Thursday 17 November 2016

Collage / Boris Hauf - Clark / Iancu Dumitrescu



Commodities, RTomens, 198-
More art here
***


clark-cover-1

New speakers for the new PC - thing is, playing Boris Hauf's Corona from the Clark album, I don't know if he's built distortion into the sound or the speakers are rubbish - 'DUFF!-DUFF! DUFF!-DUFF!' If you read this, Boris, let me know. Really, they cost a whole £25. And as this track goes through nuclear meltdown towards the end I'm slightly worried as to which it is, the speakers or him.

Well, whatever, at first I thought 'OK, clean Techno generic, fairly good' but playing it over the last few days my opinion is changing towards 'Techno generic but twisted just enough to make it interesting'. I like the clean minimalism, which is the overriding impression, but that's ignoring the distortion mentioned above...and the storm of electro-static washing over Mind Tapes, which really takes it to another level and, as it progresses, creates the impression of being whipped up in a sonic tornado. Non-Stop Flight's crackle and persistent brain-phasing texture, which barely allows the subdued beat to take hold, is also nicely done. Clark is rising in my estimation with every play. It's reissued by Shameless.  


***


I'm going to see Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana Maria Avram at Cafe Oto on the 27th - yes, I'm actually having my slippers surgically removed in order to traverse the mean streets of London, at night, which is quite some effort on my behalf I can tell you. The book, Cosmic Orgasm, is highly recommended if you want one about him. I don't think there are others to choose from. I bought it on a mad whim whilst browsing in Housmans a few months ago, based on nothing more than faint recollections of what his music is about and no idea whether any resided on my hard drive...you know what it's like, these days, the plasticity of our brains being what it is, our minds are constantly being re-shaped by multitudinous input from The Screen....that's my excuse anyway.

Turns out Dumitrascu is a brilliant composer - you may already know, but since buying the book I've been catching up. He is also deeply into philosophy and theory but finds that attempts to expand on ideas by talking to musicians about them doesn't work, they 'simply stiffen up'. He tells them to forget what he was talking about and gets better results. The same could be said for listening to his music. One may know, or learn about, phenomenology or the Pythagorean monochord (!) but my total ignorance of either does not hinder my appreciation of his music. Like the players, I find it more helpful to relax, be open-minded and free from intellectual baggage. This approach suits my basic inability to grasp anything much beyond the bare facts of life, such as having to get up every morning, sleep at night and maybe do a few things in between.

Still, I'm looking forward to hearing them both, as Avram puts it, 'solicit the maximum force of the performer' at Cafe Oto.



No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...