Cristopher Cichocki/Kevin Shields/Rale – Artist Series Vol. 1 [Deathbomb Arc/Table of Contents]

This is the next installment of the Kevin Shields-related round-up…
To clarify the title of this review a bit, Cristopher Cichocki is the filmmaker behind this 3” DVD-r of which he created visual accompaniment to a Kevin Shields piece as well as a Rale piece. The goal of the project is to translate the “micro-grain obsessions” of the two composers into a visual medium. This is done through serious, split-second editing working at maximum frame rates. (I stole that bit from the press release, I actually don’t know shit about film editing)
The Kevin Shields track goes first. “Motorhands” was also seen on the vinyl bonanza Thrash Sabbatical but here it’s delivered in spiffy, digital quality (though through my crappy TV speakers). I’m gonna try not to focus too much on what all the visuals are and a bit more on the overall effect the video creates. That said, as a starting point I’ll mention that much of the raw footage from this video looks to be images taken during a Kevin Shields performance. That metallic crank she’s so fond of (apparently a “film synchronizer”, if I can trust internet research) makes a prominent cameo appearance early on. The audio begins with a steady sine tone. When the noise breaks, an image (well actually it’s like a hundred really similar images) of Eva Aguila’s gear begins shaking erratically, moving between images drenched in red light and soft pink. What freaks me out is the way all her gear seems to be continually “slipping” across the table. It is a very disorienting feeling, much like one gets from hearing Aguila’s music. There’s a jump from that relatively static image to a series of images where the camera appears to be swooping in close to Aguila, though that may just be the editing. This set of images is disorienting as well but in another manner. The juxtaposition (sorry if I sound like a tool) of the nearly static image with the next set of short moving images almost creates the sensation in my body of being stationary (which I am) and then suddenly, repeatedly being jolted forward. That isn’t even the real brilliance here; that set of moving images is positioned perfectly with a part in the audio where Aguila repeatedly breaks the flow of noise with a hi-pitched tone, an adrenalized lurching if that makes any sense. The video ends with a frantic, psychedelic mindfuck of nature images with things of various colors: a cool blue, a pale green, a grey and a kinda orange-red-gold. The composite of the frenzied alternation of all those images looks galactic to me which is pretty rad to behold.
The second video is titled “Tattered Syntax” with Rale, which is a project of noise artist and Cassette Gods scribe, Bill Hutson’s. As far as I can tell, this is the first time this track has been released, though I’m far from a Rale expert. No matter. The majority of the footage used here seems to be images of metal, light, earth, modern architecture and probably some other stuff that I’m not catching. There’s a recurring section with what looks like a wall of light bulbs, where their varying intensities in the different images of the bulbs are cut to a shimmering, digital crackle in the audio. Patterned metallic flooring is intercut causing the columns of lights and embossments of the floor to interact, almost as if those little things could dance. The interplay of these two images begins to break up as the audio gets more intense, until it explodes along with a new group of images that are deceptively clear but still play tricks on my mind. There’s a brief lull before the video/audio elements both just go off, for lack of a better term. Each time I watch this I catch a different image I didn’t see before which leads me to the conclusion that Cichocki has weaved a near infinite amount of images here. Both the audio and the video blow right past me which leads to the best part of the video for me. Hutson takes an unexpected break and in that short-lived silence there’s a few images (I’m guessing an upclose shot of a burning joint but who knows) that barely last for a nanosecond and it’s a really dramatic, eerie feeling to suddenly hear silence and see a few beautiful, though still unclear, images. It feels like my heart stops every time I reach that point, even when I know it’s coming. After this there’s a brief return to the light/metal theme before more images jump in, this time geologic, which are increasingly more smeared than the ones before. The track ends how it began with flashing lights and static crackle.
Cichocki has done a great job adapting the work of Aguila and Hutson into visual forms and that is a weighty accomplishment. Watching this DVD-r made me ponder the difference between the way we interpret sound and images. I guess I can only speak for myself but when I look at something visual I try to “make sense” of it as you can see by my preoccupation with figuring out what single images composed these videos. Anything goes for sound, however. While I can often be curious of what is making the sounds I’m hearing, I just accept the sounds as sounds more often than constantly trying to figure out what is producing it. Anyway, I don’t actually have a point about that, just an observation.
