Marhaug Forlag: Sudden Infant- Noise In My Head & Personal Best #1

2011-12 has been an exciting year for re-issues; Vinyl On Demand's gorgeous box sets of the late 1970s to mid 1980s Industrial/Noise/Synth/Wave scenes and key bands, Finnish maverick composer Pekka Airaksinen's One Point Music, Albert Ayler's Stockholm/Berlin 1966 CD, etc. But arguably more exciting to me in recent months is the slight resurgence of REAL print media in the music underground: As Loud As Possible's first issue, Sound Projector's all-vinyl only issue and Lasse Marhaug's 2 inaugural publications, Sudden Infant: Noise In My Head and the Personal Best #1 zine.

The Sudden Infant book was published mid last year and it is an excellent monograph-like spread of essays by friends and admirers (actually they are both in one most of time) of Joke Lanz, an amazing reservoir of photos from his various actions, gigs and whatnots throughout his long path down the aktionist/noise/transgressive tunnel. the fact that the artist himself and editor-in-chief, Lasse Marhaug decided to foreground more visuals over text is an exceptional choice, as Sudden Infant's art is not merely just sounds OR easily expressed via words but one, ideally has to be there, to feel the full impact of the man's creative vision to shock, to perplex and to hopefully trigger something amidst one's grey area, and not forgetting to entertain as well.   A hardbound book of exquisite layout and design to behold literally, it is a labour of love from both men involved in its production. A must for all vaguely interested in  REAL art from the heart and the underground.

Marhaug's second publication is a fanzine compiling 13 interviews he and his friends have conducted and you will be pleasantly pleased by the topics in discussion here. Going beyond music and noise (as the cover proudly states "Noise, Music and Beyond"), the subject of the interview talk about films, comics, extreme sports and AC/DC(!!!) plus more in a candid but committed way, irreverent at times but funny and non-po-faced. I personally love the Bruce Russell, Very Friendly (an excellent comic series based on the creator's impression/life as a sound/noise artist), C. Spencer Yeh ones. The overall design is of course tops. I see myself living in and out of the two publications for a long time to come. Get it before they are gone, as far as I know, the zine is down to around 20 copies right now from the publisher himself, find out more at Marhaug Forlag. You may want to try getting them from Tedium House, Volcanic Tongue or Metamkine. Better still, get BOTH.

The Observatory: An Interview

The Observatory are the premier alternative rock act in Singapore, or rather the alternative rock band of this region. Since 2002 they have released 4 albums with meticulous care put in for both the content and the form of their CDs/LPs which made their artefacts highly collectable, if you are a record-collector type. For those who are more into the music only, the progressive and experimental arc the band has traced for the past 10 years, is filled with rewarding surprises if you are one to sought more than mere entertainment from your cultural consumption. The interview below was conducted with the band over email. The four members of the band talk about the up-coming new album, "Catacombs", as well as their future plans, and more. Go to The Observatory to find out more on the band after reading the interview if they are totally new to you.

THE INTERVIEW:

1. In view of the fact that this is your 10th anniversary, what does it mean to be The Observatory in 2012 after all these years?

Dharma: Other than it meaning we are 10 years older now, it also means we have managed to last that long making music in this environment. That does feel like quite an achievement if you consider how the cost of living has been going up over here. On top of that the 4 of us are doing this full time or at least we don’t have regular jobs anymore. Not sure how long more we can last but it sure feels like we want to give it everything and more while we still can. Looking back at our general outlook abt music 10 years back, it’s still the same…. we like to make music that challenges our personal expectations and not have it compromise to monetary needs.

2. What and who drive the creative direction of the band? Is there anyone who dominates?

Vivian: I think the music direction of the band has always been a collective effort. In the early days, it used to be Leslie who would write the bare bones of a song first before we set music arrangements to it. But since A Far Cry From Here, we've been individually bringing songs to the table or passing ideas around, then letting these develop naturally as we work together on it. Up until Dark Folke, we would put our own arrangement spin on whatever song idea that was in circulation at the time, first by recording our own parts in our bedroom setup, then trying it out during jams. With Catacombs, the process was a lot different. We would come up with our ideas, record a simple fragment or a longer, more filled out version, then pass it on. After listening and letting it sink in a bit more, we would then meet to work out the songs inside our studio proper. We would literally spend days and weeks playing it out and seeing where the song leads us. Leslie would also start to mumble some lyric ideas once we had a decent shape of a song in place. Due to the fact that we went to work with one another every day, in a space of our own, we found it much easier to concentrate on the music without losing momentum.

