Maja S. K. Ratkje / Joachim Montessuis - Janus LP

Erratum (EM009) October 2013

My first encounter with Joachim Montessuis came through Bryan Lewis Saunders, a common friend and brilliant artist from Tennessee, who introduced me to his work a couple of years ago. I've been in contact with Bryan since the early days of my label Fragment Factory, his collaboration tape with the dutch artist Raymond Dijkstra was one of the first outputs on FF and remains one of my favorites to this day. Bryan already knew Joachim for quite a while at that time and was working with him on his debut LP which was eventually released on Joachim's Paris based Erratum label. They did a couple of tracks together for this album which Bryan sent me prior to the release of the LP (if I remember correctly). I was taken by Joachim's work to say the least, which led to our first meeting in Paris in 2011 and the release of his first LP "Chapel Perilous" on Fragment Factory the year after. We stayed in touch ever since, met again and I finally had the pleasure to see him performing live at last year's "Extreme Rituals" fest in Bristol, UK.

I remember Joachim already telling me about this project with Maja when we met for the first time and it shouldn't take less then 5 years from its beginning to the final release. I discovered Ratkje way before I came across Montessuis (I think through her collaborations with Lasse Marhaug throughout the 2000's), but for some reason I never examined her impressive body of work any closer. All the more delightful that she was brought back to my attention with the recent release of this album.

First of all, Janus is a beautifully and highly esthetically looking record. Subtle black jacket, black inner sleeve, very restrained, minimal design, done by JM himself. Very much fitting the previous releases on his delicate label.

At the first moment, listening to Janus calls up pioneering vocal acrobats like Henri Chopin or Trevor Wishart. Further listening however reveals much more than that and - although the voice is still the main tool here - brings up the skillful combination of classic sound poetry elements with frantic cut-up electronic techniques and short outbursts of noise Montessuis is well-known for. The B-Side even comes up with an unexpected, spherical, almost meditative piece, which would have made a great finale in my opinion. I'm not aware of the division of work between the two artists on Janus, but we certainly have the voices of both on here, at the most perfectly complementing each other. I would guess that Montessuis did the mixing and was responsible for the electronics but I could be wrong here. Anyway, every bit of Janus seems cautiously arranged and assembled with care to a fascinating whole. It's quite a multiface(te)d record and as much as I believe to detect the distinctive hallmarks of JM at certain points, as much am I looking forward to delve into the works of Ratkje and make out hers.

Erratum
Maja Ratkje
Joachim Montessuis

Muennich / Esposito / Jupitter-Larsen - The Wraiths of Flying A CD

Firework Edition Records (FER1102) November 2012, Edition of 300 copies 

A collaboration album by Michael Muennich, Michael Esposito and GX Jupitter-Larsen has just been released on Sweden's Firework Edition Records and is now (resp. very soon) available from FER (Swe), Fragment Factory (Ger), Rumpsti Pumsti (Ger), Tedium House (US), Metamkine (F), Die Stadt (Ger) and Infinite Limits (UK)

Original field recordings/EVPs captured by Michael Esposito at American Film Studios, Santa Barbara, CA (PAW case file: PAW109), additional sounds recorded by Michael Muennich at Fragment Factory, Hamburg during 2011/2012, edited and processed by Michael Esposito, Michael Muennich and GX Jupitter-Larsen, Chicago / Hamburg / Los Angeles.

Mastered by Phil Julian, London in September 2012.
Artwork by Philip Marshall, Berlin in May 2012.

Sound samples can be heard at:  
http://soundcloud.com/michael-muennich

more info/details: Discogs

Firework Edition Records
Michael Muennich
Michael Esposito
GX Jupitter-Larsen

Krube. - Für Nichts Und Wieder Nichts C40 cassette

Angoisse (ANG-04) August 2012, Edition of 40 copies

Not only in the matter of Noise, but also and most notably in the school of hard knocks, Krube. has been a constant companion to me during the past 15 years. Literally speaking, we've been through shit together. Knee deep, up to our throats sometimes, good shit, bad shit, hilarious shit, tragic shit. I'm sure even if I wanted to (and such occasions are far from scarce), I wouldn't be able to get rid of Krube., he's downright haunting me and equally am I haunting him.

His latest coup - art-wise - has just found its way into my mailbox in the form of a nearly 40 minutes cassette, which has been recently released on a small spanish label named Angoisse. This is actually the second edition, since almost all copies of the first turned to ashes in an accidental fire, as stated on the insert! The somewhat trashy artwork and packaging of the cassette differs pretty much from previous Krube. releases and possibly doesn't reflect so much the artist's as the label's aesthetics. Judging from the xeroxed paper inlay, one rather expects some cheesy finnish lo-fi junk than new works by this Berlin based artist. Luckily the first audition easily makes the grade and fulfils the high expectations that were raised by his 2010 split LP w/ Raionbashi and his first solo tape released the following year. Though greatly influenced by works of early electronic/musique concrète composers, as well as by the whole Schimpfluch coterie (thinking of the creaking moments of Marc Zeier or the crude body sounds of Eb.er for instance) once again Krube. manages to draw your attention with elaborate, well conceived compositions that require a very close listening, just to spit a rabid FUCK YOU right in your face the following second! The balance between skillful composition and nasty noise, somewhere lurking between the reputable and the artistic precarity is something I always loved about Krube.'s work. And this is exactly what makes this cassette not only worth hearing, but moreover and most of all highly authentic.

