Oren Ambarchi, Günter Müller & Voice Crack - Oystered (Audiosphere, 2003)

1 Walking Oysters 10:51
2 Briefing Oysters 13:11
3 Grounding Oysters 7:57
4 Oystered 9:47

Debates continue to rage about what to call the ever more important genre of AMM-influenced electronics. Still freely improvised, the music has variously been called lowercase improv, egoless improv, electro-acoustic improv, post-AMM improv, glitch-prov, and more. I don’t know what in the world to call it, but if anyone is even remotely familiar with the genre then the names of the musicians on Oystered will be instantly recognizable. Australian guitar experimentalist Oren Ambarchi – one of the more interesting young players in this scene – met up with Swiss masters Voice Crack (Andy Guhl and Norbert Moslang on "cracked everyday electronics"), who have recently disbanded, and Günter Müller, who plays electronics and selected percussion. Apparently gorged on oysters and wine, they headed into the disturbingly named Big Jesus Burger studio in Sydney. It’s a very rich meeting, comprised of four tracks over 41 minutes, and doesn’t sound much like what one might expect from a Müller/Voice Crack summit.

"Walking Oysters" opens with processed drum throbbing away, a gentle catalyst for some jarring, almost serrated electronic sounds. Perhaps no surprise here, since Voice Crack have always struck me as among the more rhythmically oriented electronics improvisers. The Müller’s and Ambarchi’s strategies work well in concert with this approach – somewhere in this piece it sounds like a helicopter flying above a crowd involved in ritual incantations (with somebody playing a contrabass clarinet). As always with this music, one has very little idea about the source of the sound; that’s part of the intrigue, as is trying to describe it. On "Briefing Oysters," muffles and subdued whines try to keep down flinty scraping noises, but fail beautifully. The slowly changing frequencies – tones being altered in pitch – create some delicious tension, as the crackles and rustles suggest tiny animals clawing their way out of your speakers. "Grounding Oysters" is the most nervous and claustrophobic track, with its insistent pulse and sounds of a robot’s indigestion. On the closing title track, Ambarchi’s processed and treated guitars are very eerie. Though this is a one-off meeting, ultimately the group sounds very coherent, a single-celled sonic organism that might well have emerged from the same muck as the group’s beloved oysters. In general this is subdued music which might appeal to fans of Ambarchi’s work with Keith Rowe, some of Müller’s duets (with, say, Taku Sugimoto or Lê Quan Ninh), or sound artist Ralf Wehowsky.
Dusted Reviews

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Luc Ferrari - Les Anecdotiques: Exploitation Des Concepts N° 6 (Sub Rosa, 2004)

1 Numéro Quatro, Ronda Espagne, Juin 2001 (Un Groupe De Touristes Espagnols Dans Un Musée) (4:50)
2 Plaza De Toros, Ronda (L'Arène Est En Réparation) (5:14)
3 Le Ciel De Toscane Italie, Août 2001 (4:30)
4 Essayage, Saint Jean D'Angélys, France, Juillet 2001 (Pendant Une Répétition, Les Comédiens Essaient Leur Costume) (4:05)
5 Superstrada N° 2, Toscane (2:28)
6 Un Cyprès Au Coucher Du Soleil, Toscane (1:48)
7 Mer D'Eze, France, Septembre 2001 (2:43)
8 Les Vendanges, Saint-Laurent D'Eze, France (4:59)
9 Le Ranch, Texas USA, Octobre 2001 (2:28)
10 Chicago USA, Octobre 2001 (Répétition Pour Un Concert) (5:39)
11 Promenade Du Dimanche Dans Un Village (Harley Davidson, Texas) (1:49)
12 Les Chaussures Rouges, L'Estaque, France, Juillet 2002 (Visite À La Cimenterie Lafarge) (2:38)
13 Trou De Mer, L'Estaque, Juillet 2002 (2:07)
14 La Joliette, Port De Marseille, France (Embarquement Des Containers) (6:46)
15 Les Portes Du Rove, L'Estaque, Même Période (Le Rove Est Un Tunnel Maritime Qui Donne Dans Une Calanque À L'Est De L'Estaque) (2:33)

Credited as his final composition, Les Anecdotiques sees one of the truly great masters of musique concrete assembling a cinematic sequence of auditory vignettes, drawing on location recordings, environmental sounds and the most delicate of electronic touches in post production. As you'd imagine, there's a considerable weight of authority to this album, which elevates it far beyond the usual field recording travelogue. The pieces here are derived from a wide variety of locales throughout Europe and America, each handled with the utmost creative vision, with Ferrari reshaping the documentary sounds into vivid sonic portraits, covering topics ranging from the mighty percussive workings of a harbour and clanking construction work to more pastoral nature-themed recordings and even the harmonically-pleasing creak of a rusty gate. Wonderful.
Boomkat

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Winter Family - Winter Family (Sub Rosa, 2007)

1.1 Salted Slug (5:09)
1.2 Garden (2:04)
1.3 Auschwitz (3:03)
1.4 Psaume (4:53)
1.5 So Soon (4:24)
1.6 Nous Les Vivants (4:40)
1.7 You Wish (3:33)
2.1 Just Like We Said (1:56)
2.2 Ray Of Light / No Bad Animals (6:31)
2.3 So Soon (3:57)
2.4 Winter Family (2:44)
2.5 République (13:15)
2.6 New Sun (5:52)
2.7 Golden Sword (1:50)

Pour la version française, laissons parler la blogothèque, en texte et en vidéo :
http://www.blogotheque.net/Winter-Family

Debut double CDs are usually greeted as a bit audacious, and it probably should be counted as doubly-so when the music contained within them could easily be contained on a single platter. So goes for this self-titled release from spoken word and music duo Winter Family. That's right, the group finds Israeli artist Ruth Rosenthal and French musician Xavier Klaine creating minimal pieces that find her words (in both English and Hebrew) mingling with piano, harmonium, and pipe organ. It's definitely audacious, and quite possibly pretentious, but amazingly they've managed to put together something that's charming at times and deeply hypnotic in others.

The release opens with "Salted Slug," and things are pretty dour as minor-key close-mic'ed piano provides a backdrop for the quiet, breathy words of Rosenthal veer between English and Hebrew in abstract ways, painting an evocative and strange portrait. "Psaume" is even better, with droning wheezes of harmonium layered upon one another while words entirely in Hebrew sound like some sort of mystical and even seductive call.

Considering the somewhat limited palette that the duo works with, they've actually managed to create a highly varied batch of songs. "Nous Les Vivants" is probably the most over-dramatic piece on the entire release, with massive church organs that come crashing down from above while Rosenthal is at her most theatrical. "Republique" also takes advantage of said organs, but is much more successful, stretching out over thirteen minutes and playing on subtle note changes and much more subdued vocal stylings. Oddly enough, the most jaunty song is the downright odd "Auschwitz," which mixes completely bizarre lyrics with playful piano melodies and a mouth harp.

That said, the release does have some soft spots. "Just Like We Said" is essentially a lackluster revisiting of the earlier "Garden" and "So Soon" suffers from a more open live-sound recording that feels completely out of place amongst the other pieces. When the group hits their stride, though, the beauty of their music is simply hard to deny. Both "So Soon" and "Golden Sword" strip things down to just simple piano melodies and words, but they're absolutely gorgeous. Like many debut albums, Winter Family is a bit too ambitious in places, and certainly has a couple stumbles (not to mention the 2CD set, which is a bit annoying considering the entire release spans just over sixty minutes in total length), but it shows a lot of promise as well, and is most likely something quite different than anything you've heard lately.

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