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Dusted Features
Every Friday, Dusted Magazine publishes a series of music-related lists compiled by our favorite artists. This week: Jozef van Wissem and Eats Tapes.
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Listed: Jozef van Wissem + Eats Tapes
Jozef van Wissem
Jozef van Wissem probably plays and composes for the most unlikely instruments in the world of contemporary improvised music: the Renaissance and Baroque lute. He has accomplished the strange feat of bridging the idiom of 17th century lute literature and 21st century free improv of the silent type. Van Wissem first came to be noticed a few years ago because of his radical conceptual approach to Renaissance lute music: he deconstructed existing compositions, for instance by playing them backwards. He also composed his own pieces for lute, using palindromes and mirrored structures. His music therefore does not have a traditional linear progression, nor leads to a climax, it rather stays on the same level of intensity. His music is quiet and not so much demands concentrated listening, as it will bring the listener in a state of concentrated listening - an aspect that makes Van Wissem a natural ally of current post-reductionist improvising musicians. (www.jozefvanwissem.com)
1. Neil Young - On the Beach
On the Beach is an intense masterpiece and the ultimate downer experience. It has not too many vocals and Neil Young’ delivers a stellar performance on guitar. Dismissed by critics when it came out as being too difficult, tracks like “For the turnstiles” “ On the Beach” and ‘See the sky about to Rain” rate among his darkest work. The song about Charles Manson “ Revolution Blues” is rocking. And it has that famous line “I hear that Laurel Canyon is full of famous stars / But I hate them more than lepers and I’ll kill them in their cars.”
2. Charles Manson - Live at San Quentin
An hour of his songs and improvisations recorded live at his jail cell in 1983. Here’s what Neil young had to say about Manson: "”He had this kind of music that nobody else was doing. He would sit down with a guitar and start playing and making up stuff, different every time. It just kept comin' out, comin' out. The he would stop and you would never hear that one again. Musically, I thought he was very unique. I thought he really had something crazy, something great. He was like a living poet."
3. Ensemble Pan - Island of St Hylarion Music of Cyprus
Lute player Crawford Young plays a timeless medieval lute solo on this record of anonymous instrumental and vocal pieces coming from the Island of Cyprus dated around 1420. It is very hard to imagine how this music was performed in these early times as the applied manuscript doesn’t indicate rhythm and there’s no aural testimony. The flowing execution by Mr. Young of these early pieces on his plectrum lute is a truly great achievement.
4. Robert Johnson – King of the Delta Blues Singers
The most essential classical country blues record of all times. “ Come on in my Kitchen” recorded in the thirties has these sexy lyrics” You better come on in my kitchen, it’s going to be raining outdoors’ His vocal slide guitar style is almost like free jazz and comes off sounding more like a reed instrument than a guitar.
5. Ry Cooder – Ry Cooder
I bought this record when I was 14 and it rates among my favorites until this day. Dark is the Night by Blind Willie Johnson is the most haunting solo slide guitar piece ever, period. “Going to Brownsville” by Sleepy John Estes doesn’t rock the boat but sinks it.
6. Harry Partch - And on the Seventh Day, Petals Fell in Petaluma
A very pure recording of minimal compositions by Harry Partch for self-built instruments made from found objects amongst others, which compare to nothing else. Very percussive and rhythmically driven and microtonal because of his use of scales based on harmonic series, which, unlike the 12-notes-to-the-octave scale of most Western music, puts 43 notes into every octave. No wonder he spend some time living as a hobo. .
7. James Blackshaw - Waking into Sleep
A live CD of a concert by wunderkind James Blackshaw recorded in Göteborg in May 2006. Listening to this live recording, it’s hard to decipher how it’s possible that it's performed by only one guitarist . James Blackshaw makes his 12 string acoustic sound like an orchestra, The result is truly a transcending experience. He doesn’t use a note too many and his economic but expansive style defies categorization.
8. Psychic TV – Je T’aime 12 inch
The Serge Gainsbourg song “ Je t’aime moi non plus” is deconstructed by Genesis P. Orridge through the application of recordings of real live orgasms. Apparently the recording engineer wasn’t too pleased. Hypnotizing stuff not for the faint of heart.
