RYOKO AKAMA / ANNE F - JACQUES “Evaporation” C45 (Notice Recordings)

“Evaporation" is two 20+ min live collaborations between Ryoko Akama and Anne F-Jacques, two merciless, nuance-worshipping, psycho/electro-acousticians/sonic-sadists that probably hold your cilia and mental well being in possibly maybe likely less than the highest regard. 

Through their homemade, contact mic’d devices*, RA/AFJ explore** the merits of inducing temporary tinnitus-led panic attacks and bump-in-the-night scurryings and carvings with such a mix of patience and furious battering that it’s very much not recommended to listen to this within 4 hours of (attempting of) going to sleep, as the nervous system is gonna be rendered S-H-O-T by the end of track 1’s trebly terrorizings. 

Luckily, side B is (relatively) lower in pitch, attack, beatings-per-minute, & shrill feedback… but, in its place is buried a labored breath rendered by lungless reverberations that is just as deceptively discomfiting as anything else you've ever never wanted to hear coming from a closet in the middle of the night.

In short, this’d make for one HELLUVA Halloween*** soundtrack, despite having not having “Horror" anywhere on the agenda.

https://noticerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/evaporation

and/or

https://ryokoakama.com/

https://anne-fff.tumblr.com/

—Jacob An Kittenplan

*some appearing to have voltage added for extra oomph/brutality. Check the enclosed snapshots of a few of them to get an idear!

**with much chemistry

***or April Fool’s joke/revenge

XUAN YE / CHIK WHITE “Breath Fractals” C27 (Notice Recordings)

The barebones intimacy that must have been involved in capturing the acoustically wrought elements of this collaboration between Xuan Ye and Chik White is only NOT viscerally palpable due to how close it sounds to goth/blackmetal vocalists, isolated, laying down the tracks of their final death throes, in a semi-anechoic chamber, that strikingly alien feel of sharp echoes (post-recording) adding another gripping hook to the table! Now, add to this mix a hefty serving of aggressive JAW HARP riffage and texture, and it’s become obvious that “Breath Fractals” is somewhere between concerted/enthralling breakdown and an other-wordly series of incantations.

Delightfully freakish, listen to on headphones FAR the fuck away from any other stimuli and/or obligation: This’ll take a while to come back down from.

https://noticerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/breath-fractals

and/or

https://apureapparatus.bandcamp.com/

https://chikwhite.bandcamp.com/

—Jacob An Kittenplan

CHIK WHITE “Raft Recordings from Economy” (Notice Recordings)

Economy is the name of a place, in Nova Scotia, the place, in fact, where Darcy Spidle was spending a residency (of some sort) and where he also decided to build a raft and make a jaw harp record under his Chik White moniker. It’s not that simple (or as ridiculous as it sounds) – it was pretty industrious of him to build his raft, and he decided to make his recordings while on it in the Bay of Fundy, location of the world’s highest tide. (He also brought some seal bones, eagle feathers, and clam shells, because DUH.) This modern-day Gilligan (you guys get that reference anymore?) would head out, hoping his raft wouldn’t sink, and make music with his hand-made jaw harps, using the lap of water and the surrounding ambience as background for his compositions. Surprisingly listenable for such a strange endeavor, “Raft Recordings from Economy,” while no “Thriller,” is certainly one of the most forward-thinking and natural-sounding releases of its type. Aw, who am I kidding, it IS the “Thriller” of jaw harp records! Topping the charts. But seriously, folks, this tape is beautifully curated, thick cream cardstock with faux woodcut artwork. Looks like a real artifact – gorgeous thing, and as tranquil and natural as it gets.

Notice Recordings

--Ryan Masteller

Stefan Thut & Seth Cooke “Aussen Raum” C40 (Notice Recordings)

Field recordings of the sounds of water along Bristol’s River Frome. A “realisation of Stefan Thut’s text-based score.” Wander the waterways with Seth Cooke and hear firsthand the actual sounds of a river diverted and its surroundings. Ridicule along with everyone else the water feature built as a monument to the river. I’m laughing at it in my head. It’s so stupid! “Aussen Raum” is clearly a labor of love, academic, stone-faced, serious. Understand the commentary of man’s hubris as he foolishly tries to subvert the will of nature. Listen to him try and succeed in the face of opposition, only to be mocked incessantly! Water continues, water goes on. Such is life.

Notice Recordings 

--Ryan Masteller

CHIK WHITE “Jaw Works & Behind a Dead Tree on the Shore” C60 (Notice Recordings)BEN OWEN "Birds and Water, 4" C41(Notice Recordings)

CHIK WHITE

The immense, magical strangeness of the jaw harp – man, that twanging, cartoonish sproing – fuels this release. It’s essentially a series of brief exercises. On Side A, the Nova Scotia-based White cycles through variations on his daily practice; on Side B, he improvises along a shoreline. Since each track is no briefer than 50 seconds and no longer than four minutes, a game freshness reigns and there is never a sense that the artist is repeating himself: the coiled spritely bounce of “Hiding In A Dead Tree” is as distinct from the breathy, fading hesitancy of “Dreamer’s Words” or the steady, strident vibrations of “Dreamer’s Question.” White’s tones sidle from hypnagogic to inquisitive to – in the case of “Cliff Collapsing Slowly” – downright cybernetic, the echoed thrumming contrasting deliciously with the ceaseless crash and dispersion of waves. “Meditative” is a descriptor that’s thrown around a lot in experimental or drone music, but it’s rarely this earned, even as a crepuscular unease lurks at the edges of this cassette.

