breizhiselad
[2006, erewhon]

erik cordier is an american baseball pitcher. eric cordier is a french sound & visual artist. today, i'll be focusing on the latter cordier. from what i can gather, eric's been releasing music since the late '80s, first as a part of un nom a coucher dehors with christophe grosos, melina doudoux, vincent legrand and vincent vivien. then around the mid-90s he began his solo works, from there, he teamed up with jean-luc guionnet, twice. the first was in a trio, phéromone, which was rounded out by pascal battus from archipel (with emmanuel petit, mathieu werchowski, sophie agnel and fabrice charles). phéromone released one disc on bruce russell's corpus hermeticum. jean-luc and eric cordier would again get together in trio form, this time with eric la casa, for afflux. this group is still active and just put out a cd last year on alluvial. eric's also released solo under the alias no output laptop, or nol.

i first became aware of eric cordier (i want that crawl unit shirt!) earlier this month at kaon when i was trying to get some background information about mizutani for my review. i saw his name listed (but without a bio or any description of his sound) amongst a few others that i recognized and liked; michael northam, seth nehil, roel meelkop, toy bizarre and others. with that, my interest was piqued enough to seek out some of his work, that search culminating with this gem of an album.

principally, breizhiselad uses excerpts from two pieces of music, bro goz ma zadou & ar baradoz, from an old 10" record entitled bretagne. i haven't been able to find out what ar baradoz is about exactly, but bro goz ma zadou is (was?) the anthem of the french province of brittany (bretagne; the western peninsula of france). the two versions heard on breizhiselad were sung by les chanteurs de la cathedrale de saint-brieuc (bro goz ma zadou translated from breton into french as vieux pays de mes pères, which, when translated into english, means old country of my fathers). since both were on an album named after a province, i can only assume that ar baradoz has nationalist overtones to it as well. i have to give credit (and thanks) to eric himself for supplying me with some of that information. as for his musical contributions, he's essentially stripping away that nationalism and focusing on the choir's vocal melodies and harmony, and the tweaking and rearrangement of.

i've always been a fan of choral music, despite not being the least bit religious. when it's done right there's an unparalleled ethereal beauty to it and cordier's captured that brilliantly. actually, i think what he's really done is accentuated it. by using various forms of manipulation, the addition of field recordings as well as warm, natural, vinyl noises, eric's provided the ideal platform for the vocal work. each of breizhiselad's six tracks utilizes a piece of music from the aforementioned songs, but he presents each of them in a different manner.

opener breizhiselad / ar baradoz is heavy on vinyl cracks and pops with a good deal of manipulations used on the music in the first half, then it sounds like its just ran through a delay pedal for middle and latter stretches. the effect creating a very eerie ambiance. in a good way.

the next track is light on the excerpts as they play a barely audible background role in the first half. this one's focus is on field recordings. it's worth noting that the faintness of the music is a fantastic compliment to his outdoor recordings. it was almost too subtle to fully appreciate, i eventually caught on around the third listen or so, and really came to enjoy the pensive feel to lieux de repose.

this album's penultimate moment of beauty comes with the fifth track, vieux pays de mes pères. here's where breizhiselad is at it's most haunting and breathtaking. it also seems like it's the most minimal piece. outside of vinyl noise, the music is mainly made from the chopping up of bro goz ma zadou - vieux pays de mes pères. when i say chopping up, i don't mean that in a detached idm sort of way. instead of being annoying, this is actually musical, in a similiar vein to what maurizio bianchi did with the soundtrack from a clockwork orange, only eric's doing it with vocals. the job that he does with said vocals on this one is outstanding, but i could throw adoring adjectives at this all day. it really comes together when the refrain saunters in after about seven minutes and, while mainly intact, it's delayed, echoed, layered, panned and repeated to perfection. hands down one of my favorite singular pieces of music in, at least, a long, long time.

one of the most important things that this album manages to achieve is that it leaves an undeniable impression on you. long after i will have forgotten how minimal the last rlw album was, how droney that damion romero album was or just how dense that cdr by the rita was, i'll remember what this sounds like. chances are pretty high that anyone else who listens to this will as well. surely our collective level of appreciation for this is bound to vary, but i feel pretty confident in saying that most of us haven't heard anything quite like it before.

oh, in case you were curious, erik cordier was 4-1 in 10 starts in the minors last year. i think we know which cordier had the better 2006.

