SIMON SCOTT
Bunny
MIA017
Miasmah Recordings  2011
08 Tracks. 40mins23secs

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Two years on from his stunning debut album, Navigare, Simon Scott returns to Erik Skodvin’s Miasmah with a much more ambitious follow up, where he revives some elements of the shoegaze he helped map out as a member of Slowdive nearly two decades ago, and weaves them together with atmospheric late night jazz and decaying ambient sequences.

Following his departure from Slowdive, after the band’s seminal second album, Souvlaki, Scott went on to perform with Lowgold for a while and later on formed Seavault, with ISAN’s Antony Ryan, and Televise, under which banner he released a number of albums between 2005 and 2008. Navigare represents however a watershed in Scott’s career as he finally stepped out in the limelights and fully assumed his position as a solo artist. Since, he has published a number of mini albums and EPs on Secret Furry Hole, Slaapwel or Sonic Pieces, and collaborated with Jasper TX’s Dag Rosenqvist on the soundtrack to Juriaan Booij’s short film Conformists, and The Sight Below on It All Falls Apart, published last year.

Like its predecessor, Bunny is a haunting and vibrant piece of work, but here, Scott steps away from the stark ambiences he explored on Navigare to investigate a much wider cross section of moods and sounds. Despite being only three and a half minute long, opening piece AC Waters, is a particularly ambitious piece; delicate guitar brushes, bowed cello, plucked double bass and textured electronics are clustered into sensory components to form a vast evocative soundscape. This sets the tone for the rest of the record. From there on, Scott alternates between similarly murky moments (the first half of Labano, Black Western Lights, the end part of Honeymoon, Gamma) and heavily hazed guitar-led pieces (Betty, the second half of Labano, Radiance, Drilla) which will undoubtedly hit a chord with shoegaze nostalgics.

Scott carves here a series of extremely effective and powerful moods, and applies them in subtle sonic layers. On the opening moments of Labano, a muffled piano floats above a distant bed of electric tension, while processed electric guitars create a dissonant drone on Black Western Lights before decay weakens it until it entirely disintegrate. On Gamma, the gloomy toll of a single piano note, at times echoed by a double bass, icily pulses over fragments of slide guitar and cello. Similar atmospheric sprawls can be found on the slow burning guitar pieces, but, buried under layers of distortions and reverbs, they lurk in the background and are not instantly noticeable, yet this is where they are the most devastating.

With each new record, Simon Scott has altered his path slightly to deflect expectations. He does so here in quite a perverse way, bringing back hazy guitars and vast reverbs when he appeared to have left them behind for good, and integrating them into his refined electronics. Here, he has widened his scope greatly, but has retained the core of his dense soundscaping to create a stunning follow up to his impressive debut.

4.5/5

Simon Scott | Simon Scott (MySpace) | Miasmah Recordings
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KABOOM KARAVAN
Barra Barra
MIA015
Miasmah Records 2011
10 Tracks. 44mins37secs

KRENG
Grimoire
MIA016
Miasmah Records 2011
11 Tracks. 53mins45secs

Barra Barra
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Grimoire
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This may just be a coincidence, but Miasmah are releasing almost simultaneously the albums of two Belgian collectives with activities reaching far beyond music to encompass other art forms, and each with a very unique and intriguing vision. While the two records are radically different in many ways, they feed from a shared aesthetic, and both show a similar taste for surrealist and enigmatic settings.

A collective activities ranging from theatre and film to dance and music, Kaboom Karavan are somewhat difficult to pin down. That they ended up on Miasmah is hardly a surprise though considering the dramatic nature of Barra Barra. Their debut on Miasmah, this album follows a first digital-only release, Short Walk With Olaf, published in 2007.

On Barra Barra, Kaboom Karavan distill generous portions of poetry and horror, weaving them tightly into the fabric of each track until they become almost indiscernible from one another. Their soundscapes, built from acoustic instruments, found sounds and electronics, are twisted little formations, often fairly minimal, yet extremely complex and intricate. Out of distorted instrumentation and broken sound collages occasionally escapes fragments of melody, but they are swallowed back into the flow of sonic debris which populate the backdrop of these tracks as quickly as they appeared, leaving virtually not trace of their existence behind. This intensity in the execution contributes greatly to the feeling of oppression which taints the whole record, and while KK occasionally temper this with delicate touches, these remain too isolated to make lasting marks on the overall work. As they are, they only appears as no more than small clearings in an otherwise extremely thick jungle of noise.

