The Wire Tapper 13

[iloverage]

A good listen as always...

THE WIRE TAPPER 13

Free with The Wire June 2005 issue 256

Tracklisting

01 HANNE HUKKELBERG EASE

FROM LITTLE THINGS (LEAF)

The 26 year old singer is the latest distinctive voice to erupt from Norway's fertile music scene, having served time in projects ranging from Improv to Metal and jazz rock. Hukkelberg, born in Kongsberg and educated at Oslo Academy of Music, plays synth, glockenspiel, bass, Wurlitzer, piano, lyre, violin, guitar and various domestic objects on her debut album, which features musicians from Jaga Jazzist, Kaada, Shining, Kiruna and Exploding Plastix.

Leaf

02 MANDARIN MOVIE THE GREEN GIRAFFE

FROM MANDARIN MOVIE (AESTHETICS)

Mandarin Movie is the latest group put together by Rob Mazurek. The onetime Chicago scene mainstay currently resides in Brazil, where he has added painting and multimedia installation creations to his impressive list of musical achievements with the likes of Chicago Underground Trio and Jim O'Rourke. MM's line-up includes Mazurek on cornet, Moog, programming and 'electric eels', plus Alan Licht, Matt Lux, Steve Swell, Jason Ajemian and Frank Rosaly. The name derives from a dream in whch Mazurek found himself on a tall building: It was all light beams and flying discs and dense beautiful sounding explosions which put a good feeling in the back of your head.

Aesthetics

03 ALEXANDER HACKE SONNTAG

FROM SANCTUARY (KOOLARROW)

Alexander Hacke is the low-slung bassist with Berlin's Industrial titans, Einstürzende Neubauten. The starting point for Sanctuary was hours of recordings of friends, strangers and atmospheres he has captured on his portable minidisc over the years. These found recordings and short musical snippets have been incorporated into a sequence of songs that acts as a personal travelogue of the past decade. Sonntag is an excerpt from his score for a short film by Matthias Heise, Alles Wird Gut.

Koolarrow

04 MATT ELLIOTT WHATS WRONG

FROM DRINKING SONGS (ICI D'AILLEURS)

On his ninth record in as many years, Matt Elliott has left behind the claustrophobic swarms of electronic textures of earlier records such as Semtex (1996) and You Guys Kill Me (1998). The man behind 90s avant drum 'n' bass alias Third Eye Foundation has relocated from Bristol to France, and in the process has discovered a new seam of inspiration in European and Slavic folk music, which forms the predominant mood on Drinking Songs.

Ici D'Ailleurs

05 JUANA MOLINA SALVESE QUIEN PUEDA - JUANA'S EPIC RE-VERSION (EDIT)

FROM SALVESE QUIEN PUEDA REMIX EP (DOMINO)

In Argentina, Juana Molina is best known as a comedy actor for her part in the TV sketch show Juana Y Sus Hermanas. It was only in 2004 that the rest of the world heard her musical side after the release of Segundo and Tres Cosas by the UK's Domino Records, and she was invited to tour in support of David Byrne. The EP this track is taken from also features two remixes by labelmate Four Tet.

Domino Records

06 PICASTRO TOW-TRUCK

PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED (MONOTREME)

Picastro are a quintet hailing from Toronto, Canada, and their mournful, abrasive, string driven sound appears cut from the same cloth as Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Guitarist and vocalist Liz Hysen, who plays violin on this track, has appeared with Cerberus Shoal and Tigerbeat6 artist Dwayne Sodahberk, who guests on Tow-Truck. A track from their 2004 LP Red Your Blues was used in the TV series 24.

Monotrome Records

07 DEVIATIONISTS SWEETEST CHARMS

PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED (BiP-Hop)

Matthieu Voirin of the French op*ac collective and BiP-Hop label founder Philippe Petit began making music together in early 2004 in Marseille, choosing a name whose French meaning implies desertion in order to highlight a pacifist agenda. As Deviationists they move sideways from their more accustomed electronica strategies, enriching their sound with the help of Marien Käffer (vocals), Chris 'Same Actor' Cook (dulcimer), Sébastien Raimondo (self-made instruments), François Richez (guitars) and Françoise Basset (cello).

