GÜNTER MÜLLER / VOICE CRACK
buda_rom
For 4 Ears
CD1344


As the 21st century unfolds, the availability of advanced technology and electronics sometimes means that music played at home and in public can differ immeasurably. This is especially true of the sub-genre of improvised music that involves electronics. Case in point this disc by the Swiss trio of Voice Crack -- Andy Guhl and Norbert Möslang -- and Günter Müller. Although all of the tracks were initially recorded live, with four subsequently remixed, consuming them in your own listening space is vastly different from "seeing" the band in person. Those quotation marks are there intentionally. Since the three, who add erikm on turntables and live sampling to become Poire_ Z, prefer to work in near darkness, and with much of the so-called performance consisting of the audience watching shadowy intense figures peering at video screens, the effect is anything but visual. Besides, with creative subtleties commonly swallowed by an open space's acoustics, the effect can be like peering at a painting through a keyhole.

However, heard without distractions at slightly louder than usual volume on a CD player, what the trio creates with Müller's selected percussion, minidiscs and electronics plus Guhl and Möslang's cracked everyday electronics comes clearly into auditory focus. First of all, it's nearly impossible to tell which are the live tracks and which are the remixes. There are good reasons for that: experience. Voice Crack has utilized variations of radios, turntables, transmitters, dictating machines, magnetic and radio waves as complex, cracked, everyday-electronics since 1972. Past collaborators have included noise-improv trio Borbetomagus, and producer/musician Jim O'Rourke.

Müller, whose instruments of choice are modulated electronically with a mobile pick-up and microphone system, explored electronics as part of then band Nachluft as long ago as 1986. Since then his associates have ranged across the jazz and improv field including saxophonist Michel Doneda, cornettist Butch Morris, AMM guitarist Keith Rowe and O'Rourke.

Perversely though, after all that, since the remixes are all in the three to four minute range, they don't get to develop much beyond initial sound variations. Essentially what you hear is the now-standard audio field of what appears to be replication of spinning motors, electronic distortion, TGV railway travel and bubbling liquids. The "live" tracks are much more absorbing, but then again on disc you can concentrate on the sounds without expecting visuals.

For instance, "buda_two" has a sort of obdurate rhythm that seems to mix the metallic clunk and crunch of percussion with static radio waves and what could be the warbling of a mechanical bird. Submerging the scratches, buzzes and undertones of voices from a radio broadcast at one point is the genuine sound of an airplane noisily taking off. After these electrical disturbances expand and become stentorian you begin to wonder if the plane has crashed or is perhaps merely loudly strafing a village with machine gun fire. Eventually, after a few episodes that alternate silence and noise the drone disappears.

Mechanical activity that could be the soundtrack for the first Industrial Revolution suggests itself on "buda_three," which begins with what appears to be a factory whistle shrilling. Soon motorized bangs and clunks give way to something that sounds like a spinning wheel slowly being immersed in water. As it whirls more quickly it takes on a bass saxophone-like tone, blaring a rhythmic theme that contrasts with the metal squeals. In the aural distance the water must lead to a harbor, for what appears to a tugboat belching smokestack music makes an appearance. Timbral variations soon become even stranger as vocal harmonies are suggested -- has a doo-wop group been trapped in the smokestack and is trying to sing its way out?

You won't think of close harmony vocal groups as much as heavy metal when you listen to "buda_one" though. That's because the track is much more industrial than anything Black Sabbath or Iron Maiden ever imagined. Cranked up, you could be listening to the spinning motor of a fan belt running faster until it takes on bandsaw properties. Earlier, what appeared to be the replication of a stylus cutting into turntable grooves had been heard, but now the saw's steady hum is bisected by what seems to be a video game's whirling cycles and squeaking echoes. By the track's finale, as the drone quickens and gets more metallic it moves through electronically tinged aviary sounds into an elongated train whistle with ghostly overtones, then gradually fades.

A profound experience for the organ of Corti, this CD can create its own visuals for the internal optic receiver.


-- Ken Waxman


Track Listing: 1. roma_one; 2. buda_one; 3. roma_two; 4. buda_two; 5. roma_three; 6. buda_three; 7. roma_four


Personnel: Günter Müller, selected percussion, minidiscs, electronics; Andy Guhl and Norbert Möslang, cracked everyday electronics