I have to mention the packaging as well because, well, it should be mentioned. This 3” DVD-r comes mounted on a 5x7 sheet of aluminum! This is then wrapped in a vellum cover with info and so forth. It looks killer and there’s nothing like holding a DVD mounted on aluminum in yr palm to give a boost to the old self-esteem. Trust me on that one. The release is limited to 75 copies and already sold out at Table of Contents; Deathbomb Arc still has some in stock though so hurry if you want one. It appears Volume 2 has been released as well with audio by Warm Climate and I Heart Lung.
The official theatrical (ha!) trailer

Brian Miller & Kevin Shields – We Had a Baby and It Will Die [Deathbomb Arc]

Here comes the next exciting installment of the Kevin Shields files...
This is the first DVD-r release I’ve ever seen and I can’t think of a more overjoyed/scarier pair to initiate me. Case in point, when you reach the menu an incredibly loud noise loop starts playing and the first time I put the dvd in, it made me jump ten feet in the air. So I’m a wuss, whatever, let’s move on.
We Had a Baby and It Will Die is a “short film” comprised of footage from a handful of BM+KS live sets recorded during a west coast tour, and it is fucking insane.
One of the first images you get features Eva (who also edited the film) manipulating electronics and Brian rolling an amp around on the ground, walking around in circles with a dazed and simultaneously manic look on his face. I’m pretty sure the amp would be safer in GITMO. The first “set” is similar with Eva working with a small array of electronic devices creating strangled, pitchshifted swoops. Brian Miller is a tape fanatic (adhesive not magnetic); he’s never seen with out a roll of packing tape in the entire thing. Anyhow, he tapes all the equipment together and the duo begin rolling around in the pile of equipment against an almighty cacophony. The next set is really short and about half of it is Miller introducing the name of song they are going to play, which is “Possessions are Fleeting”. It’s a Simpsons reference apparently. They start raging and are done after a minute or two. Onto the third set, which sounds like it is raining nails. The video footage is edited together from a number of different sets it looks like. Actually I think I’m gonna give up on trying separate these as “sets”. One performance is amusing where Miller with his trusty tape roll begins wrapping it around everyone/everything in sight eventually becoming caught in his own web and with the help of Eva’s army of sine waves he finds the strength to break free from his self-adhered shackles. The last show of the tour is my favorite because it’s equally chaotic and destructive aurally and visually. There’s an absolutely wrecked speaker cabinet and a guy in a suit with a bowler that’s doing a vaguely interpretive dance. And Aguila is an out-and-out monster with her circuitry, even watching her I have no idea how she does what she does.
It seems to me that this DVD-r is a great summation of Miller’s and Aguila’s attitudes toward making music, particularly noise music. They make music with supreme positivity. Despite the harsh textures they summon and their destructive tendencies, it’s all done in good-natured expression—you know, for fun. There’s no sort of angst or obsession with violence or misogyny that seems to be bound to harsh noise music way more often than not. And the two have my total respect for their approach.
While “short film” isn’t the most accurate term to bestow upon We Had a Baby and It Will Die it beats “concert film” or “album”—and I’m not even sure what term would be accurate. The DVD is more about the spectacle of the performance as a whole; the noise, the venue, the crowd, Miller’s spasmodic disruptions of Aguila’s concentration all evenly make up the experience of watching this. It’s a unique artifact.
Like any DVD worth its salt, We Had a Baby and It Will Die has special features! Miller and Aguila each contribute an extra short. Aguila’s is called “1st Live at Il Corral” and it features music by Brian Miller set to home video of a southwestern wedding and then cuts to a long continuous shot while a camera is pushed through a drain pipe. It’s impossible to describe why but I have a very creeped out, almost physical reaction to the shot in the pipe. I don’t know if that was the goal, or if I’m a closet claustrophobe or what but, man, it freaks me out every time I see it. Brian Miller’s video is titled “I Can Expand My Universe Without You: an I/O composition in the key of I” which is basically signal destruction on film. I’m pretty sure there’s live footage at the center of this but you’d be hard pressed to make anything out through distorted colors and video glitches. The special feature I’d really like to see though is a DVD commentary; here’s to hoping for a 10th anniversary collector’s edition!
