Jazzkammer & Howard Stelzer: Tomorrow No One Will Be Safe
CD - PacRec, USA - 2007
Reviews:
Jazzkammer & Howard Stelzer
Tomorrow No One Will Be Safe
[PacRec; 2007]
Rating: 7.0
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Improvised music is usually more enlightening live than on record; the mechanisms behind the madness often illuminate the sounds without demystifying them. It's kind of a reverse Wizard of Oz effect: Paying attention to the people behind the aural curtain makes their creations even more magical-- or at least trickier than the sounds alone might suggest. I've never seen Jazzkammer, the Norwegian duo of John Hegre and Lasse Marhaug, but based on their busy recorded output and mysterious use of guitar and electronics, my bet is they're fascinating to watch. I have seen Howard Stelzer, and he definitely is. The Boston-based sound artist works mostly with cassette tapes, and the way he exploits this fading technology-- discovering sounds in rewinds, hiss, and dirt-- is a unique sight.
Given their intriguing methods, it's hard not to think of recordings by Stelzer and Jazzkammer as half-experiences, like a TV show with the sound turned off. But their records are really starting points-- calling cards for the audiovisual experience each offers in concert. Tomorrow No One Will Be Safe, taken from a 2004 Jazzkammer/Stelzer American jaunt, certainly contains enough interesting sonic matter to tide anyone over until either act's next tour.
The first cut, "Requiem for Officer Bobby Barker", is by Jazzkammer alone. It begins nearly silent, with small, creaking sounds that evoke the minimalism of AMM. As the pair gradually distribute metallic clangs, morse-code-like blips, and filtered static, their swelling mix becomes like a wordless shortwave radio conversation. That the piece ends with a noisy maelstrom might be predictable, but it's the way Jazzkammer gets there-- building noise through patient, organic construction-- that's the surprise.
Stelzer follows with a stranger solo piece, "Last Night at BLD". His sounds don't build so much as they randomly fire, shooting all over the place without any obvious interest in meshing or melding. Springy twangs, warping scratches, and the sound of tape rolling over playheads all create a cartoon soundtrack without the music. Close your eyes and you can almost see the ACME products exploding in time to Stelzer's picturesque noise.
Most compelling is the collaborative, album-ending title track. Stelzer's tape warps chime in immediately, tempered by Jazzkammer's low guitar rumbles and electronic slashes. Loops of noise provide rhythm here and there, but the main attraction is the connective tissue that the three use to string their noises into arcs. Jump around the track and you'll swear all these different sounds couldn't possibly fit together, but somehow Stelzer and Jazzkammer make it all stick through simple listening and response. Whatever the shortcomings of improvised noise on record, releases like this are the only chance most people will get to hear these two Norwegian noise hounds meld minds with a Massachusetts tape addict. As such, Tomorrow No One Will Be Safe is a pretty valuable document.
(Marc Masters, Pitchfork Media)
Jazzkammer/Howard Seltzer - Tommorrow no one will be safe [Pacrec - 2007]
Tommorrow no one will be safe brings a track a piece from Norwegian noise collective Jazzkammer & Usa Electronic artist/ tape manipulator Howard Seltzer & then a one joint track. All of the tracks were recorded on the pairs tour in 2004, and offer up a creative and varied take on improvised music, noise and bizarre soundscapes.
Jazzkammers’s Requiem for Officer Bobby Barker opens up the disk, it starts with muffled dragging noise and discordant guitar lite picks of sound and a dry eerier sound like gas escaping, then a ever now and ten bass line appears, that never quite forms it self into a loop. They really build up a wonderful odd and broken anticipation filled soundscape, that keeps feeling like it will suddenly explode as it get more and more agitated and tense the gaps in sound filling in, the gas sound and distortion throb building on it’s self, but it still keeps almost stopping, before building the tension back up once more, towards the end it builds up to almost extreme metal like loop pounding as chainsaw like tones rip and tear away above the rhythmic battering.
Next we have Howard Stelzer's Last night at Bld, which again starts off relative tame, as we make our way across an disjointed landscape of a unspooling and ripping tapes, buzz and wine of dieing electronics and robotic like chatter. There’s also the element of a sweet/sour drone pitch hovering in the chaos. The track never goes full over board there’s still control, giving a very claustrophobic feel like been sealed in side a box with these strange jittering and stretching tones and noises. It all finish off with some rather satisfying grainy speaker feedback and swirling and scream tape unreel.
Lastly we the collaborative piece and the title track Tomorrow no one will be safe, Which enters with a nice doomy bass line, tape rips and screams, really build quite feeling of dread. Before flipping in the sound like a broken iron lung trying to madly pump, tape whistles and stretch weather whitened washed-out haze guitar. The bassy like sounds appearing again as the pace picks up, but in a more droning and loose plucked form , they throb in grim wonder and the asthmatic percussion tries to keep up and stretch and swirls of tape run back and forth in panic fashion. Before diving into some nice Sharpe slopes of guitar feedback high pitchness at the six minute mark. Midway through the track we drop into this strange sort of black and white nightmare feel, as dieing machine drone pounds on and discounted voices and human sound flow and drive through the sound air, this downbeat subdued and eerier air stays pretty constant until the end, it feels like wondering through long abandon apartment corridors, dust caked windows look out into the grey and featureless skies.
