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Das
Synthetische Mischgewebe's reworking of original and archive source
material from TNB. The focus is on early Electro-Acoustic sound and is
more minimal than their later blast-furnace style, with lots of
scraping, low textural growls and metal-punctuated silence. The attack
is focused into shorter, more condensed tracks and the feel is a little
more conventionally compositional than previous TNB collaborations,
making it a particularly interesting installment. Volcanic Tongue
Guido Huebner is another European avant genius whose work I am only just
beginning to acclimatise myself with. He is the main man behind Das
Synthetische Mischgewebe. On this new release, which has been issued as
a four-sided vinyl epic over one LP and one seven-inch, he performs his
transformative magick on materials supplied by TNB. The
Monosyllabic Bicycles Tri-Coloured
Quadruples is described as, ‘a negotiation with each other’s
mutual silence, insinuating personal strategies into one of the
other.’ Actually that is just one line from the very detailed and
high-flown description which Mr. Huebner generously provides for this
work. So far, I hear little of the volume and roaring hideousness that I
associate with TNB, yet enough traces remain to convey the familiar
sensations of discomfort, dread, and claustrophobia. The Sound
Projector
Nearly an hour of new sound collages and spheres by the long-established
and influential and infamous nihilists TNB working in close
collaboration with the hugely acclaimed and long-running sound artists
Das Synthetische Mischgewebe. It is a little surprising that these
artists have not collaborated before. This is both a challenging and
important anti-work that demands close listening as it took ages to
craft the sonic textures contained in these spinning circular vinyl
grooves. Equation
When it comes down to it TNB are the most absurd of all the
original UK
Noise artists. What exactly TNB are remains a bit of a
mystery. So we have a highly composed cut-up
Noise artist who may or may
not actually do anything in the name of Anti-Music, releasing broken
records that could never be played on any player. Regardless of any
information or disinformation the track record of releases that CAN be
played are highly constructed pieces of composition. Frequencies stretch
to insane levels and blasts and silences collide with sheet metal sounds
and who knows what else. I’ll confess that I’ve never heard anything
by Das Synthetische Mischgewebe but this release, musically stands with
the best of anything I’ve come across by TNB. The cuts, the source
sounds and the recordings are all brightly clear. Rarely has TNB been so
sharply sculpted as the sounds take on a more modern composition feel as
opposed to a junk pile assault. Any fans of the Mego label should take
note of this release as its fits in closer to the European vanguard than
U.S. scum tactics. You know, if any artist in this vein deserves to have
another essential release to their belts its TNB. Noise record of the
year? Art record of the year? Play it in a museum or in a dingy basement
it works. So there you have it. Swingset
TNB and DSM have been active
for over twenty-five years and have both become stalwarts of the
European experimental music underground. While the bulk of DSM's work
has been concept-oriented and decidedly artistic multi-media
compositions, TNB have become the de facto poster-children for anti-art
nihilism. Perhaps because, or in spite, of these fundamental differences
this project works as well as an alchemical wedding. Huebner has taken
raw material of TNB and sculpted it into a meticulously constructed
Musique Concrete composition much like a remix artist would. If you're
looking for another chapter in the full-blown noise tomes of TNB, you
may be disappointed. I for one relish the way that the noise is placed
in an entirely new context, with equal blasts of silence that are just
as powerful and even give the harsh textures a renewed significance.
Despite DSM's Teutonic origins, I sense an affinity more with the French
aesthetic towards Electro-Acoustic music
whether
it be the classic work of Pierre Schaeffer or such later practitoners as
Lieutenant Caramel. Side A subdues the trademark noise of TNB without
rendering it impotent. Instead the textures are placed under a sonic
microscope in which all the scrapes and hisses are exposed at a
molecular level. Bursts of machine noise and percussive rustlings are
erected like crystalline pillars of acousmatic beauty enshrouded in a
landscape of quiet clouds. Even at the music's most dense moments, there
is a flow and undeniable sense of attentiveness; this is not sloppy
work, but absolutely dramatic. Every sound is presented on its own terms
and is simultaneously related to what precedes and follows it. Generally
nothing is ever acoustically or electronically obscured as the
cut-and-paste work of Huebner actually further illuminates the timbres
of the source material. Top-shelf concrete work that ends, appropriately
enough, with a flourish of classic TNB noise.
The second side of the LP kicks off with isolated bursts of junk
percussion and is punctuated by small actions of noise that are both
brought into play structurally through the use of silence as a
compositional construct. Avalanches of violent sound are kept in check
by the context in which they emerge. A squeaking wheel is juxtaposed
over a malfunctioning machine part while an erstwhile carpenter works
his day away in vain. Handicapped locusts chirp their last gasps amidst
the impending doom of a nascent summer heatwave in a cloud of DDT. At
times the editing work almost calls to mind The Hafler Trio's work circa
A Thirsty Fish. It's clever yet foreboding with a remote sense of
optimism amidst an imminent apocalypse so to speak. Spiky barbs of
sounds are bandied about that accumulate to create a wall of noise
threatening to eventually take the work over, but are subdued by oil
barrel percussion edits. Quite an impressive composition.
The diminutive record bears the distinction of including source
recordings made by Huebner : 'electricity meters, badly working plugs,
kitchen tools, etc.' I imagine that the use of these sounds is intended
to forge an aesthetic kinship with TNB. At any rate, it works. The
dynamic interplay amongst the dispersion of the various sounds is
creative and dramatic. Again, noise and silence meet in harmony and
coexist on equal footing. The latter half of the side tends to be a bit
noisier and has a more consistent flow of material until the very end
flirts with silence and harsher textures bringing the whole thing full
circle. Every noise is exquisite and placed meticulously in relation to
its relative quietude. Honestly, nothing more can be said about the work
here except that an old steam radiator seems to be gasping its last
breath. Not a bad thing to hear. The music really stands out far beyond
typical noise recordings. Top-notch effort, mates.
Heathen Harvest
Contemporary
collaborative work between TNB and Das Synthetische Mischgewebe. Comes
as a high-spec LP release (full color everything in an ‘old-style’
tip-on sleeve) with a bonus 7" of DSM’s original sound-materials.
Rather than a wash of tool-shed shenanigans, this is a fairly
event-heavy Electro-Acoustic suite, coming in much closer to the
contemporary Musique Concrete of Lionel Marchetti or even Anestis
Logothetis’ Fantasmata 1960
than anything out of the harsh-Noise / post-Industrial camp. An
impressive record to say the least. Highly recommended !!! Mimaroglu
Various junk sounds are ground down and layered like a complex geologic
stratum. With intermittent silence, an amalgam of sounds with dense
structure gets twisted, slides, and dissolves with vivid undulation.
Though the overall feel of the sounds is half-solid, hard edged a stiff
metal feel comes to the surface occasionally. It's strange to say this,
but the resultant sound is really quite organic in spite of being
composed of inorganic solid sounds. Das Synthetische Mischgewebe
constructed this album, using TNB's raw materials. Though its basic
structure is geometric, the piece is not too serious and it has feel of
being aloof from the world. Molehill
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