Through the distorted lens of their approach, KK create a universe half way between cataclysmic post industrial chaos and enchanted fantasy world. The journey they embark on is quite simply breathtaking and full of surprises. From the unsettling humming (or is it a growl?) of opening track Lentetooi and the pressing flow of violins on Nuit Nadar to the textural Parka or Thyres, the suspiciously playful Wälzer to the plain disturbing assemblage of the title track, KK conscientiously deflect the course of the record at every opportunity. Barra Barra is a maze of sounds, noises and atmospheres which never settles, and in which it is impossible not to get irremediably lost. One can only let the flow carry the mood and admire the foolish ambition of such an undertaking.

If KK’s focus is firmly set on creating stark atmospheric soundscapes, compatriots Kreng favour an approach very much based on the music itself and on developing cinematic compositions using a fairly vast orchestral lexicon. Authors of an impressive debut album with L’Autopsie Phénoménale De Dieu almost two years ago, Kreng went back into their laboratory and devised an equally as fascinating follow up.

Far from being straightforward and linear, the band’s vision is equally as distorted and grotesque than that of KK, the many components of their tracks appearing at times extruded and grossly deformed, or at others so far in the distance that they are barely noticeable. This happens under cover of respectability in many cases, with Kreng weaving strange noises, muffled caustic animal breath or fragments of conversations, possibly extracted from films or played for the sole purpose of tilting the mood toward discomfort, into theatrical orchestrations, at times inflated with operatic flourishes. The mood is suitable bleak and oppressive, with a constant emphasis on the dramatic, but Kreng temper this by retaining a strong cinematic element to their music, at times punctuated by percussions (Le Bateleur, La Poule Noire), at others crystalised into rich and evocative themes (Wrak) or haunting sound placements (Le Petit Grimoire, Girl In A Fishtank). Remains the totally surreal and dreamy aspect of the overall work, each track perfectly set into a much wider narrative. While nowhere near as intricate and intense as those of Kaboom Karavan, Kreng’s soundscapes remain extremely dense and pertinent, and appear to spill over the whole record. While there are undeniably distinct features on each of the tracks presented, some being more atmospheric than others for instance, the collective purposely blur the transitions between each section to create a superbly consistent soundtrack.

While different, these two albums stem from a same fascination for ambiences and flair for mise en scene. Both Kaboom Karavan and Kreng tread very refined and complex grounds, and it takes all the understanding of space and context for the collectives to retain control of their work. Ultimately though, it is impossible to find that one has the edge over the other so perfect is their respective execution.

Barra Barra: 4.8/5 / Grimoire: 4.8/5

Kaboom Karavan (MySpace) | Kreng | Kreng (MySpace) | Miasmah Recordings
Barra Barra
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Grimoire
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JUV
Juv
MIACD014
Miasmah Recordings 2011
13 Tracks. 73mins08secs

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The story behind this record is as odd and unusual as its content. Toward the end of the nineties, two Norwegian teenagers, Are Mokkelbost and Marius von der Fehr, were experimenting with dense guitar textures and bleak drones, but for one reason or another, the relationship collapsed before any music could be released, leaving the recordings they had gathered in the couple of years they worked together unfinished and abandoned, bound to never be heard. Fast-forward to 2009, when Mokkelbost, now a firmly established musician, happened to come across these long lost tapes and, having realised the potential of the music documented, decided to get back in touch with von der Fehr and the pair got down to work, editing down the wealth of material into an album, finally completing the work.

The particularly dark abrasive textures and bleakscapes collected here feel very much at home on Miasmah. Although primarily build from electric guitar sounds, the majority of the tracks here could be likened to the remains of dead stars. There is often little more than a faint glow pulsating from the dense sonic conglomerates assembled by the pair, and whatever energy is emitted is often swallowed by vast clouds of echoes and delays.