This has been long sold out but, hey, long gone stuff pops up in distros randomly all the time, although so you can taste a bit of the insanity yourself…
Peep this and absorb it, keep the planets in their proper orbit

Brian Miller & Kevin Shields/Pump Kinn & Don – Virgin Passwords [Weird Forest]

So I have accrued a number of slammin’ Kevin Shields-related projects (yes!) and initially I was gonna do a massive roundup review of them all. But in a misguided attempt to create suspense(?) and keep the audience hungry for more(???) I am going to post a review of one of the items once a day for the next however many days. Sound like a fun idea? Probably not; though at least you get to read about Eva Aguila’s and her friends’ excursions into the weird forest of noise! (see what I did there?) Oh, and before we get any further, in case you're unaware Kevin Shields here refers to Eva Aguila's noise project not the guy who is actually named Kevin Shields. And I might add, her work is way better than anything that guy ever did, for serious.
Virgin Passwords is an LP split between a pair of signal crushing duos/collaborations. The Brian Miller & Kevin Shields side consists of three tracks recorded after a massive amount of touring—9 months apparently. “Noise like Weight” begins with shards of static and occasionally stable hi-pitched feedback. Competing with semi-steady arrhythmic shuddering, Brian’s vocals are repeatedly beaten down to the point of almost non-existence but a few lucky syllables slip through the cracks. Near the end the track erupts a little, blowing off steam before an almost pretty passage where vocals return with a slightly stronger presence against a loop of a half-formed melody. It’s actually rather reserved for a BM+KS recording. I’m always amazed by the duo’s ability to control their sound and the sheer amount of sounds they conjure up with a pretty simple, stream-lined set-up. The brilliantly titled, “Ain’t Never Been Down With OPP”, is a bit more confrontational with a thick wave of static before some scurrying pitch-shifted, tape-fucked sounds explode blowing out the walls of wherever they were playing. Lots of other stuff is going on too but it all goes so fast, I’ll be damned if I can get down two words before something new happens and distracts me. The track is over too quick but it ends with brief but seriously groovy stuttering sine waves; making me long for the day when BM+KS put out a dance record. The final piece “Virgin Mafia” may be best of the three but that’s a contentious issue in my mind. This track is heavy; I can’t help jamming it way too loud. It has a relentless forward drive and sticks to developing a few main ideas. That is until it takes a sharp left turn beginning with slowly building hi-pitched feedback before cresting, dropping out, bringing in some sing/speak vocals, and slowly building the whole thing over again but this time extra batshit insane. I’m afraid this fucking thing is gonna set my eardrums on fire or something, but that’s a risk I’m willing to fake. The piece ends in a sublime, ecstatic freakout of charred circuits and synapses. Fuck, man, it’s amazing. This side is the best piece of the Brian Miller & Kevin Shields collab discography I’ve come across and like all Kevin Shields works, it only gets better with time.
On the flip side resides a track by Pump Kinn & Don, neither of which was I previously acquainted. The side is one track, untitled as far as I can tell. It begins with pre-recording chatter and rustling. When things get moving there’s a low synth-y totally seasick groove cycling and slowly feedback bleats overtake it. There’s a kind of distant hypnotic element in the piece which is really strange for a semi-harsh noise track like this one. The piece unsuspectingly coheres with looped percussive clanks buried in distortion pedals before it, just as unsuspectingly, disintegrates before cohering again. The noise maintains its general temperament to sustain but becomes sharper. There is an almost drone-like quality to the piece (in a Hototogisu type way I guess) marking it with a certain patience and slow dynamics that definitely works for the track. There are enough patches where a rhythmic thrust materializes briefly and dissipates not allowing the track to get stagnant. That said though, the track does feel a bit long overall. I’m gonna have to keep my eyes out any more releases by these two though.