3. How do The Observatory fit in in today's music climate?

Victor: I don't know to be honest. There's so much music out there and we have not given it any thought about where we'd fit, except to focus on our own direction when we were working on Catacombs. In terms of our own direction, we've been been getting colder and darker since our first album, which was sort of a natural progression for us over these years.

4. I heard that The Observatory will be leaving Singapore soon and to be based in another country soon. Can you confirm this? If yes, what are the main reasons behind this move?

Leslie: Viv, Dharma and myself have plans to relocate to Canada. The band is not. But there might be an Observatory (Canada) and The Observatory (Singapore). Our producer Jorgen joked about this. Haha. Who knows? But without Victor, it would seem a bit of a stretch still calling it The Observatory. We don't know what's going to happen yet. My reason is to live somewhere else for a while. One that is more suited for my
temperament. A quality of life that's higher and of a pace that's slower than that of Singapore. Our ancestors were immigrants, so there's probably a lot of that running in my blood still.

Dharma: it will be nice to live in a place where one can work in a simple job and be able to get by modestly…yes, minimum wage level and a better quality of life is what I’m looking for. Also where nature is in abundance and not too far away.

5. How does the exit of Evan Tan and Ray Aziz affect the making of your new album Catacombs?

Dharma: The main thing I would say is the approach in playing drums. As none of us are actual drummers (Or as good as Ray on drums!), we took an unconventional approach of doing the drums. The main drum duties were shared by Les and Vics, on some songs both playing at the same time. When there was a need for bass and Vics was unable to cause he was doing the drums, then Viv would do it on the synth or Les would play it on the guitar. There is one track where Vics played drums and synth bass at the same time too. So basically there was quite a bit of shuffling in our roles. I took on doing more sounds/noise, filling the void from Evan’s departure.

6. What can we expect to hear from your forthcoming album? Will there be any marked shift of musical direction and sound?

Vivian: I think listeners might perceive Catacombs as having a totally new sound and direction. It's hard for us to say as we've lived and breathed these new songs for about half a year now, and it's not really that strange to us. It's hard for us to make the same album again, every time. It might seem sadistic but we do thrive on the experience of getting out of our comfort zone. We like to explore shades of grey instead of doing what's safely black or white. If we try to do a bluesy song, it will still come off strange. If we do anything metal, it'll probably not gel with the traditionally metal listener. In music, we like aggression but we also like beauty and fragility, and there's a lot of both in Catacombs. In temperament, we often come off melancholic but even that complexion has become darker. We're venturing to places that are more sinister and will probably make most people uncomfortable. But that's what discovery entails, the willingness to explore anything, even the stuff out of one's usual boundaries. In terms of rhythm, we hardly utilised drums on Dark Folke. On Catacombs, both Victor and Les are playing drums and exploring more industrial rhythms. Dharma also heavily adds to the forceful rhythmic element. I chip in a little snare and tom on a couple of tracks and play keyboard bass on most. There's definitely a more defined, stronger pulse on this new album. It's trance-ish and hypnotic. You might even be able to dance to it, well, at the very least, nod to it. In terms of arrangement, it is by far, more singular and focused than anything we've put out before. Leslie's vocals have also finally found their real timbre. To me, it definitely is our most interesting sounding album to date.

Mike Kelley (Destroy All Monsters), R.I.P. 1954-2012

The passing a great artist, non-musician and all-round conceptualist and aesthete. Founding member of proto-punk/noise/freak unit, Destroy All Monsters in the early 1970s in Detroit and non-music art group, The Poetics, and later went on to be a successful artist who has close association with Sonic Youth, culminating in the use of his art work on the Youth's album "Dirty" which was released in 1993. A key mentor and icon in the American underground and alternative scene and culture, and with his death, it seems like another nail into the coffin which seals the end of an era which was signposted by post hippie-burned out, punk nihilism and the democratisation and grassroot-ification of avantgarde culture from the mid 1970s to the 2000s. Go get a copy of the 3CD Destroy All Monsters collection and be shocked by its prophetic noises and sounds which pointed to so much of what we are listening today in the underground scenes and beyond.

