To me, Modern Love was the label of 2011, the main support for my daydreaming. Demdike Stare’s ‘Tryptych’ (containing ‘Forest of Evil‘, ‘Liberation Through Hearing‘ and ‘Voices of Dust‘) and ‘Elemental’, Miles’ ‘Facets‘ (also his ‘Midden‘ as Suum Cuique), Andy Stott’s ‘Passed Me By‘ and ‘We Stay Together‘, G.H.’s ‘Ground EP‘… all these have haunted my ears.  As far as Demdike is concerned, even Andy Votel’s cover design is responsible for that feeling of achievement — a feeling you got in live events too. Last month, an outstanding party took place in Berghain. The Manchester-based duo was playing along with some mesmerizing footage of horror films on two huges screens and Andy Stott was throwing his swirling beats in some dark erotic way. The whole thing enraptured everyone.

The other label I couldn’t help coming back to through 2011 is Miasmah. I have been seduced by the somber and crystalline beauty of Kreng’s ‘Grimoire‘ (see my last post from… six months ago) and his previous albums, notably ‘L’Autopsie Phénoménale de Dieu‘. It strangely kept me warm during the colder month of the year. Simon Scott’s ‘Bunny‘ was also an inspiring album. And Kaboom Karavan’s ‘Barra Barra‘ made my day several times.

The good thing with this shortlist of mine is it has all been uploaded on the labels’ soundcloud page and therefore can be heard for free in a decent quality. Needless to say that you can buy the cd or vinyl versions.

∴ Demdike Stare – Tryptych, Elemental ∴
∴ Andy Storr – Passed Me By, We Stay Together ∴
∴ Kreng – Grimoire ∴

I wouldn’t be able to write down a top 30 or 50 list because I have not listened over and over again to that many, but a few other recordings stood out by themselves though.

∴ Æthenor – En Form for Blå ∴
∴ Biosphere – N-Plants ∴
∴ John Chantler – The Luminous Ground ∴
∴ Grouper – A I A ∴
∴ Miles – Facets ∴
∴ Pinch & Shackleton ∴
∴ Shackleton – Fireworks ∴
∴ Sun Araw – Ancient Romans ∴
∴ Vatican Shadow – Pakistan Military Academy, Kneel Before Religious Icons ∴
∴ Vladislav Delay – Vantaa ∴
∴ Vladislav Delay Quartet ∴

∴ ∴ ∴ ∴ ∴ ∴ ∴ ∴
LIVE EVENTS. 

I also had the chance to attend some stunning live acts. I already said how good the party with Andy Stott and Demdike Stare was, but I have not mentioned Emptyset sharing the bill: in fact dancing on pure bass, dust sound and silence was quite a weird experience — that I highly recommend.

An evening with Aidan Baker, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Barn Owl at the Levee club contained gorgeous moments of music. In between songs I could sip my beer and have a chat with Adam Thomas (aka Preslav Literary School, who played some mighty tape loops at Madame Claude during the summer and released a gorgeous, drony album called Veer).

Ghedalia Tazartès playing and howling on the Haxan film at NK made a lasting impression and his last minute contribution to an improvised gig with Chris Corsano and Dennis Tyfus afterwards was such a happy ending.

Nisennenmondai at Festsaal Kreuzberg was an uplifting concert; whose mind does cute drummer Sayaka Himeno not blow?; their new disco-krautrock track ruled.

I was happily surprised by a short performance of Cyclo (Alva Noto and Ryoji Ikeda) in the Gestalten bookshop; not soulless at all; and some impressive visuals.

Possibly anachronistic band Atari Teenage Riot harmed my ears in Astra; logically they displayed energy and communicative rage.

Iranian ambient prodigy Sohrab was the last one to play in a series of mini-gigs that night of September in West Germany and he saved the night; good news for him might mean good news for me.

In the same venue, once again I enjoyed another Groupshow concert. Jelinek, Pekler, Leichtmann are adorable aliens. More than ever it felt like an improvised cooking lesson by some ménage à trois.

Last but not least, in a gallery named Vittorio Manalese I entered another space-time continuum thanks to the very still music emitted by Moritz von Oswald playing a grand piano and treated by Rashad Becker’s analog equipment. Single note project, they called it. Then followed a Pantha du Prince show with cloaks and bells: it all seemed Grand Guignol in comparison.

