to jar the whole body it’s connecting loose. Which, of course, is what the Electric Nature does on their side, “Lungrakes,” flipping that restraint on its head with a maelstrom of psych bombast. Staking its territory with a couple minutes of controlled march, Michael Potter’s outfit suddenly blooms like the offspring of Sleep and Tonstartssbandht, pummeling their instruments until the groove is ripping off that epidermis and the blood is spattering all over the metal, the heavy metal, ya know?

Two sides, one goal: total focus. You’ve got mine.

https://theelectricnature.bandcamp.com/

https://lurkerbias.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

TEUTHIS GALORE “I Smell Voices” C20 (Lurker Bias)

Teuthis Galore runs the really-out-there Orb Tapes (and godbless’em), an ever-shifting organism whose whole purpose is to subvert whatever ideas you may have about “sound” and “music” and “albums” and whatever. Maybe “subvert” is too tame a word. Maybe its more that Teuthis and friends are more interested in mangling your ideas, shredding them, gutting them, mutilating them, then stuffing them back into your brain in their new and reconstituted forms. Unfortunately the host often rejects these new ideas, completely shutting down in the process like a computer whose motherboard is melting from gross misuse.

And that’s just how we like it.

On “I Smell Voices,” Teuthis “subverts” human senses, because if you get right up to someone who’s speaking and take a gigantic whiff of their “voice,” you may wind up in a hospital bed if they’re a smoker or if they’ve just eaten lunch or gotten out of bed, or if they never brush their teeth (godforbid). He also subverts the idea of noise as a static imposition, a sinister slab of sonic onslaught overcoming and overwhelming you with its sheer intensity. And while there’s certainly a time for that (oh god is there ever), “I Smell Voices” takes a different approach.

“GLAT” is a skipping, tripping, industrial gut punch, a low-end glitchfest punctuated by electronics tearing through metal at high velocity. “M E A ME” is a fried sample slow burn, a simmerer, a grotesque creeper whose voice effects become physical and palpable. It’s like you can almost smell them, if you know what I mean! Together they ratchet up the tension within the human body and manipulate all sensory input, scrambling the data and ruining the hardware. You’re only probably perceiving a fraction of it. Still, that’s probably enough in the end.

https://teuthisgalore.bandcamp.com/

https://lurkerbias.bandcamp.com/

--Ryan

MASSIMO MAGEE “Hunting Horn and Rotation Studies” C40 (Lurker Bias)

“The ‘Hunting Horn and Rotation Studies’ are a group of 5 audiovisual digital art pieces made with an antique French hunting horn. Each piece is designed to be read by a computer as both a visual still image an audio track, these two readings arising from the same file in each case. The computer sees the two readings as one but they are presented here separately for human observers.”

Take a look at that cover image up there, and you can sort of get what the liner notes are talking about. Each fragment of the front cover is one of the five visual pieces, and the cassette itself comes with the full pieces printed on cardstock. Unfortunately, as a human person and not a computer, I must, as suggested, have the visuals and the audio separated to observe them. Amazing that a computer program takes a visual piece of art and also processes it as sound. Who thought of doing that – whose idea was it to painstakingly create something that human beings can’t even properly ingest without cybernetic brain implants (probably)?

Massimo Magee, that’s who.

I’m familiar with the London-based artist because of his work with Tony Irving on “The Fog,” released by Astral Spirits last February, but he’s got a larger body of work that it’s probably imperative I check out. “Hunting Horn and Rotation Studies” features the titular antique instrument, though, and I keep reading it as a “French horn,” which it’s not; it’s this. What results could only be some weird computer spectrum of sound, an interpretation that’s more surprising than anything. From the twitchy kinetic energy of “Study I” to the micro glitch of “Study IV,” then the twitchy micro glitch of Study III to the frightened ambient of “Study II, “Hunting Horn and Rotation Studies” never stops evolving, which is exactly what you want it to do. Computers aren’t here to regurgitate the status quo – they’re here to blow your mind when manipulated by forward-thinking humans. Magee’s one of those. Probably a cyborg too.

Massimo Magee

Lurker Bias

--Ryan

RAIC “Symbiosis vol. 1” C47 (Lurker Bias)

“Symbiosis vol. 1” by the Richmond Avant Improv Collective (RAIC) is really a feat. Now, before I get into it, full disclosure: I am a huge fan of what RAIC does. So I’m not exactly an unbiased party coming into this. But this release speaks for itself and really displays a sort of musical branching out for RAIC that I’m very happy to hear.

The material for this release came about after a day-long recording session back in December of 2017. RAIC went into the studio with Ceremonial Scissors, a Richmond-based “avant trash” band to record a single improvisational piece. The idea was to record something to send to a few percussionists in Italy who they were planning on collaborating with. However, what was supposed to be a quick studio session turned into a day-long affair and, in addition to the track for Italian percussionists Paolo Sanna and Giancomo Salis, the group wound up with about 90 minutes of recorded material that was just too good not to use. Much of that material will be released as 2 different upcoming albums, and the rest of it composes Symbiosis (which will have a second volume coming out via Lurker Bias in the near future).

Now, I usually don’t like to write or read track-by-track reviews, but I feel like I need to talk about individual tracks for this one because there is so much range on this album. The opening track, “Reciprocal Altruism,” is a sometimes eerie, sometimes contemplative journey. Laden with washed out guitar, miscellaneous percussion, piano, and amplified twiddlings of unknown origin, this track really carries the listener through a range of worlds, all while still maintaining a low key, meditative aura. Though less melodic than much of RAIC’s improvising, this track showcases just how well this ensemble listens to one another, the most crucial aspect of good improvisation.

The second track, “Endosymbiosis,” comes in with swirling and pulsing electronics that last the duration of the song, accompanied here and there by oddball piano, sometimes manipulated. This track showcases the noisier side of RAIC. In fact, according to RAIC member Sam Goff, Symbiosis is the closest to a noise album that RAIC will get. If you’re at all familiar with this group, you’ll know that their music runs an enormous gamut of styles. From jazz to ambient to post-rock to noise to electroacoustic and everything in between, RAIC is definitely not afraid to dip their toes into new musical water. (In fact, I have it on good authority that some of their upcoming material will feature straight-up country and funk pieces.)

“Ectosymbiosis” follows, continuing the electronic atmosphere from the previous track for a while before shifting to a percussion-heavy mix, complete with sparse but high-energy vocals. My favorite track on this release though is the closer, “Antagonistic Symbiosis.” This is an epic, 17-minute long ride through a throbbing sound soup. Electronics that ebb and flow, tom-heavy driving percussion, the blathering of a lone bugle, it’s all here. RAIC tends to gravitate toward longer pieces anyway, so they are right at home with this marathon of a track.

If you’re a fan of any sort of vaguely experimental music, or jazz, or ambient, or post-rock, or any other style you can think of really, so long as it’s carried out in a roughly improvisational manner, you need to check out RAIC. Samuel Goff, Abdul Hakim-Bilal, Erik Schroeder, Zoe Olivia-Kinney and Laura Marina are all extremely talented musicians, as are the folks in Ceremonial Scissors (which Laura is also a part of, along with Brendan Ginsburg and Zoe Brzezinski). True masters of their craft, these are artists who can really transport the listener/audience in ways I have seldom seen before. And all without overt gimmicks or political/social messages. They revel in sound and are adept at using it as a tool.

https://lurkerbias.bandcamp.com/album/symbiosis-vol-1

https://raic.bandcamp.com

--James Searfoss