I Saw The Future of Music & It Is... CUT HANDS in Tokyo

Everyone in the venue, UNIT, was filled with anticipation; around two hundred people were there, in one of the hip areas of Tokyo, Ebisu. It was a triple bill night with veteran Noise legends, Incapacitants celebrating their 30th anniversary, Ramleh of seminal Power Electronics record label, Broken Flag and the headliner, Cut Hands completing the triptych. The opening act started at around 7.15pm, but it was not one of the three acts mentioned earlier. Masked and hyperactive at his gadgets on the table placed in the middle of the stage, the man went on for 20 minutes to squeeze out some of the most piercing electronic squiggles possible this side of The New Blockaders. It might just be one of the Rupenus brothers underneath that ski-mask of the guy...

Incapacitants were the next act; rock n' roll was what they were all about. The two by-day salarymen in offices of their banks transformed into rock monsters tonight and they have been at it for 3 decades. The electricity from their circuit-linked noise set-up seemed to course through their bodies and in turn, sent tremours throughout the audience and the venue. They kick serious ass. Especially when one of them stage-dived into the crowd. Sheer Dionsyian abundance.

Ramleh came on next and their signature mix of psychedelic guitar-pyrotechnics with the wall-of-noise of power electronics is all about melting the ether and freeing the synapses of the audience. Volcanic and immersive, the duo was still at the top of their game.

When Cut Hands, a.k.a. William Bennett of Whitehouse and Come notoriety came on at around 9.20, the mood was right for what was in store for the congregation of refuse-niks, Noise heads, long-hair freaks & other assorted weirdos. The thundering Afro beats with the accompanying bass rumble shook the place, the images on the wall presented still photographs of Africans in their various daily affairs but pulsing in synch with the almost distorting and overloading rhythms from Bennett's laptop. What the hell was he emitting? Basic Channel filtered through cassette-quality Sublime Frequencies tapes and re-fed back into the existentialist speculation of modern life? This is not merely Noise transmogrified through beats but this is a sign of what is to come, in other words, I saw the future of music and it is Cut Hands.

Kye Records - Another Record Label Spotlight

It was criminal of me to omit one of the BEST record labels from my year-end review of 2011 last December: Kye Records. One of the most understated labels of all-time with one of the most enigmatic line-up of artistes who are not just sub-subterranean (not due to any fault of theirs, of course but more a result of wilful ignorance and self imposed media occlusion) but limited in its editions of each release so far. The provenance of the label is a continuation of the beautiful, surreal and oblique other-song-liness of the Shadow Ring (which I actually had as one of my previous blog entries a while ago) which released a double CD retrospective a few years ago and it is also run by one of the three Rings, Graham Lambkin. Within the orbit of Lambkin is Tim Goss (one of the three Rings) and his new project, Call Of The Giants, which have released two modern day post-noise sketches of almost lament-like musical scribbles with his step daughter, Chloe Mutter; both the self titled album and the follow-up "the Rising" are affecting and deep-night contemplative soundtracks.

Also on the label is the re-issue of one of the side-projects of the Rings, Elklink, "The Rise of The Elklink", which frankly speaking befuddled me tremendously but it is one of those albums which slowly draws one in gradually which its "what-the-hell"ness of it. Veteran Noise/drone/freak outfit, Idea Fire Company also released one of their most sublime albums on Kye with "Music From The Impossible Saloon"; a suite of 1920s piano-led tone-poems going slightly wonky at the edges but buoying the listeners with its rudimentary a-melodies at its core.

The discography of this excellent label is still slim but with other great releases by Belgium composer Moniek Darge, Australian avant-rock group Vincent Over The Sink, one half of Bird Of Delay, Helm, and weirdo post-music outfit Fossils, Kye is one of the labels to watch out for. I for one, is hooked.

One Man Nation - A Singaporean Artist in Exile, An Interview

In early November 2011, I met up with Marc, the man behind the project One Man Nation for a chat. So far One Man Nation has released an LP on Austrian record label, Moozak last year, entitled SUSPENDED IN A VORTEX IN THE MIDDLE OF A BOWL FROM TIBET / WHEN I WAS YOUNG I WAS EASILY AMUSED, BUT NOW IT IS ALL, THE SAME. AND THE SAME.... His album refuses to be pigeonholed conveniently, call it experimental, avant-garde, electronic or sound art, it is one and all of those adjectives listed.