BiP-Hop

08 KID 606 PHOENIX RIDDIM

FROM RESILIENCE (WICHITA, FORTHCOMING)

Born in 1979 in Venezuela, Californian Miguel Depedro has already racked up an enormous discography of legal and semi-legal artefacts on such labels as Mille Plateaux, Ipecac, Fat Cat, 555, Soul Jazz and his own prolific Tigerbeat6. He moves restlessly but innovatively through most electronic styles including mash-up Jungle, drill 'n' bass, dancehall, Techno and cheeky bootleg sample-bricolage, but always with a passion and vigour that sets him apart from the herd. Phoenix Riddim is an Acidic skank from his next album, his first for Wichita.

Wichita

09 ARIEL PINK'S HAUNTED GRAFFITI JULES LOST HIS JEWELS

FROM WORN COPY (PAW TRACKS)

27 year old Los Angeleno Ariel Rosenberg has spent the best part of his formative years creating around 500 songs on his antique Yamaha eight-track cassette recorder, which explains the downgraded acoustic of the albums he's been releasing on The Animal Collective's Paw Tracks. Ariel plays all instruments himself and almost all the drum and percussion sounds you hear are generated out of his own mouth.

Paw Tracks

10 MJOHN SURMAN WAY BACK WHEN - PART 4

FROM WAY BACK WHEN (CUNEIFORM)

Saxophonist John Surman is one of the UK's most prolific and longstanding individuals in modern jazz, from his beginnings in the 1960s playing with Alexis Korner, Ronnie Scott, John McLaughlin and Brotherhood Of Breath, to later partnerships with Kenny Wheeler, Tony Oxley, Barre Phillips, John Warren and Dave Holland, among many others. Way Back When dates from 1969, when Surman gathered his friends John Taylor (electric piano), Brian Odgers (bass) and John Marshall (drums), plus Mike Osborne (alto sax) for a farewell session at London's Tangerine Studios (Surman was departing to work as The Trio with Stu Martin and Barre Phillips). The lost master tapes were only rediscovered in 2003.

Cuneiform

11 NICK CASTRO SUN SONG

FROM FURTHER FROM GRACE (STRANGE ATTRACTORS AUDIO HOUSE)

Chas Smith spends a lot of time in the deserts of Southern California, and his expansive textural pieces are made from rethinking traditional American instruments such as the 12 string dobro and pedal steel guitar. This track reassembles excerpts from two cuts from his An Hour Out Of Desert Center, plus elements from an unreleased live performance involving real-time loops.

Strange Attractors Audio House

12 JUNKBOY SHADOW AND ACT

FROM LOST PARADE (ENRAPTURED)

English brothers Rich and Mik Hanscomb, with longtime friend Ed Rae Allison, are influenced by soundtracks, Muzak, folk and electronic music. Everything, from their recordings to their small, self-run label Tommy Basilio, is kept on a domestic scale. Their goal is to design a sound which is different from mainstream mundanity yet accessible and fresh.

Enraptured

13 AKINORI RED FIELD

FROM RED FIELD (HÖREN)

Trained as a classical guitarist, Akinori has more recently worked as an assistant and engineer to Tango-based sound artist and instrument builder Akio Suzuki. His debut album is an attempt to fuse guitar with electronic music, and this track includes local acoustic elements of the Tango Peninsula, including the local 'singing sands' and insect noises from neighbouring fields.

Hören

14 CURRITUCK CO SLEEPWALKING I

FROM SLEEPWALKS IN THE GARDEN OF THE DEADROOM (TRACK & FIELD)

When people ask Kevin Barker to describe the sound of his 'group' Currituck Co, his reply is usually 'psychedelic folk', which makes sense, as he is a parttime member of Devendra Banhart's Vetiver, and earlier this year he toured with Drag City artist Joanna Newsom. Most of Sleepwalks, which shows off Barker's dark Country fingerpicking on steel guitars and banjos, as well as longer improvised pieces, was recorded in the bedroom of his home, Marlborough Farms, in Brooklyn.