A notable exception to this, Revolusjoner bows under the pressure of a series of riffs, but even there, the sound remains partly muffled and filtered, so the distortions never appear quite as splintered as they naturally would. The addition of strident saturated layers in the second part of the piece however instills a new level of fear and oppression which, although short-lived, continues to resonate for some time after they have died down. A similar feeling emanates from Undergang and Sut, this time triggered by rather chilling screams, human in the latter, possibly animal in the former, piercing through the doom-laden atmosphere of these pieces.

Elsewhere, the pair opt for rather more nebulous soundscapes, the original sound sources so extremely processed and refined that they are, for the most part, barely identifiable as guitar sounds. The vast desolate plains that characterize the title track, Stue, Forvasel or Verk are in stark contrast to the more angular moments of this record, but this allows for possibly more progressive compositions. This is especially the case on the epic closing piece Verk, which goes through a series of phases ranging from dense ethereal structures in the first few minutes to extremely delicate and pastoral arrangements around the half-way mark to near orchestral grandeur toward the end.

Whether this collaborative effort is doomed to never be repeated, or might spark a new endeavour for Are Mokkelbost and Marius von der Fehr, only the future will tell, but if this album were to remain an isolated effort, it is quite a magistral stroke.

4.8/5

Miasmah Recordings
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FNS
FNS
MIACD012
Miasmah Recordings 2010
06 Tracks. 45mins26secs

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If spring is finally making an apparition in Britain, it appears as if Norway, or at least the corner occupied by Miasmah, is still in the grip of a permanent winter. The label headed by Erik Skodvin has claimed glacial landscapes as its own, and its latest signing, Oslo-based musician Fredrik Ness Sevendal, will do very little to contribute to a thawing in the aesthetic of its catalogue. Yet, Sevendal’s debut album for the label, very much like Simon Scott’s Navigare before it, scans a very different type of icy territories to that favoured by Miasmah until now. Using both acoustic and electric guitars, often in treated form, as his main sound sources, Sevendal carves a varied series of textured soundscapes at the confines of psychedelic folk and ethereal noise.

The album opens with a strummed acoustic guitar oddly reminiscent of David Bowie’s Space Oddity for a moment, but a shimmering melody, peppered with gentle percussions, takes Silence To Say Hello in an altogether different direction, and as the track progresses and sound grows more altered and distorted, and eventually collapses, the fragile nature of this album becomes much clearer.

A veteran of the Norwegian music scene, and an active member in a variety of bands, Sevendal builds his solo work around lo-fi home recordings, working glitches and sound defects into the fabric of his music, rendering it surprisingly much stronger as its fragility becomes more obvious. This is very much what is fascinating about Silence To Say Hello. The piece is almost anodyne as it opens, but as defects come into focus and alter the listener’s perception, it gains incredible strength from these glitches. As the album progresses, this treatment becomes even more potent as the lights are left shining on the more minimal moments, often materialised in little more than an acoustic guitar, the accidental speckles of dust having a particularly deep resonance. On Sappélur and Flaggermusvingers Vift I Dimmet, layers of distorted, yet somehow smooth and refined, guitars build a stark landscape, where melody becomes almost secondary to the noise structure, although, in the closing few minutes of the latter, the dust settles again slowly to reveal dreamy textures reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine at their most delicate end.

In two occasions, Sevendal leans towards more openly human grounds by adding voices to the mix. On Dream, reversed vocals prove an uneasy echo of Matt Elliott’s drunken songbook for an instant, but a wonderfully eerie guitar loop lifts the piece to an almost narcotic-like dimension later on. Wooden Leg sees Inga-Lill Farstad take on vocal duties, and the mood is here is even more ethereal and poignant, adding exquisite flourishes to Sevendal’s music, especially as the voice splits into touching harmonies.

This Miasmah debut, which originally appeared in a slightly different form as a limited CDr release a few years ago, is once again a wonderful addition to the label’s catalogue, its evocative scope being told from a slightly unusual perspective, but all the more powerful for it.

4.4/5

FNS | FNS (MySpace) | Miasmah Recordings
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SIMON SCOTT
Navigare
MIACD011
Miasmah Recordings 2009
10 Tracks. 47mins59secs

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Once a member of early nineties daydream shoegazers Slowdive, for whom his manned the drums for four years, Simon Scott has since worked on a variety of projects, including, in recent years, atmospheric pop/electronic outfit Televise, and, more recently, Seavault, a collaboration with ISAN’s Antony Ryan. He is also at the helm of experimental imprint Keshhhhhh Recordings, which he runs from his native Cambridge.