I’d cry if I had to write down all the gigs I missed this year. Silence is better.

Kreng aka Pepijn Caudron creates music mostly out of samples and found sounds. Magic ingredients for a witch’s brew: you need vervain gathered from unsunned spots, midnight tears of a virgin, mandrake watered with cow’s milk… you need rare stuff. That’s Caudron’s job to find some. Be it free or ambient jazz, Z movie sounds, opera songs, throat singing, orchestral grandeur, casual noise or contemporary chamber music, he knows how to pick up the right thing. Already in his (fantastic and fantastically-titled) previous album ‘L’Autopsie Phénoménale de Dieu’, you were struck by unthinkable yet congruous combos: ‘Meisje in Auto’ combines 4 bars from a slowed down prelude by Chopin, lazy jazz drumming and a sobbing woman, ‘Tinseltown’ puts together exotic percussions, looped bits from a Sibelius sonatine, reed instruments and who knows what else. Such combinations might look common to passionate listeners of weird music but the science employed by Caudron to lay them out is most uncommon. Pure mastery.

‘Grimoire’, Kreng’s last output for Miasmah, could be the tale of near-death experiences or opium dreams. A voice in the first track, Karcist, puts you in situation: “Let go of the earth, you don’t belong here! Go towards the light!” before a couple of drones and a creepy breath fills the space. Later, ‘Wrak’ is how a modern symphony could (should) sound like, its climax is reached when the initial elegiac melody on strings gets overwhelmed by bursts and blasts from hell, free jazz dissonances and chaos, a carousel gone mad. Right after that comes this superb Purcell-like consort music, all elegant posture and baroque melancholia. Slowly until the end, the melody and the sound become more and more stretched out, mufffled, slooow, like swallowed by a weak black hole, defeated by growing distortions. This is the great, death-wishing ‘Ballet Van De Bloedhoeren’.

Caudron shows all the way his love for good old instrumental music from the past centuries but unlike much of today’s ‘modern classical’ music, this doesn’t sound like a collection of clean-cut corny harmonies meant for urban people tired of urban life. It’s much more intriguing. Everything takes shape within the frame of some unspeakable narrative (I wish I had seen an Abbatoir Fermé production). Kreng’s soundtrack-ish music would definitely suit Lynch’s and Quay Brothers’ overrefined atmospheres. Strongly anchored to typically Romantic Era themes, it brings in mind oniric images from Redon or Füssli, dark and unknown words from Huysmans or Poe. It reveals the luminous edges of darkness, recalls the great decadent works, inspires awe.

***

L’Autopsie Phénoménale de Dieu (2009):

Grimoire (2011):

If you look for Preslav Literary School in Wikipedia, you will learn that it was a 10th-century literary school and a language laboratory. Today Preslav Literary School is the moniker used by English Berlin-based sound artist Adam Thomas. When I first had the occasion to listen to Echolalia, a complex 2010 record of a tape loop orchestra led by Thomas, I had no idea about who or what Preslav Literary School was, but it immediately felt like a strangely compelling work, impecably put together, full of neatly chosen sounds—decayed, altered, and organized in gloriously blending layers. To me Echolalia stands out from the ambient crowd for two reasons: first, the vast, almost encyclopedic range of sounds gives the exciting sensation that the whole world is contained within it; second, a resolutely unfocused quality makes the music always move forward, not just revolve around a couple of drones. Adam Thomas’ craftsmanship fooled me: he is not a middle-aged artist with decades of experience, he’s young, active and friendly. We met in a bar in Neukölln and discussed about tape techniques, literature influence and artists’ schedule.

Read the interview on tokafi.com and above all listen to Echolalia:

Live at Festsaal Kreuzberg, Feb 2, 2011 – Club Transmediale Festival

Did you miss the series of mini gigs by Room40 and Faitiche crews? You shouldn’t have! (No one is perfect though, I missed the last one featuring Tujiko Noriko Trio.)

Read the review over at tokafi.com

Sorry, can’t do top lists or rankings anymore, but I have been listening to a lot of music in 2010, old and new stuff, many different genres and I can tell what’s still on my mind at the end of the year.

