Text of Light - Metal Box review

Below is copy which I intended to submit for a music review website which never happened. Here it is in its unedited glory.

Text of Light features a shifting pool of improvisers including Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Alan Licht, Ulrich Krieger, Christian Marclay, William Hooker, Tim Barnes and DJ Olive. The group perform improvised soundtracks to the avant-garde silent films of Stan Brakhage. Myriad live appearances are assembled across these three discs contained in a replica of the PiL metal box, engraved ToL.

Disc one starts the proceedings with the groups first ever set, from New York’s Tonic club in 2001. The music is immediately frenzied and abrasive. Hooker’s frenzied free jazz drumming collides against Marclay’s warped turntables. Things calm down enough for some pleasantly modulated guitar to seep through. The set continues this way: alternately frenetic and then subdued. Eerie dissonance remains a constant. At times the instruments are difficult to distinguish from each other. This being their first show, some listeners may perceive teething problems, parts where things go slightly awry. Others may delight in the earnest experimentation and spontaneity of it all, such as the end of track one when the other instruments gradually whittle away leaving a surreal turntable loop.

Track two is rooted firmly in sci-fi sound effect territory, a cauldron of modulated electronic signals and bleeps accompany Ranaldo’s trademark delayed guitar. It sounds reminiscent of another recent successful Sonic Youth side project - Four Guitars Live. Patterns, melodies and sketches of structure may emerge briefly but are quickly blown away in a hurricane of noise. There is no definitive path, everything is shifting and subjective, just like Brakhage’s films.

Track five features slabs of drone with notes and tones flickering briefly like flashes of light illuminating an empty auditorium.

Disc one closes with a 17 minute voyage to nowhere. It begins with ominous foghorn sounds, crashing cymbals like waves and a slowly melting saxophone. The sounds evoke bleak plains with ink black birds scattered across an empty grey sky. This is the group at their most filmic, a sound they will revisit more centrally later on. Wide open sonic architecture is erected to accommodate Brakhage’s images.

Disc two assembles material from various sources including an improvisation by Krieger, Ranaldo and Licht over a stanza of James Joyce’s poetry. No-one can accuse Text of Light of not being interdisciplinary.

Disc two also includes an excerpt from the group’s most recent set in Brussels 2005. A more minimal approach is utilised here with heavy slabs of drone intercepting each other. The main difference between the way the group sounds here as opposed to on disc one is in the percussion department. With William Hooker at the helm in 2001, Text of Light had a more scattershot, fierce free-jazz strategy. Later shows featured Tim Barnes replacing Hooker. Barnes, who also features on Sonic Youth’s tremendous SYR6, is concerned with a lighter, more subtle approach. Tinkling bells and chimes leave the guitars and sax to create wide open vistas of atmospheric noise. The overall result is possibly more satisfying than the group’s earlier experiments which, at times, seem to lack focus and cohesion.

Also included here are live studio sessions from 2002 which find the group without a drummer. Instead DJ Olive and Christian Marclay feature on turntables. The results are generally impressive although at times the sampling seems slightly arbitrary, leaving the other musicians tentative, seemingly unsure as to how to engage with the turntables.

Disc two closes with an excerpt from a Berlin gig in 2003 with Ranaldo, Licht, Krieger, Barnes and DJ Olive. Again, Barnes percussion is magnificent. He seems to know when to be more prominent and when to hold back and has a great array of tools for the job. DJ Olive’s work here is inspired as well, his short samples of foreign voices, explosions and general destruction lend a grim atmosphere to the piece. In contrast the guitars are quieter, placid, almost verging on melodic at times.

On disc three we find the unit at their most monolithic, sparse, and satisfying. Phosphorescent electronic sparks illuminate vast canvases of ominous feedback and drone. The music seems to be slowly exiting Earth’s atmosphere to explore distant, desolate planets. The percussion here evokes corroded structures collapsing in the distance. Suddenly horns blurt in, squawking like exotic dying animals. The looming wall of noise caves in to a frenzied free jazz assault. Instruments stutter and squeal , the whole structure on the verge of collapse. High frequency alarm tones bring to mind My Cat is an Alien. Shimmering vistas of feedback, a silver electronic sun illuminating glittering percussive shards. Dead-end horns lament over post-apocalyptic scenes of terminal decay. Snippets of tentative horns echo into infinity in a whirlwind of clattering percussion.

There is much within this metal box to sit down with and gradually immerse yourself in. I found it fun to trace the lineage of the group and listen to the Text of Light line up gradually morph over the three discs. This box still serves as a vital artefact for this formidable improv unit and will appeal to experimental noise chin strokers as well as the more adventurous Sonic Youth fan.

