Includes Tapper CD: The Wire Tapper 26:
The latest volume in our series of experimental and underground music compilations featuring 20 new, rare or unreleased tracks from Tirudel Zenebe, Joe Morris Wildlife, Anne James Chaton & Andy Moor, Walter Schnaffs, Wooden Kimono and more.
Tracklist & info
[Full info]
01
Tirudel Zenebe
“Gue” (Wire Tapper edit)
From Ililta!: New Ethiopian Dance Music (Terp)
Taken from a 12" split single shared with Tesfaye Taye, Tirudel Zenebe’s “Gue” was produced with Mesele Asmamaw, who has also worked with the Terp label on an earlier compilation documenting Ethiopian musicians’ rehabilitation of traditional dance musics lost during the nation’s Derg regime. This was recorded during one of Dutch underground group The Ex’s musical exchange trips to Ethiopia.
02
Joe Morris Wildlife
“Display” (excerpt)
From Traits (Riti/AUM Fidelity)
Wildlife is one of free jazz bassist Joe Morris’s many projects. Beginning as a trio, it now includes Jim Hobbs (alto saxophone), Petr Cancura (tenor/alto saxophones), and Luther Gray (drums). “We use the idea of change as the primary device for the creation of sequence in performance,” comments Morris, “rather than relying on one piece. Our intent is always to reach for a highly spirited performance that grooves and is rich in melodic invention.”
03
Aspec(t)
“Intorno Al Drago”
From a forthcoming Nuun Records release
Naples’s Aspec(t) are SEC_ (Revox tape recorder, samples, no-input feedback) and Mario Gabola (acoustic/feedback saxophone and electroacoustic chain of resonant drums, piezo speaker feedback, mini-tapes, audio contact bars). “Feedback, self-regulating systems, mimicry, mutations, becoming-animal, asymmetrical dislocation” are the duo’s own keywords in their musique concrète research.
04
DJ Balli
“Skatebored Is Not Skateboard” (Valpelice Live Mix 2011)
From In Skateboard We Noize! (Sonic Belligeranza)
“Hard electronics blaxploitation” is DJ Balli’s own description of his contaminated dancehall/hiphop rhythms and ripped noise shards. Working with exclusively skateboard-generated sounds here, the Italian’s noise-poisoned breaks use a combination of turntablism, sonic manipulation and “vinyl infringement”.
05
Kikuchi Yukinori
“Crystal” (Wire Tapper edit)
From Luminous (Test Tone Music)
Japanese computer musician Yukinori began making music as Billy? in 1993, the same year he launched his Test Tone Music label. Selecting sounds by improvisation and “considered unconsciousness”, his Max/MSP constructions have also been heard in sandmachine, ANSONIC and various overseas collaborations.
06
Anne James Chaton & Andy Moor
“Princess In A Mercedes Class S 280”
From Transfer/2: Princess In A Car (Unsounds)
Since Anne James Chaton joined The Ex on stage in 2004, the poet has collaborated with the group’s guitarist Andy Moor on various multimedia projects. Their Transfer series is based on themes of transportation and transition; this track comes from their ‘reconstruction’ of Princess Diana’s last hours before her fatal car accident in 1997, and features a rhythm track by Yannis Kyriakides.
07
Øystein Kapperud
“Leland Wrapped In Plastic”
From 311/Amnesia (Handmade Music)
Sculpted in the suburbs of Oslo, Norway, Kapperud’s ethereal electronic music is, in his own words, a product of “being stuck inside four walls half of the year, left to break the imaginary ones open”.
08
Savaging Spires
“Bending The Rules Of Time”
From Savaging Spires (Critical Heights)
This English group are drawing a veil over their identities for now, but their “work song for the dead”, with its ragged chorus, penny whistles and strings, invokes the glory days of pastoral psychedelia.
09
Elektronavn Sacred Songbook
“Path Bodhisattva” (Wire excerpt edition)
Previously unreleased (Empty Sounds Rec)
ESS is the work of Danish composer sound artist, songwriter and Improv drummer Magnus Olsen Majmon. His forthcoming album Fire Of Creation employs all these talents, which have previously been aired on other labels including Not Not Fun, Ikuisuus and Humbug. This track is licensed under Creative Commons.
10
Contemporary Noise Sextet
“Is That Revolution Sad?”
From Ghostwriter’s Joke (Denovali)
This Polish group’s repertoire uses jazz as a springboard to elegant compositions delivered with punky energy. Spacious pieces, filled out with piano and a brass section, build towards a climax they hope will “make the flesh creep”.