A rich and rewarding collection of erratic and often doomy soundworlds, played out with real control and depth of sound. Certainly not for those looking for all out noise attacks, but for those wanting more thought out and detailed noise craft, you can't go wrong. (Roger Batty, http://www.musiquemachine.com)
Jazzkammer & Howard Stelzer- Tomorrow No One Will Be Safe CD (Troniks/Pacrec)
This collab is much more in the experimental, musique Konkret vibe going on. Odd sounds, detuning strings, weird effected sounds in mono and drifts and drones going on all at once. Though is can get loud and oppressive it isn't noise or harsh in anyway. Welcome to the world of the truely Avant-garde. This has more in common with Jester artists like When and Rotoscope even the last Bogus Blimp. Ultimate sound deconstruction at its finest. This also where Tazdik takes a lot of there heavier more noise based projects. I don't really know how to explain music like this fully as its not music more a theater for the mind and senses. Very well done may I add as well. Another very amazing release from the world of the Troniks records family. PS I love the broken guitar cord sounds intermixed just add an touch of texture to it all. (http://absolutezeromedia.us/ )
JAZZKAMMER & HOWARD STELZER - TOMORROW NO ONE WILL BE SAFE (CD by Pac Rec)
Since hiring Jliat to do the dirty work in the field of noise, I can safely play around with the noise of people I have been following for the last couple of years. Lasse Marhaug and his mate John Hegre are such persons, now incarnated as Jazkamer, but these recordings are from the time they were called Jazzkammer. In May and June 2004 they toured the USA together with another old close relative Howard Stelzer. The three pieces on this CD were originally to be released as a triple 3"CD set, but now ended up on one CD on a different label. All three pieces deal with recordings from this tour. The first is a live recording by Jazzkammer, then a solo live recording of Stelzer and then a collaborative piece of all three. Jazzkammer's piece starts out in a soft (!) improvised way, a duet for two detuned guitars perhaps, but over the course of the next fifteen minutes things erupt in quite a big manner to end in a rather tape-like ending. Stelzer is our man on ancient technology. These days also incorporating an analogue synth, but usually armed with a mixing board and a battery of walkman machines and cassettes. He plays them by button pushing - play, fast forward, reverse - and amplifying them in unusual manners, say through a small plate of steel. His solo stuff ranges from quite subtle to quite loud, usually within one set, but on this particular occasion he is quite loud, perhaps under the influence of Jazzkammer? He plays quite a raw and rough shaped version of improvised music, that lingers in between noise and improvisation, and is as always a strong voice of his own. In their trio piece things start out in a true improvisation scheme, loose sounds flying about, but sooner than on the Jazzkammer piece things work towards an eruption, wall of feedback noise, but Stelzer keeps throwing in those loose end sounds and the Norwegian boys take control again. In the end it captures that Stelzer like roughness with a Jazzkammer take on the noise side. (Vital Weekly)
Title: Jazzkammer & Howard Stelzer - Tomorrow No One Will Be Safe
Label: Troniks & Pacrec
Genre: Metal Based Noise / Experimental Noise
Collaboration between
1. Tomorrow No One Will Be Safe
2. Requiem For Officer Bobby Parker
3. Last Night At BLD
This collaboration between both Howard Stelzer and Jazzkammer gave birth to this 500 pieces of the album “Tomorrow No One Will Be Safe”.
First track has some noises that make one think to some looped train’s noises, with scratches, white noises explosions.
Most frequencies seem to be quite average: not lower than higher. Some kind of low noise looking like a bass guitar appears, punctuated with metal like shocks. Progressively this bass-like sound evolves through some grating distorted sound, and gets messier.
A big change at 6.10 so that one may think this is no more the same track playing… Howling gratings, broken up and distorted. Sounds are really original and difficult to define. The track doesn’t have a structure anymore from this moment. The track calm down again, some more ambient part appears with low noises again. Few samples are present, but some appear at around 11 minutes. They’re broken up, modified and a bit hysterical. But, ambient aspect prevails. Rhythm is no more present in the last ¾ of the track: it deals with really ambient noises, fuzzy and notes, without any shocks anymore, some rare scratches.
But, in the end, this seems to wake up: guitar gratings, even more tormented scratches and a few shocks.
Second track begins with discrete strings’ noises with some really low background. Gratings quickly develop, yet still without rhythm. Parasites make an interesting appearance among sporadic gratings’ thunders. This evolves to some ambient part mostly composed of parasite-like noises, strings’ shocks.
After that comes a part with lower vibrations and more distorted noises, cumulating layers, rising in intensity. Apart from over-distorted bombing, some kind of mad drumming (seemingly some extreme metal sample with prominent drums) add the necessary amount of brutality to close this track.
Third track is dealing more with scratching and music distortion through varying playing speed. It sounds less guitar-based, but feature globally mostly the same dissonant gratings and guitar-based cracks and clicks.
It sounds quite raw, especially the first track, most (bass) guitar like, and are really original. They doesn’t sound being computer generated. Rather samples or brutalized cassettes: the specificity of Howard Stelzer’s work. Some noises sound like bats’ or feline cries… Not that it is exactly the same, but it is almost indefinable. The fact it seems some sounds almost remind voices, or animal cries is interesting. Is it deliberate?
Don’t wait for rhythm: there’s none, except in the repeating pattern in the first part of the first song. Each track lasts around 20 minutes. I guess people used to the genre won’t get borred, but this music seems to me reserved to these people. In the end, some kind of ‘radio noise’ prevails on others, regularly reappearing but finally swallowed by this parasite vibration.
“No One Will Be Safe” album is something really experimental suitable for connoisseurs of raw guitar-based underground noise. (http://www.heathenharvest.com/)
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