Gyromancy
by The Mnemonist Orchestra
ReR Megacorp, Thornton Heath. Surrey UK,
2004
CD-ROM, ReR MN2, £12.50
Distributors website: http://www.rermegacorp.com
CMCD: Six Classic Concrete,
Electroacoustic and Electronic Works,
1970-1990
by Various Artists
ReR Megacorp, Thornton Heath. Surrey UK,
2004
CD-ROM, ReR CMCD-RE, £11.50
Distributors website: http://www.rermegacorp.com.
Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher
Saginaw Valley State University, USA
mosher@svsu.edu
One likes to think that a benefit of our
Postmodernist century is that all music
that we ever liked or heard is now available
for our collections; this reviewer recently
purchased Farfetched Records Destroy
All Monsters "Broken Mirrors"
disc for tracks recorded live at a concert
I attended in1978. ReR Megacorp has reissued
four pieces by the Mnemonists, an electroacoustic
group from Fort Collins, CO that later
recorded under the name Biota, first issued
on 7" (45 r.p.m. vinyl, presumably)
in 1983. They process a wide range of
musical instrument sources, and the CD
is enhanced with a book of artworks.
"Gyromancy A" begins with distant
Edgard Varese-like doom-booms. A marchlike
drum corps enters, throatsinging interweaving
with its bagpipes. There are malevolent,
scraping dangernoises, a burst of sawing,
and big portentous silences in between.
"Gyromancy B" mixes moody chimes
with sounds that evoke a swarm of bees
attacking the string section in an orchestra
pit, the cut gamely chugging forward like
a railroad train. "Nailed" suggests
the cries and growls of a mismanaged zoos
animal house, and sewer echoes beneath
it. "Tie" creates a snuffling
pig scraping something off a shoe, his
successes marked by quick annunciatory
piano glissandos.
The same labels CMCD: Six Classic
Concrete, Electroacoustic and Electronic
Works 1970-1990 collects a variety
of compositions by international composers.
John Oswald is probably best known for
his Plunderphonic CD a decade ago, all
copies destroyed at the behest of Michael
Jacksons record company. Jacksons
music was one source (Michigans
MC5 was another) for that rich audio sampling
and remixing project, but collaging Jacksons
head and leather jacket upon a nude female
body probably didnt endear him to
the plaintiff either. On this CD, Oswalds
speeding up of Erik Saties "Parade"
sounds like exactly that. Did Punks shout
"Faster!" at Saties concerts?
"Aide Memoire" by Georg Katzer
is made up of German radio broadcasts
1933-1945 to paint an audio mural of the
Third Reich. Its a very cinematic
collage, a Dada animated cartoon like
a haywire collaboration between John Heartfield,
George Grosz, and Warner Bros. director
Tex Avery. Broken by the white whoosh
of a nervous hand rotating the radio dial,
it processes both angry Nazi speeches
and uplifting choral song. It doesnt
take much to make Hitler scary, and the
skillful assemblage ends with a metallic
clank, as if der Feuhrer were mercifully
bonked on the head with a lead pipe.
Lutz Glandiens "Es Lebe"
uses tuba as its source . . . yet these
multi-tracked and processed tubas have
grown aeronautic, and we seem to hear
the pneumatic propulsion of craft resembling
a Popular Science melding of dirigibles
and Electrolux vacuum cleaners. "A
Quiet Gathering" by Steve Moore strings
together field recordings at various sites
where we hear childrens voices,
churchbells and rowing on a river. It
may be a bit too long to sustain the simple
concept, though parts of it do have the
quotidian-becomes-epiphanic quality of
the dawn of cinema, like the Lumière
brothers "Train Arriving in
Station". Similarly, Jaroslave Krcek
creates a sonata thats largely like
a cats meow.
The last track is a fine piece of rethought
audio Pop Art, as strong as the best Plunderphonics
works of John Oswald. Richard Trythalls
"Ommagio a Jerry Lee Lewis",
opens with sonic glimpses of the old rock
n roller Lewis, as if a curtain
coyly parts momentarily then snaps shut.
We strain to hear tantalizing bits of
the pop narrative "Whole Lotta Shakin
Going On" as the song gets subjected
to speed changes, filtering, loops and
reverberation by Trythall. Sometimes this
results in the song sputtering into bouncing
fragments like ball bearings or air-rifle
BBs emerging from a chute. Sometimes the
listener is spattered with pulsing bursts
of vocals or guitar lead, and sometimes
we have to duck from the demon pianos
swooping from the rafters that Trythall
has unleashed from Jerry Lees tortured
soul.