The album can be heard here; Chik White also has a Bandcamp page.

-- Raymond Cummings

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BEN OWEN

Refrigerator tones. A distant lawnmower. Putting your ear to an airplane that is incessantly take off. Blow-dryer by the sea.

Ah, I just noticed some subtle shifting and extra-ness under the surface. Is it new, or has it been there from the start and my ears are just adjusting? Classic drone question.

Source is probably electronic. Who am I to say that it is not a vacuum cleaner? Or a blender? Maybe a microwave cooking meatloaf? This is jam is making me hungry. Tasty jammers.
    

Subtle changes happening under the surface, oscillating sounds cycling, shifting, bubbling. Do you like chilling out to subtle drone? Blast it. This will be the summer jam of 2015, folks cruising with the windows down, lemonade in cup holders, cranking this at top volume.
    

It feels like the artist is making sound that is asking you to stop what you are doing and FOCUS on the sound. Meditate and envision sine waves. I'm really wondering if I'm missing out playing this on a stereo with ONE SPEAKER.
    

In a hospital bed you are zoning out to the sound of a machine monitoring someone's heart-rate flat-lining. You notice the constant tone is suddenly much lower, and you realize those drugs have kicked in and you can feel waves rippling. A sort of fluctuating phasing is accompanying the hum. Ride it out. The doctor is good. The drugs are good. There is only peace inside the hum. Ride the waves inside the hum. The whoosh-whooshing is increasing in speed, and you wonder briefly if you are hearing your heart-rate in the humming.
    

Is the phasing sound louder than the humming now, or am I just so focused on it?
    

Side 2 feels like a series of tones droning out. Constant sound. Feels like this particular series of tones is making my stomach feel off; I am on edge. And there it goes, there is that phasing going on. This track is going to make my brain explode.
    

I feel like if my mom walked in right now, I'd have some explaining to do. Fuck. Mad respect, big ups, but this is making me feel uneasy. Was thinking about pulling the plug, but I'm g'nna weather this.
    

Someone (hi, Ben) is twiddling the shit out of a knob or something. Side 1 was more mellow, serene... but this side, for me, definitely has a jarring effect, though still, demands that you focus in & zone/drone out to the pulsating under the surface.

Hand-numbered edition of 100. Don't tell mom, the babysitter's dead.

http://noticerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/birds-and-water-4

-- Garrison Heck

RYAN JEWELL “Radio: Vol. 2” (Notice Recordings)

NTR 028 is visually what I imagine exemplifies the production values of the Notice cassette collection:  A fine letter pressed gray j-card, and subtle white on off-white printed cassette shell.  The recordings are of two separate radio performances, at WKCR, in NYC and at Triple R in Melbourne, Australia.  Here are notes from my listening:

Side A:  A seemingly improvised sound piece brings to mind gas leaks, breathing close to a hot microphone and treading water under a tipped over canoe after closing hours in a state park.  A grizzly bear fiddles with the Tupperware, but when you awake to yourself as a child of 5, gripping the chains of the rusty squeaky swing set, the bear’s still lurking, only it’s on a treadmill, and you keep swinging.  You’re safe, in a steam room, breathing from a bendy straw, and knocked a wrench onto the floor.

Side B:  Boiler room, three stories underground, years of soot.  At closer look is what appears to be the ancient motor for some sort of vehicle, except HR Geiger designed and built it.  Turns out, it’s been heating this building all along, and it’s shaking like a tailgater at a Buffalo Bills Parking lot.  The spry technician’s been climbing around this heap of pipes and gaskets, clenching a flashlight in his teeth.  Occasionally he rests to drink what looks like a can of tomato juice, but the liquid resembles 10w-40.  I think it’s break time soon, from the smell of onions on the skillet.

Many rich sonic textures fill these performances made on opposite ends of the earth.

See also: http://cassettegods.blogspot.com/2012/01/sewn-leather-blood-runs-down-drain-no.html for a review of RYAN JEWELL’s "Radio: Vol. 1" on (Friends and Relatives)

http://www.noticerecordings.com

--Adam Padavano

BLACK WILLIAM/LITUUS "Fissures/κλίση" C30 (Notice Recordings)

The artists on this split clearly started with similar materials and built two totally different things from them, and there's a conversation going on across the sides of the tape that's actually pretty cool. Definitely one of the better-matched splits I've heard in a while.

Both parties traffic in clinical ultra-minimal electronics. Black William's side starts with a couple of looping percussive synth notes that slowly shift in timbre over ten minutes or so until they are replaced by a deep ringing bell-like drone, which then circles around becoming increasingly oppressive and static before cutting off suddenly at the end of the side. There is no real sense of space in the recording, so despite the heaviness of the tones it doesn't sound like a physical presence so much as a direct transmission from the brain of some kind of analog circuit monster.

Lituus also brought along some percussive synthesizer loops for their side of the tape, this time forming a more recognizable riff which repeats for the duration of the track, with filters fading in and out and occasionally cutting off individual notes. The overall effect is sort of like listening to someone play the same level of Castlevania over and over at 1/10th speed as they wander in and out of the room, but the echoing reverb and clearer tonality make this feel substantially more organic and creepy than Side A. There's also a stubborn refusal to change things up that stands in contrast to Black William's monomaniacal point-A-to-point-B journey.

http://noticerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/fissures

http://www.noticerecordings.com/

--Will Griscom