First I discovered a blog about African music that made me realize the immensity of my ignorance on the topic. Searching for music, I found amazing things, from old Franco songs to the Congotronics series (the recent reworkings on it are worth listening); Nick Richardson’s report on Congo music and Konono n°1 in the April issue of the Wire was stimulating. Honest Jon’s release of Shangaan electro music (plus watching the dance that goes with it) blew my mind. Orchestre Poly-Rhythmo de Cotonou’s open air concert was delightful.

Later I got to hear Chris Abrahams’ new album Plays Scar. To my opinion, even if jazzy in spirit, it represented the best and the most refined of 2010′s otherworldly music. It also made me think many ambient/drone albums (in 2010 quite a few have been released) were alike or at least often created the same atmosphere — consequently theses atmospheres didn’t feel that otherworldly anymore. A live gig by Jeff Gburek and Rafal Iwansky provoked strong sensations and their album Slope/The Experience Of Losing Control was not a less impressive experience. Live experiences in this sonic world have been rich; among others: the Touch night with Sohrab (check his debut album ‘A Hidden Place’) and Fennesz, the Echtzeitmusiktage and MadeiraDig with Ben Frost and co.

In July, I discovered the new Sun Araw album, On Patrol and decided it would be my summer’s soundtrack. A couple of months later, I went to see Sun Araw live (Hype Williams and their powerful incense did the first part), finding myself among a surprisingly young crowd.

If I must drop techno names, then Pantha du Prince’s Black Noise, Efdemin’s Chicago and Four Tet’s There Is Love In You were essential albums frequently played at home when friends dropped by.

In 2010 I enjoyed many King Tubby classic albums. An inspiring interview of Scientist put me on the track of the technology-enthusiast dub producer. You may want to hear his recent and somehow surprising take on dubstep tracks. Speaking of music with plenty of bass, I couldn’t resist some Shackleton (thanks, the Wire) and right now I’m into Actress’s Splazsh (thanks again), a brilliant album opening many new worlds.

I also strangely felt on a special wavelength that made me massively listen to everything by Animal Collective and German pioneers DAF (‘Alles ist gut’ is so amazing), especially while going to work. The first band brought enough innocent joy and uplifting melodies to fill the day emotionally, the second brought substantial amount of scorn and made me furiously eager to dance the Berlusconi.

Live at Madeira Island, Decembre 3rd-6th 2010.

MADEIRADIG 2010 was the seventh edition of a festival which back in 2004 gathered an audience of 30 people in a brand new art center, the Casa das Mudas. Now the festival seems to have reached some perfect state. The audience and the musicians stay in two design hotels that support the project. They are not a small avant-garde elite anymore, it’s a group mixing the experimental enthusiasts with curious open-minded people, everyone obviously excited to meet up in a warm, green and everblooming island in winter.

Read the full review on tokafi.com

Even if a dream can’t be remembered precisely, what you choose to recall from it should mean as much as its real content, assumed Freud. Well, let’s consider the “Touch night” I am reviewing here as a remote dream. It took place in Berghain three weeks ago.

At the end of his introduction speech, label boss Mike Harding clearly wanted us to fear the first performance of the evening. “Kaj Aune will burst into your lives”, he said to the audience with a smile, “in fact he must be among you right now”. A few minutes later, plunged into darkness and waiting for the show to begin, you knew (indeed) that he was among us. A loud creepy noise and a flash of light. Then a series of flashes, shortly illuminating Aune’s face and figure like a stop motion, along with some music that could have been the soundtrack of a gripping horror movie (a short one, not even 5 minutes) or a sparse and radical take on a old scary post-war piece by Penderecki. He only played an amplified violin, the bow’s horsehair flying away with his own greasy long hair. Every single detail frozen on your retina thanks to the disturbing stop motion.

After Aune’s deconstructed violin performance came Hildur Gudnadottir’s cello melodies. The unveiled romanticism of her elegant playing, haunting or annoying depending on the listener’s mood, took the audience by surprise. Perhaps the Berghain’s concrete and steel building was not the most appropriate (and intimate) place for a cello solo; she sang only one song. Later, Achim Mohné’s set reminded me of Francisco Lopez’s Untitled #92 (a piece played by Stephan Mathieu last month within the frame of Echtzeitmusiktage) in a more minimal way. Basically, the heart of the music was rooted in the intertwining background noises (hissing, popping, crackling) coming out from prepared vinyls on turntables and building rhythmic patterns. Appearently, Mohné does a lot of installations (not necessarily related to sound) and more rarely makes music: a shame because his music seemed very subtle. So subtle maybe that the sound engineers decided it should be heard at low volume: not a good idea (unless you’re at home). As a result, you could hear people’s conversations more clearly than Monhé’s music.

