contiguous: 22 context independent movements
[1997, pure]

sound artist randy hy yau (he also goes by rhy yau), is currently residing in san francisco. in addition to making music, he's also a photographer, curator, designer and he has his own record label auscultare research (whose releases you can get through ground fault's distribution). he's been involved in the experimental music scene since 1992.

every now and then i'll come across an album or artist, and marvel over how i've never really seen anyone mention anything about it. such is the case with contiguous, put out on rrrecords sub-label pure. granted this particular album was released back in 1997, and i was definitely not listening to music like this when i was in high school. anyways, ignore the fact that it's nearly ten years old, this album could fit in easily with today's crop of experimental and noise artists. it all just makes me wonder why rhy yau hasn't received more attention. well, maybe he did at one point, but people have moved on. i wouldn't have even heard of him if i didn't get the japan tour seven inch split that he put out with joe colley.

enough of the foreplay, let's get down to the actual music. contiguous is twenty two tracks, clocking in at around fifty-one minutes. the title 'contiguous', seems to be a bit misleading, even contradictory, especially when "context independent movements" follows it. each of the tracks appear to have their own identities and they don't flow into each other. a lot of the songs are less than two minutes long, and you wouldn't think that they would sustain themselves as individual pieces of music, but surprisingly most of them work singularly and don't come across as transitional movements. the disc starts off with randy making weird vocal noises, grunts, yelps, random unintelligible shouts, that seem a bit silly until about a minute and a half in and then his vocals are transformed and distorted into some great noise. that track really sets the tone for the album. it's mostly about yau's vocal manipulation, his vascillation between amusing, bordering on absurd, sounds and then transforming that into something jarring. in addition to to the vocals, the sound on contiguous spends a lot of time on the minimal side and there's also more organic sounds (such as metal on metal noise) that get amplified or otherwise affected. for the most part, the tracks on here don't really have very much discernable structure, but with their short running times, it never presents an issue of being self-indulgent. it's a nice reprieve from all those two to three track twenty-minute-a piece albums that noise artists are so fond of making.

for me, this was a great album, and i'd definitely suggest checking it out, whether it be via your favorite file sharing network, or actually getting physical copies of randy's music. blossoming noise has quite a few of his releases for sale, including this one (for 8 bucks).

Untitled Track Four

away away
[2006, jyrk]

charalambides member tom carter definitely knows how to keep himself busy, outside of his main group he's, at one point in time, been in or collaborated with the following:

abrasion ensemble
primoridal undermind
kyrgyz
the friday group
badgerlore
bardo pond
shawn david mcmillen
pip proud
bardo pond
robert horton
zaika

spiderwebs are one of many groups recently to pop up featuring tom carter. this time he's joined by guitarist sandy ewen, who has her hands in a few things as well, most notably of which is the band the weird weeds.

out of all of the charalambides members to do solo and various side projects, tom carter has always been my second favorite member. heather leigh's efforts, taurpis tula, scorces and her solo works, have always made more of an impression on me than any of tom's or christina carter's projects, excluding taurpis tula.

away away definitely ranks up there with one of the better charalambides-related releases, and it's a hell of a lot better than anything the weird weeds have done. while i haven't listened to everything, or even most of what tom carter has put out, i've heard enough of it to know that this is a bit different than his solo cds. where on some of those his sound vascillated between drone and structured acoustic guitar playing, this seems a lot looser. some of that feel could be contributed to sandy's experience in houston's improvisational music scene.

the opening track sets things off on a misleading tone. it's about fourteen minutes of feedback and random guitar noise, easily the least structured piece of music on the album, but a great track nonetheless. the four remaining tracks definitely take on a different feel to them. excluding the first track, the remaining four all have a similiar feel to them. they have a very open and warmer sound, and that sound doesn't vary too much from track to track. if there's any real difference, it would be in the acoustic department. while on some tracks the emphasis is on random strumming and plucking, it sometimes reaches a level of actual guitar playing, that gives it a teeny bit of structure. not too much, but it all works and comes together quite nicely.

my advice would be to skip overhyped tom carter projects such as badgerlore, and give away away a listen.

in addition to this release, spiderwebs also have a three-way split cd with mike tamburo and matthew mcdowell & keenan lawler entitled strands formerly braided, put out on music fellowship.

Untitled Track Five