Good evening,
This is Beach Sloth. Below are this week’s albums:
Morton Feldman – Rothko Chapel/Why Patterns?
One of my favorite pieces of music, Morton Feldman’s “Rothko Chapel/Why Patterns?” is perhaps Feldman’s best-known work. Performed over 130 times, it is the sort of thing that seems inherently at odds with Feldman’s demeanor. In real life, Feldman had one of those tremendous booming voices. Additionally, he lived in New York City, a boisterous place with noise from below, from above, and from side to side. You can often hear elevated trains, subways, poor drivers, angry people, and yelling.
Feldman and Rothko were friends in real life, well-acquainted with each other and each other’s work. Philosophically, both focused on a yearning for minimalism, stripping things down to the essence of things. Thus, Rothko’s pieces seem to vibrate with their dark, haze hues, and Feldman’s pieces require a quiet room. His fascination with quiet might have been because it was something that could “clean everything away.”
There is a legitimate beauty to the arrangement. Feldman’s instructions to the singers are to be “barely audible, “resulting in a dark, eerie, and uniquely romantic prospect. It helps that, unlike some of his later, much longer works, which can span multiple hours, this one (with the Why Patterns?) clocks in at under an hour. Yet, it is the gradual passage of time, the way that time appears to slow to a standstill, that the magic of his work can be felt.
Even now, decades after his death, Feldman’s work led to the creation of lowercase music, of slowcore on the rock side of things, and generally went for this otherworldly cadence, the kind of thing that can help to focus the mind.
Monde Bruits – Portuguese Man-of-War
Even amongst the most hardened noise nerds (because, let’s be honest, if you are deep into noise, the likelihood of you being cool is nil), Monde Bruits may not ring a bell. An excellent project, Iwasaki Shōhei only released a small handful of works. One of those first releases is this one, “Portuguese Man-Of-War.” Naming this album after a deadly creature that floats on nebulously feels appropriate, given the intensity of the sound. This is a brutal one, though perfectly done from beginning to end.
As far as noise releases go, he captures the whole spectrum. There is only one track, a thirty-minute (almost to the second) slab of sound. He explores the high-end, low-end, and in-between with such majesty. It is a weird mixture of the hyper-saturated maximal wall of sound alongside a hypnotic form of minimalism. Elements of drones also feature prominently within the work, and there is a lot to appreciate with the high level of craftsmanship he displays.
Unlike many noise projects that incorporate some transgressive element, Monde Bruits relied exclusively on sound. There is no social commentary, nihilism, or politics; it is a pure and straightforward atmosphere. Individuals wanting to explore transgressive noise projects could go to almost any other. It is intriguing how Monde Bruits was so devoted to the sound that he spent this much time getting it right.
Only a handful of releases exist under the Monde Bruits moniker, as, unfortunately, he passed away in 2005 due to a motorcycle accident. For those interested in the exquisite properties of unrelenting noise done with a surprisingly high level of sophistication and brutality simultaneously, Portuguese Man-Of-War is a strikingly gorgeous release with a unique allure.
Al Karpenter – The Forthcoming
Things have hope as Al Karpenter allows sunlight into “The Forthcoming.” Far from some honey-speckled affair, this is cautious optimism. Yet the whole group plays like a latter-day Red Krayola “Parable of Arable Land.” Indeed, acid-fried and chaotic, the songs lumber forward. Rhythm is an afterthought and remains unpredictable. Speed isn’t of the essence, anyway. Instead, the more prominent aspect of the work comes from this sense of community. You get the sense that everybody is happy to be in each other’s company. It is a warmth that can be felt, even in chaotic arrangements.
Sometimes the tracks drift by as broken fragments of dreams. “1995 (w/ Triple Negative)” has this wooziness that has a hypnogogic pop quality. The nods to KWJAZ are apparent on this one, and considering how much I wished for more artists to sound like that delirium, I’m happy to see it pop up again on my musical radar a decade later. Underneath the monotone vocalizations is a barely contained glee, a possibility of what could be. No wave is essential to the broken-down cadences, with a few songs touching upon a burnt-out late 70s New York Lower East Side madness.
I like this. There is genuine earnestness, a desire to convey an honest emotion. No manipulation to be found here; this is blunt, not cruel, a strange sort of kindness.
Al Karpenter & CIA Debutante – AI Karpenter & CIA Debutante
Al Karpenter & CIA Debutante makes me miss the filth-laden lanes of NYC with the putrid aural dross of their self-titled collab. This dank, dark, dirty mess lingers in back alleyways, drunk on its decay. With a distinctive no-wave/nostalgic hue, these are parables for the leftover weirdoes, those who saw the cities become overpriced and out-of-reach for new generations of artists, desperately clinging onto a city their cultural output created. Now they see that artistic creation is commoditized, utilized to sell, and they are almost powerless to stop it. Yet there are those few who continue fighting, refuse to let up the exploration of grit, reveling in it, and are ready to teach the next generation of its importance. Out of these few, Al Karpenter & CIA Debutante serve as the last visage of this defiant stance, not letting anything stop them.
CIA Debutante embraces a lo-fi aesthetic, which makes sense as they’ve comfortably made their home amid many other equally scuzzy groups, from Harry Pussy back in the day to their current roster of equally muck-laden explorers. On the flip side, Al Karpenter is the project of Mattin and Álvaro Matilla. While I’m unfamiliar with Matilla, Mattin’s work as Billy Bao is an exquisite nightmare, a neurosis of urban life, and I adore it. The duality of both groups results in mixtures of broken-down synthesizers, like some Royal Trux “Twin Infinitives,” but even more spent and gone, like the negative photograph of that album, gone with the excess and left with shadows.
With their self-titled collab, Al Karpenter & CIA Debutante exchange gritty poetry, the sort scrawled in solidarity for the others on the outskirts.
Russell Haswell – Tongue Dancer ’85
Tongue Dancer ’85 proves to everyone where Russell Haswell was in 85, at the ripe old age of 15 – he was rocking out to the hottest sounds hitting the bombastic British dancefloor. Not too far away from the second summer of love, Mr. Haswell embraced the acidic tenor of the dance floor, letting it inform his later works as a madcap noise maniac as he grew older.
In the mid-2010s, a funny thing happened – Haswell decided to engage with the dance floor on his terms. The resulting output included an album or two and this thing, perhaps the most straightforward thing he’s ever done. To be concise, though, the bar is set exceptionally low as no total sheets of noise are being swept onto the listener.
People familiar with the post-rave hooligans of Evol will find much of this terrain familiar. Even some power-electronics individuals might find Haswell’s mix of acid techno and noise compelling. It makes sense that Editions Mego released this because it seemingly touches upon their early roots in abstract dance music alongside the heaping dollops of noise they’d later embrace with arms wide open.
One of the easier things Haswell put out hints at what sort of compositions he can create once he decides to add a little structure into the mix. It also makes sense that he started performing alongside Aphex Twin around this time, and some of that less noisy stance certainly influenced his output.
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