11
Syd Ewart
“The Kursk”
Wire Tapper exclusive (Warmcircuit)
Ewart’s synthesizer piece, made on a Moog IIIc modular machine and a Roland JP8000, was made as a reaction to the Russian submarine disaster of 2000. The duduk on this track is played by Brian Duffy.
12
Sonnamble
“Aphelion I”
From Blindlight (Forwind)
Sonnamble was set up by musician/engineer Conor Curran to explore the possibilities of live improvisation using real-time processing with hardware and custom software, usually alongside bassist/lap steel guitarist Peter Marsh. The forthcoming Blindlight album is the follow-up to their debut, Seven Months In E Minor.
13
Enablers
“The Reader”
From Blown Realms And Stalled Explosions (Exile On Mainstream/Lancashire And Somerset)
In the San Francisco based Enablers, the prose and poetry of Pete Simonelli is intricately woven into the dynamic interplay of guitarists Joe Goldring and Kevin Thomson, and punctuated by the precise drumming of Doug Scharin. Their compositions range from melodic minimalism to heavy, rhythmically challenging thickets of sound.
14
Walter Schnaffs
“I Am Germany”
From Endless House (Dramatic)
An erstwhile resident of Jiri Kantor’s 1973 avant garde superclub/electronic commune The Endless House, Walter Schnaffs has now resurfaced thanks to a new compilation on London’s Dramatic Records. Drenched in the sound of a thousand Roland Space Echoes, the expansive, opulent melancholy of Schnaffs’s soundworld now seems to reverberate with the tragi-comedy of Endless House’s spectacular failure. Schnaffs promises a new 12" in the near future.
15
Bob Bellerue
“Niagara” (excerpt)
From a forthcoming Anarchymoon Recordings release Currently based in Bushwick, NY, Bob Bellerue spent many years in Los Angeles, where he ran the sub-garde experimental music/performance space the Il Corral, and was involved in several local experimental music festivals. “Niagara” was recorded at an unknown place and time, using radios and guitar pedals.
16
Tulipomania
“Found Guitar”
From The Whispering Campaign (Sursumcorda)
Tulipomania come from Bristol, PA, and for their third album, Cheryl Gelover (keyboards, backing vocals) and Tom Murray (vocals, bass, guitar) are joined again by Rob Campbell on drums. “Found Guitar” is the opening track from their new release, The Whispering Campaign.
17
Enrico Coniglio
“The Void”
From Snowscapes Of Tomorrow (Psychonavigation)
A guitarist, environmental sound recordist and sound artist, Coniglio has previously worked with Nicola Alesini, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Arve Henriksen, Rena Jones, Oophoi, Janek Schaefer and others. Particularly inspired by the soundscape of the Venetian lagoon, his Ambient and atmospheric music aims to investigate the loss of identity of places and the uncertainty about the evolution of terrain.
18
AUN
“Consumed By Flies”
From VII (Denovali)
AUN is the exploratory entity of veteran Montreal experimental/electronic musician Martin Dumais. The project blossomed into its current duo form with the addition of Dumais’s wife Julie Leblanc (aka de.i.te). Combining guitars, bass and violin with electronics and synthesizers, AUN “erect vast sound walls streaked in heavenly celestial electronic whiteout”.
19
Wooden Kimono
“Hello”
From Moving To Disneyland (Perennial)
Lauren O’Connor, recording under the name Wooden Kimono, is currently based in New York. Wooden Kimono recordings have involved herself, Melody Carrillo, Christine Davis, Reuben Storey, Todd Berndt, Heather Hall, Louise Landes Levi and Hayes Waring. She wrote “Hello” in San Jose, Costa Rica, using a guitar and a karaoke box. Wooden Kimono have a 7" out soon, also on Perennial.
20
Angus Carlyle & Rupert Cox
“Three Toho Scenes”
From Air Pressure (Gruenrekorder)
Angus Carlyle works at CRiSAP at the University of the Arts, London. He edited the book Autumn Leaves: Sound And Environment In Artistic Practice; and (with Irene Revell) he curated the Sound Escapes show at London’s Space in 2009. Anthropologist Rupert Cox’s research focuses on issues of vision in Japanese Zen arts and developed into diverse interests including 16th century folding screens, 19th century automata and modern aircraft. “Three Toho Scenes” is drawn from a Wellcome Trust-funded project called Air Pressure.
Photograph by Jason Evans
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