Krube.
Angoisse

Francisco Meirino & Michael Esposito - The Ghosts of Case File 142 CD

Firework Edition Records (FER1098) 2012, Edition of 500 copies

After a slight delay due to a major fuckup of the CD manufacturing company, the ghosts of 142 have finally been brought into the light of day in all of their intended complexity. Francisco was kind enough to provide a copy to fake dimensions, thanks a lot for that! While the visual design of recent Esposito releases on Firework Edition Records (which has obviously become a pleasant home to the works of Mr. E) was done by Philip Marshall, the artwork for this CD was accomplished by Francisco Meirino. I don't know how, but in some way the art manages to perfectly reflect this overall arcane atmosphere, that encompasses this and most of the other works by Michael Esposito (and so does Philip's artwork as seen on "Ghosts of Ogilvie Station" for instance). Case File 142 is based on recordings Francisco made on site in Lausanne at a former school for anatomy and EVP researches by Michael. It's a one-piece, totalling nearly 41 minutes, a rather quiet album on the whole, compared to some of the earlier releases by both artists. There's a lot of buzzing and hissing on here, paired with very well-placed sequences of nearly complete silence, undoubtedly bearing the hallmarks of Meirino. Most of the time the EVPs are rather looming in the background, ocassionally whispering from somewhere faraway, drawing the attention to something or someone being out there, someplace here or there, far-off or even very close by. Case File 142 is a piece that needs to be listened to very closely, to ensure you don't miss the many small details that pop up repeatedly in the course of this journey. If you listen closely enough it's almost like getting a story told, and although (or precisely because) its ending is vague, you will inevitably stick to it all along the way.

Firework Edition Records

Aaron Dilloway + guests :: Hamburg June 22

V/A - Delirious Music For Delirious People CD / CDr

No Part Of It, September 2011

The first time I came across the name Arvo Zylo was sometime last year, a week or so before Halloween I guess. Somewhere on the web I read the announcement of a two-part live radio set by Michael Esposito and Jason Soliday, to be performed/aired on Halloween night during Arvo's "Delirious Insomniac" radio show on WLUW, Chicago. Said night I tuned in of course and ended up listening almost the full 4hrs long transmission. Delirious Music has been released in celebration of the 4th anniversary of said radio show on Arvo's own "No Part Of It" imprint and reached me along with another CD by himself early last week. Actually I meant to review both disks in one entry but after close consideration I decided that this one easily deserves its own. 20 or so contributions on here, some of them by bigger names such as Controlled Bleeding, Big City Orchestra, Boyd Rice (with Little Fyodor, whom I remember from his 20 seconds collaboration w/ The Haters in the late 90's) or Jarboe, most of them by lesser known artists and even some - and this is the most charming factor - by acts I would have never expected to be featured on this compilation. There's Gary Wilson for instance, whose influential "You Think You Really Know Me" LP dates back three and a half decades! Wow! Then there's Rancid Hell Spawn, the infamous british lo-fi noise punk unit, one hasn't heard of for ages, with a hell of a contribution! This is amazing. The range of contributions and styles represented on this disk is wide-ranging and the melange of Garage, Psych, Noise, Pop, Weirdo whatever certainly doesn't always work. This selection however is, beyond all doubt, very well-conceived and there's hardly any tracks that made me skip to the next one. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the appearance of Irene Moon, which was a special treat for me.
"Delirious Music For Delirious People" has been released in two versions, digipack --> CD // jewel case --> CDr, which is a bit cheaper I think.

full tracklist/info
No Part Of It
WLUW

Grizzly Imploded - loose tracks I found in my mailbox

Not an actual release this time, but rather 2 disks packed with a selection of (yet unreleased?) tracks by Grizzly Imploded, recorded during the past 12 months. G.I. is an italian trio roving around in the realm of kinda psyched free jazz / noisepunk, not very easy to describe, which is mostly rather a positive than a negative aspect. They released a cassette on Scrotum just recently and a CDr on another label (don't remember which one) shortly after. The predominant guitar noise on these recordings comes along with a pretty slick and frantic drumming, and while I'm still pondering to which extent all of this is composed or rather improvised, I notice the complete absence of vocals here, which probably benefits these songs a lot. At times this reminds me a bit of some noisier stuff on Skin Graft or Troubleman Unlimited, which - as I recall - was sometimes literally ruined by the presence of redundant vocals. I haven't been into this kind of music for the past, maybe 10 years or so (which doesn't mean this stuff sounds outdated at all), but I still enjoyed both disks pretty much. These guys are skilled, without a doubt and this little package was certainly among the better ones I received during the past months.