9. Anthony Bailes - Lute recital: 16th and 17th Century Folk Songs and Dances for Lute
This album from 1983 inspired me to study the anonymous folk lute pieces that ended op on my classical Renaissance lute CD A Rose by Any Other Name. Especially the pieces from the Straloch manuscript can be interpreted like they were written today. These pieces form a bridge between the 16th and 21st centuries.
10. Morton Feldman - “String Quartet II”
Composed in 1983 and released in 2003 the piece is over five hours long without a pause. The piece does not change in mood throughout and is made up of rather quiet sounds. Feldman said himself that quiet sounds had begun to be the only ones that interested him..
Eats Tapes
Eats Tapes, formerly Boom de la Boom, make beat-driven instrumental music with suitcases rigged full of outdated gear. Before you run off fearing the sort of painful noise assault such images conjure up, relax: Eats Tapes want to make you dance, and they're good at it. Greg Zifcak and Marijke Jorritsma take drum machines and tone generators and tweak them to considerable techno-freak levels, but it's more of a feel-good West Coast vision than scary Matrix-rave. (San Francisco Bay Guardian)
1. Robert Armani
Metal House legend Robert Armani filtering a Gary Numan bassline. Very jacking house but totally hard and distorted. 909 kick that somehow sounds like a sheet of plywood and a snare that won't stop blasting you in the face. The combination of the off-kilter melody and smashing drums makes you cock your head sideways, pump your fist in the air, and get freaky like a sideways top on the dancefloor.
2. Chaos A.D.
Buzzcaner pre-IDM Tom Jenkinson, aka Squarepusher. Weird meets acid meets electro meets self-hate, exquisitely executed on primitive gear scored at the "car-boot". A dark acid gem.
3. Not Breathing
Carrion Sounds Dead alien automatons resurrected by prolific and generous instrument builder/modifier Dave Wright. Meticulous, immaculate modular/circuit-bent madness. Sounds like Super Mario being eaten by the skekses. Part breakcore, part ambient mess, part totally unheard of....so listen to it! "Whoa oh whoa, beastfucker."
4. Disco Dancer Soundtrack
This oversaturated slab of early 80s Indian disco drama was found by a friend at a local India Bazaar. Recipe for disaster: tape distress, Hindi rip of "Video Killed the Radio Star," disco toms and 808sssssssssss. What more do you need to know? We just found the video on YouTube and it is totally more than we could have ever hoped for.
5. Sylvester - Do You Wanna Funk?
Hometown hero, ex-Cockette. Fierce disco diva falsetto riding an uptempo track by San Francisco City College electronic music protégé Patrick Cowley that somehow manages to out-Moroder Giorgio!
6. Extreme Animals
Epileptic techno treasure troll drums, part-human keyboards, and psy-trance vocals surf waves of pop nostalgia vomit. True generals of midi and slaves to the ecstatic moment. Mind-blowing live show. If Eats Tapes had spirit animals they would be Extreme Animals.
7. Laurie Anderson - Big Science
Underappreciated electronic mama, neon pioneer, conceptual weirdo and dreamer of lonely dreams channels household appliances through brilliant vocal processing over sparse instrumentation.
8. Javelin - Hot Jamz 3
Spray paint stenciled tour schwag CD-R that cinderella-ed its way into our CD player and took up residency for months. A pastiche of sunny soul samples, internet memes, and god knows what other mysterious deep and funky chunks. A loopy portal straight to the feel-good place.
9. Forcefield - sounds from their video works
Intrepid psychedelic duo explores the outer limits of the video-verse to the sounds of insect landscapes, culty electronic mantra drones, ring modulated alien speak, analog d.i.y. sci-fi sounds, and lots of backward stuff.
10. Nate Boyce - more video sounds
This is where we get totally nepotistic; the raster blaster VJ master is our good friend and live collaborator, and has made several videos for Eats Tapes. Another artist whose best sounds can be found in video format. Extreme FM brainscraping sludge vocoded by the voice of Odin.
By Dusted Magazine
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