The session started with a question on his personal musical path; to Marc, the discovery of the computer as a tool was a pivotal moment but it did not happen immediately thereafter. He traced the genealogy of his musical development as followed:

2003 – punk music with straight-ahead guitar

2004 – beginning of the use of a computer, but with guitar added

2005 onwards – more full-on use of computer, and he has used the similar setup since then, with a conscious emphasis to make sure that things do not get too techie, as to him, the music and the performance are much more important.

Marc never stopped stressing the power and significance of the collective creative experience with other musicians and artists in his creative journey thus far, as to him each collaboration goes beyond mere interaction and communication but it is about the sharing of the moment between the parties involved. He could not highlight enough that to him, he does not want to just play music but to him, the entire experience of musical creation and immersion is more than the current neo-liberal belief that all arts are just essentially entertainment and nothing more. On the other hand, he does not want to fall into the trappings of the other end of the spectrum, which is elevating what he does into something on the pedestal, i.e. high-brow academic platitudes/museum and art gallery fodder. He is always drawing what he does as a form of a continuation of the punk spirit which brought him into music and the arts in the first place. It is about breaking socially dictated norms and more vitally, breaking the artificial bourgeois spotlight placed on the spectacle of musical presentation/performance.


[One Man Nation] Tour in Bali + Lombok (Apr 2010) from transitoracle on Vimeo.


We moved on to talk at length about experimental art; we both agreed that it should be about breaking away from the many stifling cultural norms –all artistic and musical experiences should not just be spectators standing there to watch but instead both the artist and the audience ought to be involved in the shared immersive trip, and Marc mentioned a possible shamanic one but yet there should not be an invisible hierarchically-defined line between the person expressing & the people responding.

Naturally we also talked about the earlier proponents of experimental art like dada & Fluxus, which foregrounded innovation and breaking away from cultural/dogmatic confines, as opposed to the institutionalisation of the “experimental art” today. It must be about pushing forth the process as well as the creative intentions of the artists and not something driven by careerist and opportunistic drivel so common found today.

We then returned to review about Marc’s personal intentions behind his art thus far. When probed, he stated flatly that he sees no difference between what he does in his solo work as one man nation and his many varied collaboration with other artists. I then asked for an epiphanic account from Marc of a very exceptional collaborative work that he could share. He brought up Truna, a Spanish musician, whom he has an Improv duo with. The form might be nominally punk but it has been a fulfilling collaboration for the parties so far as it was like an artistic and creative conversation during their performances, a venture which is very different from One Man Nation solo project.

Spared from the type of state persecution underwent by many older Singaporean artist, Marc has been globe-trotting to Rotterdam, India, Indonesia and Spain (currently he maintains a residence in Spain, Granada but he is usually not there most of the time), and he is also focusing more on The Unifiedfield, an artists-run organisation which the Wire magazine featured in its Global Ear series last year. I thus tried to source out the provenance of his current nomadic lifestyle. Without batting an eyelid, he confirmed my suspicions that he had always wanted to leave Singapore as a child, and he has not found a way to remain here and thus he simply cannot see himself staying in Singapore and he grabbed the first chance he could to follow his wanderlust.

Thus, after the mandatory military conscription duty here, he left to tour, not the typical packaged style of course, but punkish, DIY way around Asia in 2003 and thereafter to Europe since then. He does not see much here in Singapore. It is not so much that he is totally rootless but he up-fronted his strong disdain for the general conformist and materialist mentality. We concurred that the whole society in Singapore is in general not made for individual discourse as the overall structure is stringently top-down and media dictated (which is closely monitored by the state as well), the dreary day-job situation to support the materialistic wants and he was bemused by the local grant-doling institutions for having a very narrow mind-set in their relentless search for sponsoring and supporting artists and art forms/projects here which have to have a prominent Singaporean agenda/front to them. He feels that the local arts administrators are still not very well-versed in the fields of art and Singapore despite its claim for the being the top in many areas, the arts is one glaring gap which must be seriously looked into.

