Songs From Under the Floorboards is proud to present this gem from the archives of Ralf Wehowsky, aka RLW, founder of the Selektion label (a major inspiration for my starting Intransitive) and the legendary German band industrial/noise band P16.D4 (a major early and lasting influence on my own music).

Grauzeit features a previously unreleased session from October 1980 and two added studio improvisations that would appear in edited form on Wer Nicht Arbeiten Will Soll Auch Nicht Essen!, P16.D4′s debut cassette album. The band, which includes a young Achim Scepanski (later to found the Mille Plateaux and Force Inc techno labels) on synth, played a strange blend of gray noise, psychedelic improvisation, and industrial dub provocation that still sounds unhinged today. RLW and his colleagues (friends from school, and a temporarily-out-of-the-hospital mental patient who happened to be in the audience at an early concert) made a dada/jazz/punk racket in stark contrast to the fashionable new wave scenes in Berlin and Hamburg at the time. They would rapidly evolve into an art collective that would create installations, write and publish books, produce records and CDs, and instigate an international network of cassette-trading collaborators at a time when self-publishing on tape was itself a radical political act.

RLW "Eine Übung In Disziplin"

Dark Garden, the new album of thrillingly idiosyncratic analog buzz by Nerve Net Noise – aka: homemade synth duo Hiroshi Kumakiri (aka Kumax) and Tagomago – is the perfect entry-point for listeners new to their singular sonic world. Where previous albums have explored a single sonic idea at a time, Dark Garden is their most varied and (relatively) accessible album yet. Which is not to say that it won’t cause heads to turn everywhere this is played in public.

Dark Garden is an album of short, song-like synthesizer pieces, taking cues from manga, science fiction, early electronic music, and minimal techno… but as always, the Yokohama band resides firmly in their own inexplicable universe. It assimilates fractured beats, bubbling pulses, and impatient drones into an album that’s somehow both playfully alive and coldly menacing. In his liner notes, synth builder Kumakiri describes spirits that lurk in the shadows and watch people go about their lives, existing in a parallel world that brings to mind fairy tales and myth. Nerve Net Noise’s music is similarly just out of reach, present in the natural world but not quite a part of it. For fans of Klaus Schultze, Jessica Rylan, Henri Pousseur, or Pan Sonic.

"Eleven palettes of surreal tessellations and hallucinatory miasma that move like fragments from a lost science-fiction soundtrack. Outstanding!" - Foxy Digitalis

"Strong production - very clear, very loud and bass heavy. I think because it's more musical than much of their previous work, this is their best release so far." - Vital Weekly

"... some of the most uniquely strange music this side of anywhere. Think Pan Sonic crossed with Jessica Rylan and you’re halfway there and still not even close. Rhythms are eccentric and repetitive, referencing techno, and yet they’re utterly undanceable. They’re wonderful, if they don’t drive you up a tree, that is! You love them or you hate them; there simply is no middle ground." - Rare Frequency

Nerve Net Noise "Smoke From Past"

Nerve Net Noise "Forest"

A sound improvisation performed by the students (ages 10-12) of Howard Stelzer & Vic Rawlings' SOUND/NOISE EXPLORATION LAB class as part of Science & Technology IDEACamp 2014, Lowell MA. Through hands-on workbench instruction and attentive listening activities, participants learned how to strip wire, solder, build contact microphones, modify amplifiers, and to consider and engage with acoustic and electronic sound. 

http://www.lowell.k12.ma.us/pages/lpsd/News/IDEA_Camp_2014
http://www.vicrawlings.com
http://www.howardstelzer.com 

Sound/Noise Exploration Lab - 1

Phase Plane Cake Decorator, the new album of rough and thorny drone music by Ophibre (aka artist and audio engineer Benjamin Rossignol), consists of four pieces of sensual, lysergic stasis that seep into one’s subconscious like a half-remembered dream. Each piece burrows deep into a single sound-world; the centerpiece track from which the album gets its title kicks things off with monolithic sheets of oscillator fuzz and sand-blasted guitar squall that extend outward in a spiraling uniform-density torrent. When the hailstorm subsides, Ophibre scales back the aggression while maintaining an implacably raw tension… synth and feedback loops throb through the next three pieces, seeming to conceal jagged edges beneath their ambient/minimal exterior.