For his first release under his own name, Scott couldn’t have found a label more adapted to the vast atmospheric stretches of Navigare than Erik Skodvin’s bleak house of Miasmah. Yet, this album is actually quite a departure for the label, as Scott doesn’t deal with dark orchestral formations, as others on Miasmah, but with meticulously layered processed guitar textures. At first, Navigare sounds rooted in Scott’s former band as Introduction To Cambridge echoes with the hazy spectre of early Slowdive, but soon the record takes a much more claustrophobic turn. If the peaceful sub-aquatic brushes of Under Crumbling Skies for a moment distracts the mind and lets presage of a gentle journey just below the surface, Flood In, and The ACC later on are overwhelmed with distortions and reverbs, the dense guitars layers only partially defined while the drums are given a ghostly aura, drilling deep down a sense of oppression.

This album is no hospitable ground. Tortured soundscapes swallow any reminiscence of melody as reverbs are widened to the extreme on the cavernous Repulse, which appears to resonate with echoes of underground torrents of incandescent lava, while substantial cracks, triggered by abrasive distortions, run below the surface of Derelict Days, Spring Stars or Asham, constantly threatening their very fabric and stability. Only The Old Jug And Drum provides a fleeting moment of relief, the distorted church bells at its chore giving it a surprising pastoral touch, even when they are momentarily covered in a coat of metallic particles.

With Navigare, Simon Scott has created a contrasted piece of work, its vast sonic landscapes challenged by abrasions, distortions, its structure threatened by decay. There are moments reminiscent of Fennesz here, but Scott’s ill atmospheres and wintry soundscapes make this a much more ominous and dark proposition altogether.

4.7/5

Simon Scott (MySpace) | Miasmah Recordings
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KRENG
L’Autopsie Phénoménale De Dieu
MIACD010
Miasmah Recordings 2009
18 Tracks. 55mins19secs

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Miasmah’s ill and sombre hinterlands welcome their latest dweller in Belgian artist Pepijn Caudron. When he started as Kreng some years ago, Caudron’s work was entirely sample-based, his music borrowing from classical, jazz, electronica or improvisation. Over the years, Caudron developed a more cinematic feel to his work, leading him to work on soundtracks for films and theatre, and in particular with a company named Abattoir Fermé, based in Mechelen, half way between Brussels and Antwerp, where Caudron resides. While he is credited with a number of original pieces for both film and theatre, the ambitiously titled L’Autopsie Phénoménale De Dieu is his first official release, and follows a couple of digital EPs.

Dark, haunting and unsettling, this album is undeniably at home on Erik Skodvin’s Miasmah, yet its theatricality gives it a certain grandeur that is new to the label. Caudron weaves orchestral sections, odd snippets of film dialogues, prepared instruments and found sounds into a tense and epic soundtrack which is in turn haunting, beautiful, awkward, enigmatic or surreal. Voices often betray terror or sadness, melodies are voluntarily deconstructed or repetitive, sounds are inflicted in salves, to create complete sensory overload.

While Pepijn Caudron plays most of the instruments here, he occasional gets a helping hand from Frederik Van De Moortel (sounds), Eric Thielemans (percussions) and Jeremy Calbert (piano) to create extra layers and accentuate the gloomy nature of the record. Due to how L’Autopsie Phénoménale is conceived, it is difficult to isolate any particular moment. Instead, this record seems to go through various phases, from the relatively serene Nar De Sex and Tinseltown to the more tortured Kolossus or In De Bern (Part 3) or Het Wordt Ouder, which signals a further descent into a murky world where titles such as Transmutation Device, Aspyxia, Vomitor and Mythobarbital all seemingly refer to a murder in progress, while the music takes on a much more mournful tone. From there on, Caudron deals primarily with drones, heavy bombs dropped on the last section of the record, until the closing Merope finally brings a slightly lighter note, as to facilitate a return to normality.

