Con-vpilation reviewed by Sven Swift
22-12-2006

Experimentalism has to be judged from the point of view of novelty. Did you ever hear this combination of sounds? Where do these strange harmonies come from? The enjoyable Experimental Music-label Con-v from Spain put up a great compilation of eleven artists that do not release at Con-v to get this point straight. Here’s my lab report.

Italian electronic music ‘engineer’ Luca Bergero a.k.a. Fthievel starts with his Emo-Drone ‘Seunalacrima’. Analog glitches, harmonic sinus-tones like a restrained feedback, some processed field-recordings. Guess he’s into Györgi Ligeti. Well-known Tomas Korber from Zurich comes afterwards and heads in a quite similar direction. It takes four minutes and 30 seconds of piling up smooth drones like interfering voltage and 70’s science-fiction bleeps to end them up with a violent hit on the cut out. Nice effect, but the rest didn’t hit me too hard.

Chicago giants: Adam Sonderberg & Sam Dellarias cooperation is the first highlight of this compilation. Sonderberg runs the beautiful Longbox-label, Dellaria is also very active in the north american improv-scene. Their track ‘Dead Pink’ comes up with closely monitored tom-drum recordings, very delicate sounding high-pitched overtones sampled or engendered I can’t say. Stunning. It is simple but it’s great, experimentalism und improvised sound-design at its best. A sudden slide to ‘chaotic frenzy of dissonant noise’ is provided by classical educated flutist Sabine Vogel (Potsdam, Germany). The composition ‘Snowtide’ explores the possibilities of playing piccolo and German flutes the other way ‘round, sort of. Interesting if you know how it’s done, and a really fresh approach at the border from Free Jazz to Avant-Garde sound-sculpturing. Harsh one. Xabier Erkizia from western Spain afterwards is a good dramaturgical choice. His lower chase glitches are nothing new but work out in the composition. Coeval (Juan Carlos Blancas & Jose Alberto Gaspar from Spain) from the Label Minus N show up with their dense field-recordings. The astonishing thing is, these guys manage to let their sounds float slowly into another, add some strange electronic communication glitches and make everything sound damn entertaining. An abstract radio play.

Esther Venrooy adds spooky spoken word-lyrics of Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (of Scientology-fame) to swelling synth-sounds… maybe I didn’t get it, but I think it’s boring. Nothing new. Her Studies of saxophone in the Netherlands didn’t seem to have great impact on her current compositions. Well. Spanish electronic music-veteran Vitor Joaquim at position eight is far better. His ‘Void’ is made of highly repetitive sample-clusters, cut-up vocals and an interesting harmonic concept- interesting because the composition features a tight minor tuning. The second single release, in a matter of speaking. A very beautiful little piece of improvised music is ‘Cosmic Sound’ by Belgian couple Erratic & Lina. Guitars, Synthesizer, field-recordings, senseless talking. Playful and simpatico. Margarida Garcia improvises on her guitar. Not mine, I have to admit. Can’t recognize anything interesting about her ‘The Way of the Golden Hand’, please prove me wrong, anyone.

The Conv-pilation ends with UK trio Rameses III. Their song is a splendid piece of ambient Avant-Folk, thousand layers of guitar, reverberated singing, a simple unspent melody. Check their (commercial) album ‘Matanuska’ on Music Fellowship!