Rossingol explains what he’s up to: “Several years ago, I was participating in medical studies to get by. One such study involved an MRI. At some point while I was in the chamber of the machine, I couldn’t tell if I was hallucinating or not, but I started hearing other sounds above the magnet… sounds that complimented the terrifically terrible drone of the big magnet. All the while, I was not sure if I was composing these experiences, or if they were actually happening around me. I wanted to try mimic that experience of trance, of filling in some form of minimal drowsy terror with one’s own tones and noises.”

For fans of Haare, The Hototogisu, Mirror, Sigtrygur Berg Siggmarsson, or Brendan Murray.

“Monolithic rumble music… on the surface it seems not a lot is happening, but deep down, behind the cracks, things move solemnly ahead, with some variations like insects crawling all over the space.” – Vital Weekly

“Boston’s Ophibre (aka Benjamin Rossingol) has been releasing tiny editions of cassettes, cd-rs, and at least one reel-to-reel tape for the past five or six years. His work often revels in forgotten / obsolete technologies whose artifacts and residues become the source material for his crusty drones, abraded noise, and splattered musique concrete constructions; he couples those sounds with a dry blackhumor that falls somewhere between GX Jupitter-Larsen and George Macunias. This album, released on Intransitive’s new series of hyper-limited cd-rs, draws from Rossignol’s experience with an MRI machine while he was participating in a few medical studies to help pay the bills. The first track is a screeching rasp of magnetic noise, particle accelerated vibration, and hurricane fury that’s well-suited to the likes of Birchville Cat Motel and Hototogisu; but after this 15 minute blast of noise, Ophibre’s sublime, yet gritty dronescaping takes over with mirrored tones and hazy echoes that appear like the tracers from a bad drug reaction, flickering upon his murky immersions.” – Aquarius Records

“Rossignol builds all his own devices and, much like fellow Intransitive artist Nerve Net Noise, sees them as a form of personal expression. Also like Nerve Net Noise, this is synth music that is as far away from Kosmische as you can get. Grimy, distorted textures dominate, sounding more like an overdriven guitar or organ played with exceptional control than any classic synthesizer module. Rossignol’s pieces are teeming with detail and minute changes, full of activity but clear and balanced.” – Paris Transatlantic

Ophibre "Blue Starter"

Ten years after his debut CD, Stone Blind (Intransitive, 1997), Howard Stelzer presents Bond Inlets, his first widely available solo cassette-tape composition. Stelzer, a Boston-based composer and sound artist, was never happy with his previous album and threw away most of the pressing as soon as it returned from the factory. He took the occasion of his label’s tenth anniversary to dissect the source sounds of that work and filter it through the lens of the interceding decade in order to build a piece that more accurately reflects what his intentions were then, and what his aesthetic is today.

Bond Inlets is a subtly emotional work of foreground drone that beats its head against the plastic walls of cassette-tape technology, laying bare the physicality of the process of its creation. The dying motors of ancient cassette players, tape-saturated percussion, and blown-out condenser-mic wail are mixed with elements of live tape improvisations and surreptitious field recordings taken in Stelzer’s neighborhood to create deep chasms of no-fidelity murk and evocative hiss. There is an implacable melancholy to Bond Inlets, with fragments of distant melodies that surface briefly only to be subsumed again into the grime.

