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Also more easily available, thanks to a recent distribution deal with Fusion3, is Montréal’s No Type. Originally an MP3-only label, their releases stretch from the abstract breakbeat sound of Sluts On Tape to the electro-pop of Oeuf Korreckt and on to crazier experiments with sound and noise. The Freest of Radicals, a double disc release, is the best place to start. Made for the adventurous, its quality is high, as exemplified by: Tomas Jirku’s I Think I’m In Love-minimal techno of the highest order; Camp’s Oeee, which takes the blueprint of drum’n’bass, glitches it up and drops it on its head; and Jon Vaughn’s Bouncing Ball (1 of 2) + Gravel Road, an interpolation of two of his pieces that meet for some of the craziest, yet funkiest techno that you’ll ever hear.
The second disc is full of innovation as well. Alphacat’s Waveporn speeds up some electro, plays with conventions for a bit, and then morphs into a slamming piece of techno that’s perfect for the dance floors of Tresor. Most of what’s listed here is the best of the accessible stuff. There are a few noise tracks, some sonic experimentalism and improvisation as well. But if you want some new sounds - and not ones that happened to come out this week - track it down. Other MP3 goodies can also be found at http://www.notype.com/.
A double-CD release of avant sounds, featuring an overwhelming 36 tracks. A buffet of styles is offered, including noise, musique concrète, click-dub, instrumental free-improv, electroacoustic sound engineering and ambient, among others. Some of the more striking tracks are Jon Vaughn’s Bouncing Ball (1 of 2) + Gravel Road, coupling static noise with menacing rhythmic overtones, and Tomas Jirku’s I Think I’m In Love, a nice minimalist dub piece. The one flare track is definitely Infoslut’s He Dreamt She Was An Atom, She Dreamt He Was Enola Gay, a radiant full-colour painting set amidst clever etchings. Opening up with some screaming distortion static, Infoslut lays in some drilling industrial strength percussion and epic synthesiser sweeps that instil a powerfully dramatic mood. All these tracks are very good explorations in sound texture and rhythmic pieces.
blogue@press-524_5
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Canadian mp-based experimental imprint No Type release their first 2CD set and it’s truly an invigorating thing to behold. 36 tracks are crammed into the lush cardboard package each pushing the boundaries of their chosen form in clever and inventive ways. The dominating forces are those of noise and experimental electronica but pretty beats and even guitars are not ignored. There is an excitement in the sheer variety presented but further in the skill of execution - kalx’s Couf being a brilliant case in point. As tempting as it is to dismiss this challenging music as ‘not for everybody’ well why the hell not?
“Bait” disk: rumbling low end drones from Le Chien Borgne, which I found pleasing, and drawn in to the gently grinding noises contained within. James Schidlowsky’s Radio Collision seems like the logical progression on the previous piece. Nz-style drones swell & throb, with some scraping interjections. Tomas Jirku uses a pretty much unchanging relatively conventional beat with some sounds going on in the background, not enuff to pique my interest. Speech.Fake contrasts that with a piece of separated, more minimalistic audio artifact sounds that does a good job of impelling consideration on its own terms. Relatively quiet, and compellingly arranged, with lots of space between the sounds, with a nice somewhat louder part near the end. Julie Rousse mixes bell-tones, digital pops & more layers of sound to create an off-kilter feeling, and adding some surprising movements, very nice. The salvaged sound aesthetic continues with Eucci, with torn pieces of mangled sources juxtaposed to find another askew place. I am enjoying the somewhat abstact direction of this disk, continued by the almost out-of-control short piece of distortion by Viratone Ballad. Magali Babin contributes a piece with recognizeable dropping small objects and metal resonances, which I find oddly comforting and familiar by now. Some broken beats & ringing hi end tones by Camp, which seemed somewhat minor in this context. Claudia Bonarelli also uses fractured beats, and seems pretty tame in comparison to the earlier sound experiments. Ja_dijiste brings in an scratchy vinyls sound and other sources that skirt around the edge of expectations. A quiet, unsettling, insistently emerging mix. Next is Napalm Jazz, who raise stakes with an aggressive electronic assault. An enjoyable and well-placed contrast with its instrumental ensemble approach in the midst of this disk. Backstreet Noise sounds like someone working next door, so it is like they are playing on your wall, with the possibility of them or their tools emerging thru the room boundaries seems imminent. The use of muffled, distorted shards of voices adds to this effect. A joint piece by N.Kra & Em follows, evoking the leakage of otherworldy properties thru the hole opened previously. They’re here… Will they notice us? Jon Vaughn steps up to defend the gates with a peeling sheets of noise supported by a frontal rhythm. Gets a little same-y after awhile, after a promisingly threatening start. Interesting buildup from playfully busted up sonic debris to a strong rhythm by 833-45, monolithic rather than monotonous, and broken up by the more abstract, possibly found sounds. An unexpected instrumental piece by Kanovanik, using a conventional combo sound which doesn’t really seem to fit here. This would be the answer to the “which of these is not like the others” singsong query. It is a modestly tuneful jazz-imprv-y sounding tune, but why? Idmonster continues in the “band” mode with a bass guitar-heavy piece with backwards guitar, that again, seems lost or misplaced on this comp. V. V. ends the disk with a live-sounding piece comprised of percussive events, what sounds like a sheet-metal being bowed, small chimes, and progressing into unrecognizeability and sheer sound, with a “room” sound apparent during the quiet parts, overcome by cascades of white noise during the louder movements.