Adrift in the Dead C

Since my formal inauguration into the world of the Dead C in December 2006, my musical perspectives have been irrevocably warped. It started off as a violent reaffirmation - I witnessed the group live at ATP. The trio loitered about calmly onstage, a demeanour that contrasted the screaming feedback drenched "rock" they were purveying to a deafened audience. I purchased Vain, Erudite and Stupid, immediately after their set, a 2CD retrospective which seemed like a logical starting place to immerse myself in their recorded output.
Like so much superb music, initial spins left me slightly puzzled and underwhelmed. The Dead C are extremely minimal, verging on crude and blunt. What they manage to do with limited parameters, is reconceptualize the whole notion of freeform rock. Their music is vast as it is intricate. It rocks in a completely abstract, ineffable manner.
I have also acquired their CDs Tusk and Trapdoor Fucking Exit which have enhanced my profound admiration of this trio. What I love about freeform noise/improv/whatever rock is it's potential for exhilaration and musical transgression whilst retaining the familiar anchorage of drums/guitar instrumentation. By the end of the Tusk album, moments of guitar noise begin to more closely resemble broken vacuum cleaners, a musical approach reminiscent of anti-music dadaists The New Blockaders. On Hell is Now Love, from Trapdoor Fucking Exit, there is present slide guitar that is as lyrical and infused with oceanic longing as the most potent Loren Connors sides.
This is what I adore about setting myself adrift in the Dead C. The marriage of sheer inhuman dissonance with soul nourishing guitar riffage, and whatever other distant and spectral directions the music may seep, trickle or crash towards.

Vulgar MM schwag makes me feel good sick all over

First became aware of the Magik Markers through their release on Ecstatic Peace and the hype that began to accumulate after being endorsed by Sonic Youth et al.
I bought I Trust My Guitar etc. from a Volcanic Tongue stall at the Subcurrent noise festival in Glasgow, 2005. Initial spins left me bemused - the record struck me as willfully unlistenable, pre-articulate and primal in the most complacent way... Although there was something beautiful lingering beneath that began to reveal itself gradually, with subsequent listens.
I recently discovered via an interview with Pete Nolan that Ecstatic Peace label boss, Thurston Moore, was not keen on the record himself and they really had to persuade him to release it...
Anyway, despite my initial discombobulated response I remained intrigued by this band, especially with the live video clips that kept appearing on the Ecstatic Peace website and the interviews with singer/guitar torturer Elisa Ambrogio. Her banter struck me as completely inspired stream of thought beatnik/punk poetics sans the unsavoury hippy free love sensibility. The live clips displayed a woman in the depths of feral possession, assaulting audience members as well as her instrument and shrieking like a banshee. Placid interludes were eerie, Elisa murmuring in somanmbulent confessionary mode, her tone disconcertingly reminiscent of a sulking child trapped in an implosive vortex of delayed guitars, the echo an abstract reconstruction of sad basment childhood.
I became increasingly obsessed with the band and ordered all the stock they had from Volcanic Tongue: to wit, the NxCxHxC LP, the Feel the Crayon CD-R and a live CD-R.
Both CD-Rs impressed me to some degree but the NxCxHxC LP I dug special. Kicks off with a harcore jam, Nolan propulsing the band forward with tight, succinct fills... guitars chug along whilst Elisa introduces the band. The whole structure is teetering though and is barely established before disintegrating into furious feedback tantrums and guitar/electric toothbrush experiments of the highest order. This record also delves into more creeped out ambient menace... no... not menace exactly... but there is something eerie and detached about the folorn non-musical moments evoked on this vinyl... something infinite as well, taking a slow walk along the beach to greet eternity.
I finally saw Magik Markers live in December of last year at All Tommorrow's Parties. They performed as a duo; Leah Quimby had left the band by that point... a fact which already had instilled me with cautious reservations... reservations which proved to be somewhat well founded.
What I witnessed at ATP was undeniably a good, solid set. Elisa was sporting a white t-shirt which she had marker penned the statement "I am mellow." I initially read this as "I am yellow" which I interpreted as some sort of dadaist non-sequiter...
Their set struck me as carefully constructed, almost tentative at times... Nolan began assembling a fragmentary beat over Elisa's phased guitar ruminations... Elisa's vocals were sub-audible murmurs. Audience chatter was incessant, a complaint I held for most of the performances at ATP and this doubtless affected the atmosphere of the set for me... The band seemed detached from the chattering audience and I felt sad, as if I should have been witnessing something life-affirming but instead was seeing the inconsequential last days of the band being played out... I guess I have a tendency towards meleodrama in many respects...
My interest in the group diminished somewhat after that, until last week. I had begun perusing ebay quite frequently again, picking up reasonably priced CDs and records. I scored a couple of Magik Markers records at a bargain price, two records which I had been hesitant to splash out full price on but seemed worth picking up cheap: Inverted Belgium and For Sada Jane.
For Sada Jane, on Textile records was widely hailed as a surprising departure for the band on its initial release, a heralding which left me unduly nervous. This is a fantastic slab of wax, picking up on the more careful, measured approach the band seem to be favouring more and more. Sharp slices of wah-wah guitar sound like thunder cutting up violet skies. This record really confirms in my mind the Markers as an organic noise rock band, a band with a lot more feeling and musical sensitivity than initial listens may offer up. There are also some more of Elisa's howled poetics about shitty haircuts in public and marrying Laurie Anderson. Always leaves a thrilled grin on my face.
But for me, the real gravy is the one sided Inverted Belgium LP which is on Prurient's label, Hospital Productions, and is mastered by Prurient himself who has sonically doctored it from its original CD-R form into something all the more insiduously depraved in keeping with his serial killer persona... Growling bass and piercing high-end are emphasised which gives this record a murky power electronics aesthetic whilst retaining the emotional storm of noise rock. The whole thing is all whirlwind and heat, flashing through yr consciousness like a violently unsettling fever dream. Urgent percussive propulsion by Nolan anchors the similarly propulsive guitar attack which is apocalyptic and unrelenting. Truly one of the best records I've ever heard by anyone and it has re-established the Markers in my mind as one of the best bands in the world.