L’Autopsie Phénoménale De Dieu is a rare record, even to Miasmah’s high standards. Pepijn Caudron’s experience with theatre feeds through the whole of the record and brings a particular narrative which, although pretty enigmatic, gives these compositions direction and purpose. This very mature and controlled record also shows Caudron as a truly gifted musician and sound artist, who can create and destroy atmospheres at will, and who may just have delivered Miasmah’s best records to date.

4.7/5

Kreng (MySpace) | Miasmah
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ELEGI
Varde
MIACD009
Miasmah Recordings 2009
12 Tracks. 53mins46secs

Elegi’s Tommy Jansen returns to the contaminated shore of Erik Skodvin’s Miasmah with the follow up to his 2007 debut album Sistereis, and adds another shade of noire to an already sombre catalogue. In the ten years the label has been around, in one form or another, Miasmah have carved a perfect niche for themselves by releasing some of the most haunting and dark music around, from artists such as Greg Haines, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Gultskra Artikler or Encre.

Two years ago, Norwegian musician and composer Tommy Jansen, delivered a first opus that paced up and down the desolated no man’s land between minimal contemporary classical music and isolationist electronica. With force grainy textures, created out of found sounds, and slow moving drapes of electronic sound waves, Jansen was drawing the outlines of a trilogy of which Varde is the second instalment.

Inspired by polar exploration, especially the 1912 Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole led by British Royal Navy officer Captain Roger Scott, which ended in tragedy when the five members of the expedition perished on the return leg of their journey, Varde is an impressive second effort by the Norwegian musician. Jansen weaves some particularly glacial soundscapes here, developing further the dense magma-like forms that he showcased on Sistereis. It is as if everything was intensified. The found sounds seem eroded by a long process of oxidation, the tones are more intense, and the overall pace appears even slower and more dramatic. To complete his sound palette, additional musicians provide layers of acoustic instrumentation, violin on Skrugard and Råk,, musical saw on Skrugard, Drivis and Fandens Bre, percussions on Drivis and Fandens Bre and double bass on Svanesang, and accentuate the organic feel of Jansen’s compositions.

The sound formations are so dense and tight that it is often virtually impossible to disassociate the musical elements and the environmental noises, but, on Råk especially, the violin adds an incredibly haunting and human touch to the music. Elsewhere though, the pieces remain shrouded in thick clouds of sound, with, at times, the lone tone of a piano, a sudden gust of wind or the distant howl of a wolf for sole focal point.

Varde, which translates as cairn, a pile of stones used as a monument, is as cold and inhospitable as its predecessor, but, somehow, Jansen seem to have given some of the musical aspects of his work more relief and definitions. While drones still form integrant part of the music, melodies, while still very much set deep in the mix, give out an occasional warm glow throughout.

4.2/5

Elegi (MySpace) | Miasmah Recordings
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GULTSKRA ARTIKLER
Kasha Iz Topora
MIACD006
Miasmah Recordings 2007
18 Tracks. 66mins48secs

Isn’t technology beautiful? Now that even the cheapest PCs are capable – in the right hands – of sophisticated sound manipulation, the way is open for ever more peculiar people to realize the sounds in their heads no matter how far outside normal musical frames of reference they might be. No longer does a Captain Beefheart need to capture, imprison and brainwash talented young musicians in order to create a Trout Mask Replica. Instead, people with a unique vision need only lock themselves away with a computer and tweak and twist and warp whatever sounds are around them until they have an album’s worth of the sounds that will allow others access to their soundworld. Burial – if the myth is to be believed – is one such visionary, sat in his room with the TV on and an old PC with a fan so knackered it smokes, editing sound without even recourse to a sequencer in pursuit of the perfect aural painting of the fears and joys of the South London night time; and Siberian-born, Moscow-dwelling Alexey Devyanin is without doubt another.

I pick Burial and Captain Beefheart very particularly as points of reference, not because this album sounds anything like either, but precisely because none of them sound like anything else. It is possible to find certain similarities – say, in the way both Burial and Gultskra Artikler take musique concrète completely out of the realm of the academic and make manipulations of unmusical sounds completely musical, or how, like Beefheart, Devyanin manages to create an internal logic so forcefully convincing that utterly off-kilter rhythms begin to normalize themselves in your brain once you’ve immersed yourself in them.