“Switch” disk: was impressed with the brief piece by Kalx, a rousing whit-ish noisey piece. Then depressed abruptly by the idm beats of Oeuf Korreckt, which was good, for idm, if u like that kind of thing. Sluts On Tape were an editing amalgamation that was darker and more varied… Loved the last 50 seconds or so. Octopus Inc bring it back to a more abstract setting, with what sounded like highly edited acoustic events. An intriguing piece, makes me curious for more (time to go download some mp3s?)… Alphacat realigns the stream to beats, with much reverby ambience circulating around the thumpisms, very atmospheric. Books On Tape present a piece with beats, but they are made out of pretty noisy sounds, and they keep things moving. I can imagine someone trying to dance to this, but… Good luck. A complex arrangement, with some somewhat predictable pacing. Someone passing by just said “pretty psychedelic music there” as morceaux_de_machines’ piece erupted from the speakers. Good stuff, hard to breathe, tho, its so densely packed… Claustrophobic. Hmm, and I have their full-length on tap for review next issue. Amazing piece, dense, metallic, onrushing, voices murmering things I am not sure I want to understand. Then we get to Martindx, an appropriately-placed respite of a piece which nonetheless takes us into a levitating plane, using common-sounding elements in a very peculiar and effective style- another winner. Dick Richards brings us back to earth with a less warped perspective on digital-sounding composition. Small sounds abound, placed repetitiously and layered intricately. Very subtle & effective… Chris Degiere was a kind of nondescript broken beats piece. Headphone Science continues the well-paced sequencing with its deliberate, somber, constrasts of slow tones and slippery rhythmic crunchies… Mmm, tasty, pass the milk. The interestingly named Gimp Gadget Oscillation are next with 6 minutes of modest mid-range beats. Themoonstealingproject… a little difficulty, I have to set aside a poor interpersonal experience with this guy… Mostly backwards sounds with some strange lo-fi loops off in the periphery, doesn’t really go anywhere for me. Time-stretched sonic mini-diorama from Diablatomica, very minimalistic, makes you listen for the slight variations, very nice, a standout. Kalx returns with another, more beat-oriented piece, which I found less striking than Soundtest which opened this disk. Infoslut comes in with a piece incorporated some serious sequencing, resulting in a majestic electronic orchestral arc-ing effect. After a 20 second pause (to set it apart?) N.Kra concludes the disk with a relentlessly concussive percussion & distorted sequences that were reminiscent of (a perhaps drived from?) the preset demos in cheap keyboards. Is Metroid a video game?
blogue@press-516_3
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No Type began life in 1998, and continues to this day, as an MP3 label. If the concept seems a bit ludicrous to you — after all, don’t MP3s render the whole record label structure redundant — think of them more as arbiters of quality, or defenders of a defiantly experimental aesthetic. For No Type there are no rules, no “official” sound, no set expectations — everything about them defies convention and strives ardently against categorization and quantification. Therefore, while it’s initially alarming to see No Type embrace the brick-and-mortar world of CDs, those reservations last only a few seconds; The Freest of Radicals, the stellar debut of their “tactile” line, compiles two and a half hours of the most wildly wonderful, defiantly peculiar sounds (music seems too limited a word) you’ll hear this year — compositions that not only discover and explore the union between sonic experimentation and listening pleasure, but cavort gleefully therein.