However we also agreed that in Singapore even the arts is largely about the economics which sad to say we really cannot judge based on monetary basis; either that many Singaporeans just follow a well-trodden path that everyone is going down on. Perhaps it is due to the state of Singapore that it is in: the solid security of it all and the hyper planned-out nature of our day-to-day (though the recent SMRT debacles proved otherwise). With all these in place, it can easily lead to general complacency amongst the populace and in turn, their thought processes are seriously affected. And if one would to apply the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we are not getting better here as Singapore, despite the prosperity (economic but not in other areas), we are in actual fact more enslaved to the entire system due to the high cost of living & the way and wants of most Singaporeans.

From politics we next turned back to the personal. Marc shared that his globe-trotting experience has shaped not just his musical but artistic self as even though creatively he is having some sort of a lull, but to him, art is life, life is art. One Man Nation is what he is, who he is and whatever he does daily.

I surfaced the recent acceptance and in fact active encouragement of the corporate world to promote the idea of creation and he feels that it is all about absorbing what they think is useful for them to help barf up their coffer at the end of the day. Business as usual, mate.

He then went on to talk about the importance of introspection in his daily life which is a very crucial process in his art. Seen by Marc as a process key to his personal existence, his intention to create is not the only thing out of this, but instead he is consuming life itself as the same time as it is about how he lives. He constantly reminds himself that he does not want his art-making to be tainted by commercial intentions and vanity. If there is money then it is collateral but definitely not the main thing. But he admitted that it has been a tightrope to balance to live & create, for whatever reasons he feels so far. It is not easy to live the way he is as it has no room for complacency, but the trade-off is that this instability which he faces daily makes him appreciate everything in life, which gives him the insight to treasure the moments in life.

Towards the end of the interview I asked him for an epiphany. And this is what he related to me:

He was playing with some dancers in Bilbao, at the Festival of Improvisation 2007, which annually invited both acoustic and electronic musicians, dancers and other artists to just come together to jam. At this festival, he was the nominal electronic musician with his computer and he was largely still in his “electronic musician” mind-set, as he wanted to match the “right” music/sounds to the setting. Then it suddenly hit him that he should just think beyond creating music but to instead feel the temperature in the room, sense the lighting, feel the size of space, connect with the people in the space, and more, as everything he was doing and was attempting to do in there was actually part and parcel of a synthetic fuse with the set and setting to create. He concluded that musicians who are usually too caught up in the conventional music-making procedure, very often fall into the trappings of the male patriarchal schema.

Finally when asked about the meaning behind his project, One Man Nation, he expressively stated that it is all about going beyond nation-state and nationality, to be in a world without any borders, in other words, to even go beyond international, but to be an outer-nationalist at the end of the day.

Yan Jun in Singapore: An Interview

Interview with Yan Jun, 28 Oct 2011


I met Yan Jun, the renown sound artist, Noise practitioner, event organiser and all-round ideologue of the current Chinese experimental/avant-garde scene who came to Singapore and performed during the same Sonorous Festival (which Uchihashi Kazuhisa also performed at) organised by LaSalle School of the Arts in Singapore. The interview with Yan Jun was conducted in Chinese and so the following summary of our interview would definitely not be the truest representation of the interesting conversation which transpired between the two of us. There were still many issues which we wanted to discuss but due to time constraint we had to cut short the session and thus I am looking forward to chatting with Yan Jun again in the future if the opportunity arises.

We started the interview with a short chat on Yan Jun’s musical biography when he told me that he sees himself primarily as an event organiser; for the past six years, more than 300 performances were staged by him. On the average he has one gig going on per week, and for a particular six-month period, he actually had two gigs running on a weekly basis. The artists and performers, according to Yan Jun can be largely classified into about 50% Chinese and the other half from abroad. He still defines himself more as an event organiser and record label boss, releasing albums, and not as strictly an artist. He runs the Sub Jam/Kwanyin Records. He is mostly based in Beijing, China but he was awarded Asian Cultural Residency in New York in 2011so he was in NYC for some time as well.

When our conversation moved on to his ideas and concepts on sound art and noise, he became more animated and passionate as he began explaining to me his personal definition of such terms, terminologies and conceptual schema. He feels very strongly about the fact that, today, modern art is very dictated by the canon, conventions and history of western ideas and aesthetics; to him modern sound art or noise is not so much a genre but sound should be treated as a medium, a tool. Sound, noise & sound art should be divorced from their western roots and meanings in the new century when the world has become more globalised.