Then came a live set by Fennesz. Harding announced him as “one of the best modern album makers”. The thing is, Fennesz’s live sets are really something else, not at all structured like an album, and Harding’s remark could have been misinterpreted. Although I cherish his albums as some minutely organized inner soundscapes, I can’t help loving his best sets for their immediacy and rawer material (when not borrowed from previous recordings or live shows), for their invitation to voyage. That night he had that songwriter’s gift for summing up various attitudes or states of mind in four- or five-note melodies. Around each guitar melody, he built textured layers of sounds, large ripples meant to make everything disappear eventually before the introduction of a new motif. Sitting on the floor, it felt like swimming across a sea of sensations and memories. A very powerful set.

Harding then introduced Tehran-based laptop artist Sohrab (aka Sohrab Karimi Asli), doing here his “first legal gig”. What I recall from it is an endless soothing stream of sounds floating away and a few voices speaking Persian. It all had the same lullaby effect as some of Grouper’s music but it sounded more like a peaceful Philip Jeck or Biosphere gig. His first release is due in November, let’s hope it will be as good. Touch is an exceptional record label, isn’t it?

Jan Jelinek’s Groupshow rocked! Read the review on tokafi.com.

Jan Jelinek (right)

Comparing 2010′s Echtzeitmusiktage to last year’s event named TITO (The International Turnable Orchestra) makes sense. Also produced by Ignaz Schick’s Zangi Music, it featured some of the best improv/experimental turntablists (see review here) and combined solo, small or large one-off formations, compositions or improvisations: all in four busy days and one big institutional venue in West Berlin: the Akademie der Künste. People did come to the festival, but maybe not enough. Sitting in the large hall with lots of empty seats around, I remember having wished for a more intimate location.

It looks like the organizers have improved many things this year. Echtzeitmusiktage’s concerts took place in five different venues situated in the creative center of the German capital: four in East Berlin, one in Kreuzberg—with Neukölln, Kreuzberg is the most East-minded and cosmopolitan district in West Berlin. The free spirit was definitely alive: most musicians, craving for exciting and unlikely collaborations, took part in more than one concert (not necessarily of the same genre), although no band appeared twice. And more important, the venues were smaller, intimate, adapted, and relatively packed with people. It was nice to see everyone everywhere, Thomas Ankersmit attending Stephan Mathieu’s concert, Chris Abrahams or Burkhard Beins at Vladislav Delay Quartet’s. The festival was the occasion to know or go further into Berlin’s underground scene, which seems to create and sustain friendly relations with Italian, Swiss and Australian artists in particular. It’s a small world—but it’s not autarchic.

Read the review on tokafi.com.

Ignaz Schick's table (Phosphor)

Andrea Neuman's table (Phosphor)

Read the review on tokafi.com.

« We had no money, no grants, no institutional support, and little critical attention, but we had the one crucial ingredient an insurgent cultural scene needs in order to flower: cheap rent. Cheap rent, I learnt, is far more important to fostering a vital art scene than grants, galleries, and so on. » (Bob Ostertag about life in the East Village of Manhattan in the end of the 70s. In Creative Life, University of Illinois Press.)

Cheap rent is probably what makes Berlin’s improv and experimental scene so attractive for German or foreign artists, and therefore so lively. Most musicians playing for the Echtzeitmusiktage, Mika Vainio, Jan Jelinek, Tony Buck, Burkhard Beins, Antoine Chessex, Werner Dafeldecker, Joke Lanz, Thomas Ankersmit, Lucio Capece and many others, live or spend most of their time in Berlin. In this context, a festival gathering all those residents was a duty and a blessing. I attended as many gigs as I could, even so I surely missed a lot.

Read the rest of this review on tokafi.com.

— For some pictures of Stephan Mathieu’s gig, visit Mapsadaisical —

Chris Abrahams and his DX7 (by Miss Hecker)