Pairing the two artists’ styles of noise is an interesting contrast of the way each assemble their work; BM+KS creating hyperactive—though ingeniously constructed—pieces while Pump Kinn lets their track ebb and flow a bit, coming together gradually. The LP is available for cheap through Deathbomb Arc and through Weird Forest and comes in a classy, multi-layered screen printed cardboard sleeve. If you like noise and vinyl this is the best deal you’re gonna get.
*If you are interested in buying this release, I encourage you to buy it through the Kevin Shields webstore, Eva and Brittany Gould had all their gear stolen in Europe on their Caldera Lakes tour and anything bought through Eva will benefit the extra costs now facing her.

Kevin Shields – Cavity Fever [Arbor]/Kevin Shields – Human Wider Experience [Tanzprocesz]

So after I discovered the greatness of Eva Aguila’s Kevin Shields project in the lovely summer of ’07 with the massive mind ripper/contender for album of the year The Death of Patience, I had snapped up some current (at the time) Kevin Shields frequencies right away. So now it’s almost the end of the year and I’m finally getting around to reviewing them, but hey, it’s rare when something I buy gets reviewed at all.
Starting with the Cavity Fever tape first, cause haven’t you heard? Tapes rule! This cassette is a bit more sedate than some other Kevin Shields work, but keep in mind that term is relative. The first track “Homely Straw” is a couple bass tones pulsing at various speeds and a slowed down alarm bell. There is some delayed contact mic’d stuff going on as well, almost chiming as the bass pulse gets more sinister. The track to me, actually occupies more of the drone realm than noise. “Lovely Day is a Hike Day”, however, gets noisy. There are plenty of high pitched sine tones against roughly manipulated waves of feedback. The thing then dissolves into to a strange keyboard part. Not a ditty, but close. The last track on side A, “Coarse Truth”, sounds like an extension of the previous track. The keyboard part is still present but jagged shards of fuzz being worked and kneaded dominate the track. On the second side, “Gaming Ritual” brings back the keyboard slowly adding layers of distortion. Eventually the keyboard is phased out leaving a vast shitstorm of electronics washing over me like the plague. For the all the noise, it’s a pretty moderately paced piece that builds to a great sputtering, spitting climax of charred circuitry and gnashing teeth. The oh so truthfully titled “Because I Know You Can’t Get Enough” closes out the tape, operating like everything heard previously condensed into three and a half minutes. The noise, the keyboard, the scrambled rhythms; they’re all there.
The magnificently titled half-hour of power Human Wider Experience is coarser and more forceful. After the one minute opener “Catalyst”, “Covenant Grunt” takes the stage. With a sustained bass note with actually some really sick beats. Well it’s not “beats” so much as just the way Aguila cuts up the tone but it works and little by little succumbs to a barrage of flames. After the frayed, 91 second inferno “Frecke Wrist”, comes the most interesting and best track “Children’s Court”. I’m not sure what the sound source here is but it sounds like a brittle clanking toy guitar or something. It sounds like there are also some soft vocals in the background which add an interesting “human” counterpoint to the ear piercingness of the other noises. Out of nowhere the whole thing coheres into relatively solid brick of sound (for a moment anyway). There is a lot more manipulated filter/synth type sounds that actually work really well with the harshness, both opening up the sound and adding a bit roundness to the serrated static. Aguila’s knack for composition really comes into play here but because the track, lasting nearly 17 minutes, never gets tired. She constantly adds new sounds and ideas, whether she’s building on previous ones or growing a whole new garden of sound. One of the things I marvel at most about Aguila’s work is how well she controls the chaos. A lot of noise stuff I hear sounds like the gear is running the show not the artist, but with Aguila’s work the effortless construction and grace of her style is unmistakable. As much as I love The Death of Patience, “Children’s Court” may be her best work; that I’ve heard at least. Utterly amazing. The short fifth track, “Shat & Boney Enjoying a Little”, features some help from Amy of Yuma Nora. Though I’m not exactly sure what she’s operating in the track. It’s probably the most harsh and heavy piece on the record. Unrelenting torrents of feedback. “Slug Mouth” really did a number on me because of its sweetness. After 25 minutes of noise, I was thrown off by the extended, clean solo keyboard piece. I kept expecting to be lacerated by a brutal feedback squall, but was even more thrown off when it never came. Just five minutes of twee keyboard plinking. I’ve got to hand it to Eva; she knows how to keep me guessing.