“…a large expanded dread. Like walking into a cave, the further you go into Bond Inlets the more the darkness spreads and impenetrable it may seem. But there is a calm to this material that never moves into predictable explosions of noise. This is my favorite stuff by Stelzer yet!” – The Fader

“Stelzer knows and likes his noise, that much seems to be clear, but unlike so many noise makers around, his main effect is not the pure wall of noise, but rather a full wall of sound, with small events happening on all levels. A great work this one that shows a much more mature composer and one that has been constant refining his work over the last decade to cook up this master piece.” – Vital Weekly

“Stelzer’s drones come in waves, long and slow, while the other gestures are bitty, percussive and often shrill, and are given salient structural impetus by their silent framing. As a structural system, this has real depth, and it lends itself well to observation as one approaches it from different points of view… a haggard melancholy is all pervasive; in the fleeting half-melodies, the warm though foreboding bass drones, and the fetishistic hiss—all so many residues of a living whirlwind that devours the darkness.” – e/i Magazine

Howard Stelzer "Bond Inlets part 1 (excerpt)"

Catastrophe Point #5 is the latest in Kuwayama Kiyoharu‘s signature series of compositions that explore the charged, mysterious atmosphere of disused industrial sites. For this album, Lethe turns his attention to an abandoned warehouse by a pier in his hometown of Nagoya, Japan, using objects discovered in situ to perform a ritual of sonic resurrection. He brings a dead space back to life, giving it a voice and allowing it to speak. Metal chains, sheet metal, broken machinery, and factory debris are bowed, struck, and dragged across the concrete floors of the massive hall, reverberating and responding as Kuwayama and his microphones scuttle across the desolate terrain. Growling cello and unstable horns underscore the torrents of percussive clatter. Catastrophe Point #5 is a haunting album of volatile, malevolent ambiance.

Kiyoharu Kuwayama began working with sound in the late 1980s, using half-scale violin, cello, and found junk objects in the group Minotaure. In 1999, he and violinist Rina Kijima formed the improvisational acoustic duo Kuwayama-Kijima to bring their instruments outdoors and perform in environments with unique acoustic properties, notably underneath a highway overpass and in a construction site. Between 1999 and 2003, Kuwayama organized the five-day-long Lethe.Voice.Festival in an unused grain warehouse.

Lethe‘s previous release on Intransitive was Tsurumai, a stellar collaborative CD with Dutch noise legends Kapotte Muziek. He has also appeared on albums with bassist Matt Heyner (Malkuth, Cold Bleak Heat, No-Neck Blues Band), Jonathan Coleclough, Hidekai Shimada (Agencement), Carter Thornton (Enos Slaughter, Izititiz), Kiyoshi Mizutani, and Campbell Kneale (Birchville Cat Motel).

For fans of Christoph Heemann, Surface of the Earth, The New Blockaders, Z’ev, or Organum.

“A compelling mix, in some ways reminiscent of the music of Olivia Block who also has buttressed field recordings with oddly traditional, chordal sounds. Lethe’s space, however, is both cavernous and claustrophobic, not bucolic. When the brass enters the second of the two pieces, amidst the clanking of chains and breaking glass, the effect is anything but pastoral — much more anguished. One imagines some massive, endless, Beckettian performance of La Monte Young‘s “Poem for Tables, Chairs and Benches” with additional anarchic behavior thrown in for good measure. A strong, dark effort, well worth hearing.” – Squid’s Ear

Lethe "Part 1 (Excerpt)"

In April 2009,  Scott Foust (Idea Fire Company, XX Committe, Tart, and the Swill Radio label) was invited to screen his feature length movie Here’s To Love in Europe, as well as staging his The Four Accomplishments performance.  The trip to Europe also gave him the opportunity to join musical hands with Frans de Waard (Beequeen, Freiband, Shifts, Kapotte Muziek), who had been on tour with Idea Fire Company in 2005, resulting in the IFCo album Vital.  As both Scott and Frans are heavy smokers, they settled upon The Tobacconists as the name for their collaborative musical venture (Ashtray Temple was considered, then rejected).