To him, sound art in recent years is very formalised, formulaic and predictable. If I did not get him too wrongly, sound art today is too academic and elevated to the status of high art which seems contradictory to the original intent of the pioneer practitioners. Noise and sound, in a very hygienic western world in contemporary times seems to need noise to create some form of contrast and source of opposition. This is very different from where he came from, China. He shared with me an anecdote about his own house back home: his house has no ground/earth wiring and thus so a lot of noises/sounds are emitted all around the residence and they sipped into his recordings whenever he does any home recording. Noise is intentionally forged but it is part of the landscape feeding into the artistic eco-system of him and perhaps, for some other artists from China too.

He went on to qualified that in China it is very noisy consistently, and just like on a daily basis when he eats he is also consuming a lot of toxin, the noise/sound pieces which he creates can be seen as a product of his input in all sense of the word.

When I asked him if his ideas and understanding on noise/sound art is a shared one amongst the practitioners in China, he replied that it is more personal than anything else but he revealed that two other artists based in China today do have some mutual similarities in their personal aesthetical conceptions on their art and sound. One such artist is Yao Dajuin, who is actually from Taiwan but is based in China today. Yao is a key player in the Chinese avant-garde/sound scene today and his curated double CD album released on the record label, Post-Concrete, entitled, China – The Sonic Avantgarde, is a clear illustration of Yao’s personal vision of what he views sound art/noise as: field recordings, sound collages and sonic bites which totally rejects the high art, sound art in the museum/art gallery paradigm so fashionable and profitable for the more careerist ones in recent decades. Yao is more interested in the history of listening, auditory experiences and their psycho-social, psycho-geographical relationships than a nicely packaged tour in the white spaces of the halls of western cultural shrines.

The other kindred spriit of Yan Jun is Lin Qi Rui (I hope I got his name correctly, so if I did not do so please drop me a comment and let me know more about him, thanks!) –a Taiwanese noise/sound artist based in China who is very staunchly against the western cultural hegemony in the arts and music. Lin has just finished writing a book in Mandarin, to be published soon. With 800, 000 words in tow, it examines the history and lineage of sound/sound art/noise in the Chinese world.

We went on to discuss about the terminology of modern sound art in China and he hinted that they are perhaps just fads and names merely as before 2005, these activities were sweepingly branded as Noise but post-2005, Sound Art became the acceptable name instead. He did say that China today is maybe Taiwan in the past and thus given time, China would be able to mature and grow more as a site of sound/noise creativity in the near future. Yan Jun also shared that those interested in sound/noise seem to come from the lower classes and many of them are youths living in the urban centres who are, in most part, not connected with the traditional art forms. Yan speculates that Noise to them can be seen as a form of personal projection of their personal environs and place in China today.

We went on to discuss about the perennial search for modernism today. He stresses that even before the 1911 Revolution in China, the obsession with modernity was already there. Today, the Chinese artists are continuing the path towards the push towards modernism; whereas ten years ago, the buzzword was to be the avant-garde and earlier on, to rock was the predominant artistic goal, the mental and psychological desire to stretching the envelope remains, the same today. Many want to be more extreme, more modern and even more avant-garde than the west, where such ideas first germinated. Yan Jun gave the analogy of imitation and even later on iconoclasm as the modus operandi of many artists in China. He even mentioned that it is like a form of artistic devouring of the predecessors, to make these earlier aesthetic travellers part of their own. It should be seen as form of flattery and praise for those who have come before. Right now many in China are not very self-conscious about the entire process and thus it takes time for the Chinese artists to be more sensitive, more cruel and relentless to be, neither Western nor traditionally Chinese, a third path.

Before we were interrupted by the next performance during the night, we compared the western avant-gardist tradition to that of the current Chinese strain; where Dada, Surrealism and Fluxus were a very conscious break from the bourgeois western art world (just like when Yan Jun was in Zurich, the street where the Dadaists staged the Cabaret Voltaire, the main motivation force was to disrupt and upset the quietude and sterility of the place and Europe), in China, they do not need to do so due to the differences in the historical-cultural forces at play in China for the past century.

We ended our interview at this point but from what Yan Jun had discussed, we can perhaps glean better into the developing milieu of the increasingly Chinese-prominent century in the future.