While neither are as brain collapsing as The Death of Patience both are totally sweet in their own right. Cavity Fever is sold out at source but you can probably still get it at a few distros, Human Wider Experience is available however, though limited to a hundred. Both releases are aesthetically pleasing as well which is a trademark of both labels. Arbor did a classy job as always. Cavity Fever features killer artwork by George Myers (Breaking World Records), a double sided j-card and the most beautiful, blue-green sprayjob I’ve ever seen on a tape. French label, Tanzprocesz has been responsible for some of the most innovative packaging ideas I’ve come across. The packaging of Human Wider Experience, while not particularly ingenious, is certainly out of the ordinary. A recycled fold-out, sprayed LP cover with pasted on art and info and the CD-r is floating on of those little numbs. Definitely nice to see when most labels are just doing the standard CD-r-in-slipcase thing. Collect ‘em all.

Kevin Shields – The Death of Patience [Deathbomb Arc/EMR/Entropic Tarot]/Foot Village – Fuck the Future [Deathbomb Arc/ExBx Tapes/NGWTT/olFactory]

Now that the awesome folks over at Animal Psi have beaten me to the punch (I was not expecting such a sneaky Labor Day weekend update), I am here to REALLY give you no excuse not to pick Kevin Shields’ newest, The Death of Patience. It’s a first rate scorcher to be sure. Also joining Kevin is the good people of Foot Village, whose Fuck the Future CD came out last year and compiles various out of print releases. They both come courtesy of super nice/apparently a tad bit crazy Brian Miller, purveyor of Deathbomb Arc and the oh-so-rad Cassette Gods site. So now that I’ve bludgeoned you with a million names, I’ll let miss Kevin Shields bludgeon me into sweet sonic submission and then let the Foot Village just straight up bludgeon me to a bloody, baffled pulp.
Kevin Shields, in my humble expert opinion, is one of the raddest names you could give a musical project. And hey, a rad name is half the battle, right? Well, no. But it does help sometimes. Eva Aguila doesn’t need any though, so all the points she gets for the name are bonus ones. Anyway, now that yr probably confused out of yr mind, it’s a perfect place to start talking about The Death of Patience. I’ve been listening to this thing a lot since receiving it, and this baby is HARSH. The album starts in classic bait and switch mode, with a few twee keyboard notes then promptly murders yr brain with roughly one and a half billion daggers of white noise. It’s dense and visceral and, just, wow. Aguila really knows how to build a track. It’s very well paced, well composed and becomes increasingly interesting as it moves along rather than vice versa. I’m not exactly sure what she’s using here but there is mondo amounts of feedback and it sounds like she’s manipulating it with delay pedals and probably a bunch of other things. Though even minus the musical merits, the track would be impressive for its pure force alone. “Nothing’s Never Ending” travels along steamrolling everything in site, until a start/stop static breakdown and then all of a sudden there is a totally lucid drum machine and keyboard duet. What the hell? Is this what she has been riffing on this whole time and we just couldn’t catch it through the fuzz? I don’t know. But she ain’t content to just let the duo serenely waltz off, she whips up another sonic windstorm before the tracks end. Maybe my favorite track on here, “Apparently” is quite though subtly rhythmic. Layers upon layers of jumpy, crackling sound. The track sounds like your house (or yr skull maybe) is being ripped apart. Walls are crumbling, electrical outlets are spewing a thousand sparks a minute, you used to be in yr cozy bed on the second floor but now yr in the basement crushed under piles of plaster and wrecked floorboards. Yr being swallowed up into the Earth as everything caves in around you. Abruptly yr shot back into real life as the track ends. Intense, to say the least. “Catholic Guilt” riffs on a sequenced synth loop, a pitchshifted almost rave-like kickdrum sound joins in before tape squeal breaks things momentarily. Then things get going like those rollercoaster cranks that pull you up the hill but, you know, run through hundreds of distortion pedals. The whole thing just builds and builds, occasionally giving you a moment to catch your breath. There are so many things going on in this poisonous fog, various rhythmic loops of stuttered screeches, pitch manipulations, undulating