Bro Goz Ma Zadou Excerpt (from 0:00 to 3:42)

i received this greatly appreciated package from wm at enterruption in seattle, formerly from oakland. enterruption was also involved in putting together the impressive wooden octopus skull musick pfestival. up until recently he and leslie ran the fantastic electric heavyland record/toy store in seattle, which was really the only place there that i could find great experimental/noise albums. actually, i first heard sixes when i randomly bought a split tape with him and anti-ear at electric heavyland. oh, the memories, at least there's still this label.

sixes

cursed beast
[2006, enterruption/troniks]

i don't know if i'm the only one, but i found quite a few similarities between cursed beast and wolf eyes' human animal, though cursed beast was recorded about four years prior, despite being released around the same time. this is like what human animal might've sounded like had nathan and co. scaled back the tough guy aggression. drum machines play prominent roles on both albums, sixes' baptised by fire with it's bleak feel, pounding bass and sinister sounding affected vocals seems like it'd fit perfectly on human animal. the first minute and a half of wolf eyes' fantastic the driller could be passed off as the bad ass bigger brother to sixes' noxious. obviously, any similarities between the two albums are pure coincidence, but i couldn't help but notice it..again, i might be the only one.

as for the rest of cursed beast, it's as dark an foreboding of an affair as you might assume by its title. though, this disc's name could easily be attributed to the fact that ryan broke equipment, his teeth, had a throat abscess as a result of the making of this album, and that it took two years to finally release. if that's not bad juju, i don't know what is. a major thing that i noticed this time around was how sixes music gravitated more towards rhythm instead of outright noise. it sounded like ryan was using a drum machine, in one way or another, on every track. the album closer, reign in hell, stands out as being damn near danceable, or, at the very least head-noddable. just made that up. reign in hell features a bass hit followed by staccato snare hits that are looped over and over, all while the track builds from being merely ominous to loud and noisy as hell.

after having previously heard five of sixes' releases, there's one thing that i've come to depend on: not knowing what to expect. that isn't to imply that his albums are spastic genre-hops; the three cassette releases that i've heard, lucem fero, svart alvor and the split with anti-ear have all been more straightforward noise releases (each with its own distinct qualities) while the two organ cuts discs and this cd have a good deal more experimentation to them, all while staying within the noise spectrum.

cursed beast was originally put out as a 12", but after those quickly sold through it was reissued on cd.

Wroughten Wretch


visible/invisible wall

distant realities 1 c52
[2006, enterruption]

v/iw is alaskan levi berner, also of algiers, demonlore and blue sabbath black cheer (with enterruption's own wm). levi also ran the, now defunct, numbered tapes label.

since i was completely in the dark in regards to this project, distant realities 1 was the album out of this package that i was most looking forward to hearing, and after listening to it, i'm extremely impressed. side a's dominated by austerity. cold hums, tones and drones all wonderfully layered and perfectly panned. there's an excellent job done here of using sound loops and distortion/noise (sparingly at first, but more involved during the latter third of the side) as an addition to the icy minimalism, which establishes for levi, more of an individual musical identity. side b starts off by carrying over the same sounds that the a side ended on, but after about six and a half minutes, comes into its own. the principal sound is this great two second loop of drone that'll stick around for a minute or so before everything breaks down and gets extremely minimal. before you know it, there's some new noises, maybe some tape manipulations, the sound of a dog barking in the background, then back with the loop. throughout the side it's like that, but each time that there's a passage in between drone loop, levi's doing something new and interesting, adding a new layer, music or what have you. distant realities 1 is an outstanding tape overall, but it has a hell of a b-side. i'm going to have to buy something from enterruption to make up for getting this for free, i feel like i owe it to them.

i've seen this cassette listed as a c80, but it's only fifty two minutes long for both sides.

Distant Realities 1, B3
(i doubt that there's actually supposed to be individual tracks on the cassette, but when i ripped it i broke it up when there were obvious pauses in the sound, and i think it's better like that.)


chinesefish presents: basketcase

live to air c40
[2006, enterruption]

i'm firmly under the suspicion that you could listen to one john olson related project every day and go at least a year without repeating any. the man is either really fucking motivated, or really bored. either way we, the listeners, win. for basketcase he's paired with gravitar's former frontman geoff walker (currently in transitional phase with nearly everyone who was in subarachnoid space) who played the majority of the instruments here and they're made a three-piece by lisa colwell, who took care of the contact mics and prepared cello. as for john, he handled the electronics.

live to air was taken from a performance on february 13, 2000 at whfr dearborn 89.3, and it plays out like a psychedelic improv jam session, on downers. that's not a bad thing, it's just super mellow, which is largely because of the minimal backdrops supplied by olson. what i like the most about this tape is the absence of jam session staple; the guitar. there's drums, trombone, coronet, clarinet, rattles, bells, shakers and some vocals (in an atmospheric sense on the b-side). all of which are, again, supplied by geoff, whose alias is actually chinesefish. since he's so involved in the music being made, i guess the title "presents: basketcase" makes sense...i guess, but i'm really just trying to make it work in my own head. anyways, i love how everything here sounds together, the sparseness of it combined with the unobtrusive electronics and terrific organic instrumentation, especially the clarinet and trombone, it's all extremely meditative and calming.

here's my half-assed attempt to describe basketcase's sound through their peers: think universal indians' sloth nest combined with vibracathedral orchestra's less structured work. then, get good and drunk when you listen to this so that those descriptions seem accurate and i come off sounding like i know what i'm talking about.

Side A Excerpt (from 2:46 to 6:07)