Broadly speaking, The Freest of Radicals is all about the electronic manipulation of sound. We’re not talking about anything as simple as keyboards and synthesizers, or even the sort of functional, mechanical/algorhythmic processes that yield the blips and bleeps of IDM. The source material on The Freest of Radicals is everything from the barely audible pop and crackle of PCM data to voice samples and video game music — all of it subjected to a variety of data-invasive procedures. Sounds are chopped, hacked, dissected, disintegrated, corroded, smothered, stretched, compressed, torn, fused, mutated and devolved by every conceivable means, creating everything from organic squelching sounds and dog-audible whines to pulsating bass tone arrays, needle-scratch collages and the sound of aluminum siding falling off of a house. For every piece that sounds like the artist left the mic live while tinkering with a hand-made synthesizer (ja_dijiste’s Laquinta), there’s an electro-fried dub odyssey like Tomas Jirku’s I Think I’m In Love, the feverishly brooding jazz-rock of Kannovanik’s creepy Tell Me About Death, Mommy or a crunchy, melodic epic like Alphacat’s exquisite Waveporn. To encounter pieces as fundamentally different as Julie Rousse’s gamelan-hacking Une à six idées improvisées and V.V.’s Moment 3 on the same CD is to receive a joyous (albeit ear-abrading) reminder of the near-infinite variety of sounds available to adventurous listeners. It may hurt like hell, but it’s liberating.
If you’re an old hand at the whole concept of non-musical music — that is, if you’ve sampled the less accessible works of Merzbow, JLIAT or the Ambiances Magnétiques folks — go ahead and dive into The Freest of Radicals with the “Bait” disc, which includes a higher proportion of the compilation’s “difficult” material. It’s here that you’ll find pieces like Magali Babin’s Petit jardin, which anchors its acousmatic explorations (pebbles being scraped up and dropped in a metal pan, perhaps) with a lingering, resonant three-note bass “melody” that pierces the relative silence like a foghorn. You’ll also encounter Camp’s nervously vibrant, high-pitched Oeee (which I’d swear includes a greeting-card version of the Wedding March), the sub-aural dub of Claudia Bonarelli’s They Use Us Back and the trash-compactor conflagration of Napalm Jazz’s kitchen-sink noise epic De la viande bio. The peculiar pleasure of the “Bait” disc comes from finding music where no music had seemed to exist; repeat spins, particularly with the use of headphones, reveal layers of hidden melody — rather like the aural equivalent of the moment when, while watching a subtitled film, you cease to be aware that you’re reading the subtitles. There is great beauty in even the most abrasive of Radicals’ compositions, and its discovery is a profound pleasure.
If you’re looking for something a little more musical at the outset, sample (no pun intended) the “Switch” disc first. After Kalx’s Soundtest puts your speakers through their paces, you’ll slip easily into the pseudo-orchestral “smart techno” of Œuf Korrect’s Hooked on Phone Ethics; the song’s chirping “vocal” synth might even evoke a satisfied smile. Sluts on Tape’s compellingly clever The Last and Finest of Peter Pans would turn Mike Paradinas green with envy, channeling thick layers of morose sci-fi synth into domestic-futuristic melodies, garlanded with white noise and overdriven digital burble-drone. There are glitches, clicks, pops and digital audio artefacts galore, all of them pressed into service to forcibly expand the frontiers of electronic music. Here, dissonance and beauty are two sides of the same spinning coin, and the transition from one to the other is merely a matter of perspective. The “Switch” disc’s final minutes — Infoslut’s explosive (and brilliantly named) sound voyage He Dreamt She Was An Atom, She Dreamt He Was Enola Gay and N.Kra’s sizzling eight-bit Metroid Remix — should leave you breathless.
And this, from a label that you probably would have ignored or dismissed outright in 1998. Albums like The Freest of Radicals restore faith in the musical adventure; the revelations here, both unassuming and astonishing, are the reason we take musical risks, whether we’re slapping down extortionate prices for intriguing-looking import albums or making the time to check out an unassuming CDR from an unknown artist. And increasingly as the years wear on, they’ll be the reason we download.
Abbondanza di accostamenti di tal tipo la si trova nella doppia compilation The Freest of Radicals edita dall’etichetta canadese No Type, finora attivissima come label online con eccellenti MP3 scarcabili dalla rete (www.notype.com). In oltre due ore e mezza questa sorta di manifesto della nuova elettroacustica casalinga (con digressioni più o meno prevedibili: i contributi di Idmonster e Kanovanik flirtano, ad esempio, con la ballata rocks) allinea soluzioni di ispirazione quanto meno variegata, passando dal dub soffocato e soffocante del genietto Tomas Jirku alle croccanti textures di chitarra preparata, onde radio e strumenti non ortodossi di James Schidlowsky, passando per la proto-electronica di Camp, le delicate melodie di clicks di Claudia Bonarelli e gli intoppi microsonici di Dick Richards. Per la stesso marchio di Montréal esce anche Chemin de fer dell’autrice elettroacustica Magali Babin. Trascorsi nel gruppo femminile d’improvvisazione Les Nitroglycérins e collaborazioni con nomi del calibro di Tétreault e St-Onge, la Babin edifica pregnanti sculture sonore, pellicole acustiche contrappuntate da dettagli e risonanze timbriche ottenute con l’impiego esclusivo di oggetti metallici riciclati o reinventati.
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