noise unguent at seemingly every possible frequency. It’s like taking a drop of pond water and examining it under a microscope, and seeing the endless amounts of life forms that reside there. The closer, “Bless You” (aww, how polite) is another favorite and centers itself around a percussive loop which plays out untouched for awhile at the beginning until Eva brings da noize hot and heavy. A few reviews and things I’ve read about Kevin Shields’ music makes reference to cold or icy things which doesn’t make sense to me. This is a fucking firestorm! Most of the heaviest moments on the record reside here. There are some thoroughly devastating sounds to be had here. Totally savage but totally under control. Moving with, around and sometimes just obliterating the beat. The last couple minutes segue into an infinitely echoing bit of ‘xylophone setting’ keyboardwork. Each of the five tracks was recorded in a different place but Brian Miller did an excellent job with the mastering, keeping a continuous consistent “sound” to the album (not to say Aguila had no part in that though). This thing really is intensity in 10/2 cities—sorry, I’ve got to meet my daily lame joke quota. Hototogisu have always been the titans of harsh, dense noise, in my mind. But it looks like Kevin Shields has made a place right up there along side them. My ears are on all things Aguila now.
In case you have yet to hear, the D.L. Hughley on Foot Village is drums, drums, drums and crazed singalongs too. There is at least one drum kit and then all sorts of other kinds of percussive tools. The other thing is that most tracks are named after a place i.e. “Brazil” and the Village is fond of shouting the title at the beginning of each track. Foot Village falls somewhere between interesting sonic experience for the listener and what was probably a really fun sonic experience for the players. What I like about the percussive only attack is that, although there is no melodic instrument or melody being purposely performed, occasional melodies randomly emerge from the barrage of tones. The other thing that I am quite thankful for actually is that Foot Village knows how to play drums and plays them well. Whenever I hear about an all drum band, I can’t help but think of Burning Man-style drum circles which I am not down with. Anyhow, the Foot Villagers do a great job with various kinds of dynamic arrangements and just no-nonsense, bodyrockin’/bodyslammin’ beats. Which is a good thing because the vocal side of things has probably wayyy too much nonsense. Sometimes their words are so bizarre it nearly works (“World Fantasry” with the now deceased Weirdo Begeirdo) and sometimes their vomiting is so grating that it nearly hurts (“Egypt”). I’m not sure how things would sound if the album was strictly drums only, but at this point in my life at least, not feeling the vocals too much. As far as comparisons, I’m kinda lost. The group that is most like them in theory is Big A little a and, they do a little but Foot Village is just way more out there and deranged. They don’t really have too much in common with Taiko or other kinds of drum music that I know of, though I am certainly no drum scholar. The best thing I got for you is the double drummer line-up of Ettrick. (Now there’s an idea, a Foot Village/Ettrick collabo would be off the hook) FV and the Ettrick drum squad share the same wild-eyed fury and penchant for busting heads (at least drumheads). The most fish-outta-water entry here is a Pete Swanson remix of “Antartica” (which in it’s original version is one of the strongest tracks anyhow). It’s got some minimal Yellow Swans-esque droning a la Descension Yellow Swans or Drift Yellow Swans with cut-up, effect drum crashes spliced in. An interesting re-imagining of the FV sound. All in all, I’d say lose the vocals (or least make them less of the focus) and I’m totally on board. Otherwise, I really dig the rawness and blockrockin’ beats as I mentioned before, and that, love it or hate it, Foot Village has carved out their own weird little niche in the world (or their fantasy of it anyway.)
Both CDs are professionally packaged/pressed in jewelcases and the whole nine. As you can see both come with their own brand of weird/sweet cover art too. Oh yeah, Fuck the Future comes with lyrics?!?

**due to restrictions on the amount of characters in the post title, I had to abbreviate three label names, so EMR = Experimental Music Research, ExBx Tapes = Excite Bike Tapes and NGWTT = Nothing Gets Worse Than This. My apologies to those labels.