The CD comes packaged with a booklet of collages and stories in Russian; you don’t need to read the language or look up the website to know that these are all rooted in sinister folklore, with the pictures showing bears and old faceless baboushkas lurking in shadowy woodlands, flying axes and topsy-turvy dream physics. If you do look it up, you’ll find out things about magic porridge bowls you never knew you wanted to know but are glad you do. None of which goes any further towards describing what the album actually sounds like, but all of which makes complete sense as you listen to it. The various sounds of chiming bells, creaking doors, lapping waves, frogs and other more unidentifiable but natural-sounding noises which weave around the acoustic guitars and cellos that create the main hooks of the tracks give the whole thing the air of an unfolding uneasy, surreal drama. One could imagine all manner of modern dance pieces or dark Slavic animations being done to this music, but the vital point is that it needs no illustration; the infinitesimal level of detail, the constantly-developing melodies and that vital sense that you are being immersed in the imaginings of a unique mind all mean that this album is an experience in itself, listen after listen.

Though this review so far may suggest otherwise, this album is not artwank. Neither is it clumsy ‘outsider art’ to be consumed voyeuristically. Despite Devyanin’s clear facility both with real instruments and with his software, it sounds like it comes from club/ambient music rather than from the conservatoire, with the need to keep ‘confused’ audiences engaged which that entails, so its sounds are there to be enjoyed first of all beyond any conceptual value. Its more electronic sections have all the outer-space ambient loveliness of early KLF or Orb, and even as the atmosphere darkens the clanks, bangs and radio crackles are there for emotional effect rather than to be endured. If you’ve ever had a bus-ride transformed by a great ambient record on headphones, if you’ve ever felt the otherworldliness of the peculiar indietronica lyricism of bands like Múm or Efterklang, or simply if you need to be reminded that there are still visionary minds out there producing music, then I can’t recommend this album enough.

4.7/5

Gultskra Artikler | Miasmah Recordings
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RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI
Daydreaming
MIACD004
Miasmah Recordings 2007
07 Tracks. 34mins07secs

Since Norwegian duo Deaf Center deployed their voluptuous blend of Gothic electronica back in 2004, there has been a pretty regular stream of associated releases related to Erik Skodvin, from his solo project (Svarte Greiner) to that of Miasmah, the imprint he set up (Greg Haines, Encre). Sound artist Rafael Anton Irisarri hails from Seattle, where he curates the Kupei Musika imprint. He has released minimal electronica as Luken, but this is his first album under his own name, and here, he explores radically different forms of music.

On Daydreaming, Irisarri paints incredibly subtle impressionist vignettes with sparse touches of piano and electronics. Each piece casts a particular light upon this effortlessly elegant suite, making it a beautiful and captivating record.

Unlike the claustrophobic formations found on Skodvin’s output as Svarte Greiner or the haunting spaces of Greg Haines’s recent Slumber Tides, Irisarri relies on gossamer drapes and carves wonderfully light and airy pieces. Traces of Brian Eno and Harold Budd are welcomed signposts in landscapes otherwise shrouded in fog. Waking Expectations, which opens, is a delicate reflective piece led by an omnipresent piano over which melancholic sound waves come crashing. When a guitar softly rains on the melody of A Thousand-Yard Stare, there is an echo of Budd’s collaboration with the Cocteau Twins. While treated sound debris cloud the opening moments of Wither, they are pushed aside by a particularly pure and sharp piano line. On Lumberton, Irisarri intensifies for a moment his execution for this surprisingly romantic piece, yet, here again, strips of Guthrie-esque guitar ornate the delicate melody until it fades away.

The piano is once again at the heart of Voigt-Kampf, but this time, in treated form. Lengthened and soften, each note becomes ethereal swathe, caught in a gentle breeze like a thought in a dream. Fractal displays a more ambitious series of soundscapes, with layers of fuzz and distortions slowly laid down over a muffled heartbeat-like rhythmic marker. Although the mood of the entire record lends itself to daydreaming, the title is especially relevant to these two particular tracks. Irisarri concludes with the haunting and contemplative A Glimpse.

Daydreaming is a haunting collection of stunning dreamscapes which not only allows for the mind to wander, but actively stimulates mental illusions and emotional attachment. Here, Irisarri assembles an incredibly consistent series of particularly elaborate and evocative ambient pieces which are likely to captivate for years to come.

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