Sincere Words

A more thematic approach can be found on the compilation ‘Kantoor’, which is the Dutch word for office. I am not sure how that is related to the theme, but the four artists here all work with found tapes and it works out quite differently. When the cassette was first developed, in the early sixties, it was not to
record LPs and in that process kill the music industry, but more for audio letters or recording one’s doodles at the organ and other homely activities. The people of this cassette actively seek out where to get these old tapes (thrift stores, flea markets and on the street and use them for their musical work. Jeroen Diepenmaat, for instance, crafted a great radio-play like piece (all pieces are about twenty-two minutes) of spoken word, music, and conversations taped by accident along with some religious chanting. Some of it is in Dutch; so knowing the language works in one’s advantage. Wassily Bosch concentrates entirely on a bunch of tapes from Russia, so there is some language barrier there and it takes less the format of a collage, fading from one bit to the next, but more a documentary. The excellent booklet tells us the story (for Diepenmaat actually translations!) of all pieces. Ezio Piermanttei does the same with tapes found in Italy, but somehow it seems that most of them are played too fast, which gives it an occasional (yet unintentional?) effect. Ben Roberts is the last one and he has just one long tape, a recording of a conference by a Kreuzberg church from 1974 and we hear the voice of Mr Janani Luwum, the archbishop of Uganda’s Anglican church (under Idi Amin), speaking about immigration and displacement. He was critical of Amin and died in 1977 in a car crash (actually on February 17, the day I’m writing this in 2019 – odd little coincidence). His words about immigration still make sense. This you have to hear for yourself. Three more or less different approaches to the world of found tapes, and four times fascinating stuff to hear. (FdW)

You can order your copy here

you don’t get this exceptionally high degree of uncut humanity and honesty captured on tape every day

Audiozine #3 – Valerie Kuehne is reviewed by Ed Pinsent in The Sound Projector. He hears “evidence of a wild, peculiar talent.” Read the complete review here.

The second edition is now available at Staalplaat in Berlin (postal orders too), directly from the artist, or from yours sincerely (contact form at bottom of this post).

Earlier reviewers-

“I never had heard any other music of Valerie Kuehne, but she has a new follower!” says Johan Nederpel in Yeah, I know it sucks.

“She performs with great style,” says Frans De Waard in Vital Weekly #1032

“Sehr hoher Unterhaltungswert,” says DJ TDK aka Thomas Neumann in Hörerlebnis, Ausgabe 97 (physical copy)

 

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Review of Midori Hirano – And I Am Here

Ed Pinsent stepped out of the elevator, after a ride up to the roof to look at the aeroplanes descent or climb up to the nearest cloud. It was twenty minutes to go up  and twenty minutes to return to street level again. The loudspeakers in the elevator transmitted Midori’s tape.

Here’s what he wrote in The Sound Projector when he came back home.

“And I Am Here (STAALTAPE) by Midori Hirano is the latest cassette tape to arrive from Rinus van Alebeek’s Staaltape label. We have heard instances of classical pianist Hirano’s work before, namely LushRush and Klo:Yuri, both on the Japanese Noble label, records which I’m sorry to say did not endear themselves wholly to me; her work seemed too cloying, sentimental, verging on the twee. To be blunt, her first album was so wispy it struck me as “an avant-garde attempt to make an Enya album” at the time. However, she’s worthy to be included in the Staaltape inner circle, and was one of the many contributors featured on theBerlin Tape Run 2 cassette, so I will attempt to restrain my acerbity.

And I Am Here works well as a good assembly of sounds, namely unadorned field recordings mixed with short passages of music, either Hirano playing an out-of-tune piano, or singing, or both. The notes here indicate that she regards the piano itself as a “found object”, much like the field recordings are “found sounds” on one level. She embraces the fact that the instrument is “strongly detuned”, and there are no efforts to overcome this obstacle. Right there I must admit it’s an improvement on the studio-based process-heavy albums from 2006 and 2008, which just seemed to have one too many interfering layers of additional elements, particularly from her computers. More to the point, And I Am Here works because it integrates the musical passages into the imaginary landscape created by the field recordings, so the tunes are not set aside as “art”, but are rather to be heard as part of the overall continuum of life. Conversely, the field recordings start to sound more like music in this context; and in support of this she has certainly selected some highly positive and user-friendly sounds, evoking sunny days, good weather, children at play. None of the urban squalor or menace which might be conveyed using recordings of factories or over-crowded streets.

At the end, I personally find her tentative voice an irritant, and her minimal piano tunes still appear maudlin to me, but as noted I do appreciate the more rugged and raw abstract tendencies on this assemblage, which I find preferable to her slightly over-produced studio works. As a statement, this cassette is concise and direct with its moments of distilled beauty. At best, moments of the tape are as strong as Eno’s Music For Airports, a comparison I do not make lightly; it’s got the same centre of stillness and calm. 18 copies only in this first edition; I received this copy 10 February 2015. I note from the most current page of the Staaltape website that it’s already up to a fourth edition.”

From this fourth edition there is only one copy left at the staalplaat store in Berlin (mailorder too).

Keep an eye on this blog for the announcement with pictures and all of the upcoming release:

Jeff Surak – All Gold

On this picture the first packing of Jeff’s tape. Pictures of booklet and ultimate packet still to come.

 

 

Review of :such: -Truth Series and Diktat in America by Ed Pinsent in The Sound Projector

Ed Pinsent writes:

“The first one I played is The Truth About Cassius Clay, recorded and realised by a Parisian musician called :such:. The cassette has a hand-made collage cover, layers from glossy magazines pasted together almost like papier-mache. I suppose the first observation would be that it’s simply gorgeous, beautiful music. It’s so approachable and accessible that I can recommend this without hesitation..”

and he writes:

“This fascinating document may not persuade you to follow the music of Diktat, but it will pass on a vivid picture of travel, city life, meetings, people, and the richness of all these things rubbing shoulders in the same melting pot. Without explicitly setting out to capture the “truth” about Washington DC or NYC, this fragmentary-collaged approach (sourced from the tape recorders of all three dictaphone performers) in fact reveals more about direct experiences of places than would be possible with a more considered or formal field-recording / phonography approach.”

You can find the complete review here.

Why the review/half essay is called Eat the Document, you can find out here.

The tapes by :such: and Diktat are available here.

Thanks Ed for Cabinessence, and thus for the great documentary Beautiful Dreamer, Brian Wilson and the story of ‘Smile,’ and now for the BobDoc.