Scott and Frans got to work in the Extrapool studio, composing six pieces using a small keyboard, an echo machine, a radio, some pre-recorded tapes, a laptop, and some contact microphones. Then, they took the road to perform in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and the UK.  At the end of their tour, they spent a week conducting proper studio recordings of all six pieces plus a seventh,  ’The Dark Secrets Of Dr. Perati’, which was released as a 7″ by Plinkity Plonk/Swill Radio. The six pieces will be released in 2011 as an LP, Smoking Is Green, by Hanson Records/Swill Radio.

One piece from the forthcoming record, Ocean Drama, was deemed suitable for an extensive rework using the entire principle recording, made by Foust on a boat.  This extended version of Ocean Drama, now available as a stand-alone album from Songs From Under the Floorboards, is more spacious, giving room to each individual sound with a great sense of the ‘drama’.  It is the most radiophonic piece that The Tobacconists have created so far.

The Tobacconists - Ocean Drama (excerpt)

A sound improvisation performed by the students (ages 12-15) of Howard Stelzer & Vic Rawlings' SOUND/NOISE EXPLORATION LAB class as part of Science & Technology IDEACamp 2014, Lowell MA. Through hands-on workbench instruction and attentive listening activities, participants learned how to strip wire, solder, build contact microphones, modify amplifiers, and to consider and engage with acoustic and electronic sound.

www.lowell.k12.ma.us/pages/lpsd/New…IDEA_Camp_2014
www.vicrawlings.com
www.howardstelzer.com

Sound/Noise Exploration Lab 2

Nerve Net Noise is the synthesizer duo of Tsuyoshi Nakamaru and Hiroshi Kumakiri, who confused and irritated just about everyone with their 160/240 CD, published by the Meme label several years ago.  Each Nerve Net Noise album is an astoundingly thorough exploration of one aspect of what their rough and barely controllable homemade synthesizers can do.

Meteor Circuit explores rhythms and beats, but it's no minimal glitch album, and neither is NNNa "noise" band; they are after something much more elusive and beautiful than mere obvious full-bore screech. With a strange new angle on electronic improvisation, they twisted knobs until their machines produced rhythmic pulses, then hit record and let the instruments decide what would happen next. The "natural" imperfections of the synthesizers' circuitry determined how each piece would evolve with little or no interaction from the artists. they then edited the works into a coherent, intense and (it must be said bluntly immensely bizarre album.

There isn't anyone else doing quite what Nerve Net Noise is doing, and no convenient genre or style that they fit into, which is why they are one of Intransitive's very favorite groups.  Following two albums on Kazunao Nagata's cult Zero Gravity label and last year's stunning Various Amusements CD on Hronir (and, of course, the infamous 160/240 on Meme), Meteor Circuit is the first Nerve Net Noise album to be published in the US.

Nakamura records more accessible techno-pop under the alias Tagomago. He also records using the alias Toki-Meki Science for Nobukazu Takemura's Childisc label. The band describes their sound as "electric noise music, but not academic, not mere noisy sound. We think that our music is not so much noise music as new kind of pop music".

Nerve Net Noise "#1"

Aaron Moore, percussionist of theatrical post-?? band Volcano the Bear and intercontinental improv/noise inferno Textile Trio, takes a major leap sideways with his solo pseudonym Invisible Sports. The new moniker finds Moore asserting his independence with four tracks of hazy drones and unstable incantations recorded live in Boston, MA, and Brooklyn, NY. These insidious, skewed melodies are loosely wound around tape loop murk, home-made instruments, textural percussion, and wordless vocals. Over the course of the hour, our hero establishes a disconcerting atmosphere that vascillates between playful, hallucinatory dissonance and sinister, private ritual. That’s our man on the cover, sporting his hero mask.

Invisible Sports "Ow"

Howard Stelzer (b. 1974, New York) is a composer of electro-acoustic music. Almost all of his sounds are generated by, processed by, recorded onto and played back out of cassette tapes and consumer-grade tape players. He isn’t sure how most of these things work. Stelzer operated the Intransitive Recordings label from 1997 until 2012.

Howard Stelzer

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