Track & Field

15 BOMBAY 1 MORE THAN EVERYTHING

FROM STROBL (GRÖNLAND)

Bombay 1 are Düsseldorf's Kurt Dahlke (aka Pyrolator, ex-DAF/Der Plan), and Stoya, who has previously worked with Gang Of Four's Andy Gill. Strobl is Bombay 1's second LP, following 2003's Me Like You. That debut was full of glacial electronics and distorted Techno, which the Düsseldorf residents have rejected in favour of soul-bearing, restrained, bitter sweet songwriting. The album is named after the Austrian town, by a lake in the mountains, where the pair retreated to record.

Grönland

16 PAJO WAR IS DEAD

FROM PAJO (DOMINO)

Dave Pajo is the prolific founder member of Slint and Papa M, and former player with Tortoise and Zwan. Although his latest solo album sounds loose and spontaneous, it was in fact recorded entirely from samples and the primitive studio software included with Pajo's laptop.

Domino

17 CRIMETIME ORCHESTRA LIFE IS A BEAUTIFUL MONSTER

FROM LIFE IS A BEAUTIFUL MONSTER (JAZZAWAY)

This recording session in September 2004 assembled ten of Norway's finest young free jazz players for a monster jam. Bugge Wesseltoft hosted the date and played synth, along with Vidar Johansen and Kjetil Møster (tenor saxes), Jon Klette (alto sax), Sjur Milijeteig (trumpet), Øyvind Brekke (trombone), Anders Hana (guitar), Bjørnar Andresen (bass), Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (electric bass) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums).

Jazzaway

18 PORT-ROYAL FLARES PT 3

FROM FLARES (RESONANT)

Genoa collective port-royal have developed a sound founded on their delicate, shimmering widescreen guitar textures, augmented with home-recorded percussion, subtle vocal samples and electronics. Flares, whose 78 minutes is divided into three longform sections, is their debut album, although their Kraken EP came out in 2002 on the Italian Marsiglia imprint.

Resonant

19 FOVEA HEX DON'T THESE WINDOWS OPEN? (TRUE INTERVAL OFFERING)

VARIANT VERSION FROM NEITHER SPEAK NOR REMAIN SILENT EP SERIES (DIE STADT/JANET)

Fovea Hex is Clodagh Simonds (who has worked with sound artist Russell Mills) with Hafler Trio's Andrew McKenzie. Their first release, an EP series, includes contributions from Brian Eno and his brother Roger, film composer Carter Burwell, Toby Arnott and others, all of which get melted together by McKenzie into the the beguiling, sonically corrupted sound of Fovea Hex.

Die Stadt Janet

20 TU M' WHAT YOU SAY

FROM SOAP OPERA, LIVE @ STUDIO, CITTÀ SANT'ANGELO 14.02.04 (FÄLLT)

Rossano Polidoro and Emiliano Romanelli are Tu m', the duo from Pescara in Italy whose electronic dabblings have been described as full of mischievous playfulness and a cheeky, likeable humanity. This track is taken from their fizzling contribution to the Fällt label's ongoing Live Series, documenting notable electronica in performance.

Fällt

[spanky debrest]

Cheers for the reminder.

I'd probably have only stumbled across CD-less copies of the mag by the time I realised it was out.

[Darragh]

Picked this up yesterday, but I've yet to listen to it. I'll give it a spin tonight.

[Mike S]

Whilst I often distrust Wire's wilfully obscure and esoteric tastes at times, their Tapper CD's are often inspirational and infinitely more exciting than the increasingly desperate NME's hype fests. I did see this new Wire in the shops the other day but hadn't noticed the new Pajo track or would have picked it up in a flash.

Picastro are also an excellent listen but Matt Elliot's latest direction sounds dodgy, at best, to me...

[Magoo]

This may be the only way I can really get into Wire as I am utterly lost when reading the magazine without any frame of reference. Before it's retro rehash fascination I thought Uncut could be a little obscure in their taste but Wire really take the piss.

[Seerow]

This may be the only way I can really get into Wire as I am utterly lost when reading the magazine without any frame of reference. Before it's retro rehash fascination I thought Uncut could be a little obscure in their taste but Wire really take the piss.

←

I know what you mean about uncut. I used to fucking love it.