Sub Rosa’s excavation, exhumation and examination of hidden electronic noise, emanating from dingy practice rooms and cloistered academic studio alike, reaches into a sixth volume, showcasing a broad cross-section of historical and contemporary strands in experimental music. Sub Rosa’s Guy Marc Hinant is a studious and enthusiastic curator, with an encyclopedic knowledge of the intertwined tendrils of avant-garde musical history. His extensive liner notes to this compendium share both his thrill in witnessing Z’ev’s ’80s percussionary primitivism at the Melkweg, Amsterdam, to his disappointment at being unable to source early material from forgotten pioneers of the avant-garde. The comprehensive, and deeply personal, liner notes adds an essential layer to a work such as this. The obvious passion that Guy Marc Hinant has approached this project with speaks volumes to me, as one music-obsessed ‘lifer’ to another.
Across the two discs of Volume #6, the listener starts out with the drunkenly veering musique concrète antics of Mexican composer Israel Martinez. A spluttering automobile engine brings ‘Mi Vida’ to life, and acts as a meditation on the car-dominance of contemporary culture, ending with a resounding CRASH! From 1983, Joseph Nechvatal’s ‘Ego Masher’ invites the listener to sink into a field of everyday sounds, after they have been put through a blender. Henry Cowell and Dick Raaymakers (originally Dick Raaijmakers) both explore the piano, the former playing with the innards, bringing to mind Percy Grainger’s experimental recordings; whilst the Dutch composers’ ‘Piano Forte’ is a decidedly more muscular attack on the much loved (and maligned) stringed instrument.
Disc One comes to a mostly abrasive conclusion with some nasty Japanoise flashbacks courtesy of Pain Jerk, Hijokaidan, Incapacitants and modern Chinese student, Torturing Nurse. Personally, this sort of harsh audio scree leaves me cold – although in the right context, an interlude of harshness is fine, it’s the sheer bloody-mindedness on display that sets my teeth on edge. A funny aside on Japanoise; I once lived with a guy who was a big fan of such sonic artillery and his stated desire was to find a like-minded girl who could enjoy / endure the complete Merzbow ‘Merzbox’ whilst engaging in the most transgressive acts that consenting adults can do. I’m unaware if he was ever able to fulfill his fantasy, but I cannot listen to Japanoise without thinking of this somewhat disturbing mise-en-scène.
Anyways, back to the music… Disc Two features the humbling majesty of Daniel Menche’s blackened electronic drones, ‘Fulmination’ swells and throbs, as a percussive thundering slowly come to the foreground in a manner somewhat reminiscent of the most abstract moments of the Basic Channel label. Speedcore producer Rico Schwantes aka The Pain Barrier brings us “a form of abstraction” as the dizzyingly fast tempo of the kick drum almost “dissolves into noise”. The micro-processed minutiae of ‘PHing’ by Christian Vogel and Pablo Palacio, foreground the chaos that Vogel’s previous work always hinted at. The first Danish electronic music piece, composed by Else Marie Pade, has a decidedly futuristic bent, all glacial tones and celestial bleeps; as befits a composition inspired by a visit to the 1958 Universal Exposition in Brussels.
Dark ambience rounds out the compilation, with a trio of contemporary pieces hinting at the mysterious power hidden deep inside drones, weighty sub-bass and field recordings. Arch-aktionist John Duncan explores Chile’s Nazca lines with the help of a mysterious archaeologist. The timeless, weatherworn landscape of Brittany is hinted at by Stephen O’Malley, with a similar pallet to that of Sunn0))) minus the guitars, on ‘Dolmens & Lighthouses’. Grecian multimedia artist and composer ILIOS pontificates upon “The unnecessary tyranny of settlements, the needless weight of identity, the unwished despotism of frontiers”. Weighty stuff indeed, but I expect nothing less from this heavyweight compilation and series as it aims to fill some holes in the under-documented history of the avant-garde, whilst allowing the compiler’s muse to have an awesome scope.
Oliver Laing
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