As its title suggest this is made up purely of field recordings taken from various jungle areas in and around Thailand, over a four year period. The field recordings are left as recorded and tamper free, and I have to say this is one of the most replayble, strange, haunting and rewarding field recordings disk I've come across. Dave Phillips is know to many for his often vomit educing & mind frying sound cut-ups and noise attacks. Here he takes his keen ear for unusual and often very odd sounds and takes us on a heady, strange, natural ambient sonic journey. Taking in insect, gibbon, bullfrog and canine sounds, along with waterfalls, heatseettling and the general rich and often very bizarre sounds of the jungle. Though there is no editing or manipulation going on here the sequence of the tracks is very clever going from slightly jarring, hallucinogenic and highly atmospheric. As expected with this type of thing the tracks are often very short going from a few seconds up to minute plus, but it all seems to flow well making an enjoyable and consistent whole. A few tracks are a little longer and the longest here is the simple breathtaking track 17 which is a recording of a sunset Concerto of inserts that goes on for 20 minutes & mangers to be both alien, ambient, soothing, bizarrely rhythmic, haunting & simply amazing really- built around the various rich and strange tones of the insects. Really standing up as a great and strange piece of ambience in its own right. The disk comes in a nice oversized full colour folder with liner notes by Mr Phillips and pictures from his trips around Thailand. This will certainly appeal beyond the normal field recording market, been of interest to ambient and noise fans too. (Roger Batty)

There is of course a lot of noise music out there, but there is only a handful people that do something that is really interesting. Merzbow provides the real thing, R.H. Yau and Dave Phillips do their own thing in the field of noise music, and they do a more than excellent job. '6' is Dave Phillips latest offering and it is a true blow. Phillips has been a member of Schimpfluch Gruppe, Fear Of God, Ohne and Dead Peni, but his true power is in his solo work. He blends together field recording, real noise, insect recordings, cracked electro acoustic sound and voice together in a truely fascinating manner. Not always loud, in fact hardly loud, but in a true collage style: moments of sheer silence are cut off with segments of cracking objects, insect sounds, speeding up tapes, people shouting on the street and then perhaps, perhaps, silence again. Twenty-three tracks in total, all with a super-long title, but this is best experienced as one long track. The dramatic impact is so much greater. Play this loud and you'll be scared shitless. It might be no coincidence that's halloween today? Noise music isn't about playing whatever in loud volume only, but deals with all forms of sound that are put in some context, tells us a rather unpleasant story, which in Phillips case is all about religion and the wars it lead to. A very very clever release, and establishes once again Phillips as a master of noise. (Frans De Waard, VITAL)

The Swiss Aktionist Dave Phillips has always had a knack for silence. But his use of still moments has nothing in common with the specialized hush of Bernhard Gunter, as a startling rupture always follows. Phillips’s silences explode into noise collages - a hammer dropping on wood, a gargled scream and a piece of glass being shattered are just a few of his startling punctuations. Like much of Phillips’s solo work, 6 is highly physical in its use of the dynamics between silence and noise, digressing into occasional bouts of puerile political comedy, such as the belched chorus on ‘The Absurd Belief That The Worst Of People, For The Worst Of Reasons, Will Somehow Work For The Benefit Of All Of Us (On Organised Religion, Politics And Economics).’ All 23 of 6’s tracks sport similar anarcho-political titles, whose agenda is articulated by Phillips’s manipulated recordings of insects, which express his misanthropic belief that we may be no better than the common fly. (Jim Haynes, THE WIRE # 275, January 2007)

Независимый белорусский звукозаписывающий лейбл The Egg And We Music издал свой третий релиз -- альбом "6" представителя швейцарской экспериментальной сцены, одного из основателей артистического движения Schimpfluch Gruppe, участника квартета OHNE Дэйва Филлипса. На своем новом диске музыкант продолжает опыты с психоакустикой, полевыми записями, рвотными реакциями и насекомыми. В оформлении альбома использована живопись Рудольфа Эбера. Лично у меня не возникло желание второй раз слушать эту работу, автор которой слишком увлечен экспериментом и забывает о самой музыке. Вольно или невольно создается впечатление, что она отражает ментальное состояние человека, страдающего тяжелым психическим расстройством. Это даже покруче, чем Sick Sick Sick проекта KEIN, который, я уже думал, никому не переплюнуть. Можно выделить только медитативный номер Song For Omar (кстати, это единственный трек, который имеет «нормальное» название), наполненный звуками дождя, сквозь который прорываются загадочные тихие звуки. С другой стороны, такая последовательность в производстве антимузыки вызывает если не понимание, то сочувствие. (www.nestor.minsk.by/mg/2007/01/mg70172.html)

Независимый белорусский звукозаписывающий лейбл The Egg And We Music сообщил об издании 9 октября своего третьего релиза - альбома "6" представителя швейцарской экспериментальной сцены, одного из основателей артистического движения Schimpfluch Gruppe, участника квартета OHNE Dave Phillips. На своем новом диске музыкант продолжает опыты с психоакустикой, полевыми записями, рвотными реакциями и насекомыми. В оформлении альбома использована живопись Рудольфа Эбера. Дополнительная информация о Дэйве Филлипсе: http://www.tochnit-aleph.com/dp. Заявки на приобретение альбома по специальной цене для резидентов Беларуси (6.000 BYR) принимаются по адресу zvuuk@open.by (www.machinistmusic.net)

Upon first viewing the titles for the 23 tracks that comprise '6', I couldn't get passed the thought that they could have been chapter titles in a bad Chuck Palahniuk book. It wasn't a good omen and I was slightly reluctant to press play. I'm glad I eventually did. The first thing that strikes me about '6' is that it scares the shit out of me. I jumped out of my chair about 20 times over the 70 odd minute length. The most terrifying moments were those long stretches of silence or stable activity. I began to anticipate these unbearable bursts. I never really could anticipate it though, which unnerved me further. As a result, by the end I was mentally exhausted. Remember that part in Apocalypse now when the tiger jumps out from the jungle? No matter how many times I've seen it, that bit still makes me jump. 6 is like reliving that moment over and over. All of this could come across as a cheap ploy by Phillips to make up for the fact his music fails to unnerve in any meaningful way. It's the old slasher movie dictum wherein if you can't create a true sense of dread just give em a cheap fright. Thankfully though, I don't get this feeling from '6'. Ultimately the frights only make up a small portion. Everything is so minutely and expertly composed that through the exhaustion a real joy can be garnered from the mastery of the composition. It's perhaps a tad overlong but definitely a worthwhile experience. (sound plague, www.ihatemusic.com/bagatellen)

Dave Phillips must really be a very sick man if he's anything like his explorations into audio insanity, that are severed up here still twitching to unsuspecting listener. He mixes all manner of cut up sound, noise, unpleasant & sickly ambience, silence and almost silence. Then fires it all like a sound roller coaster ride into your mind. A collection of Curse is as it's suggest a collection of track from diffrent times and places from 1994 to 2005, all brought into strange togetherness here. The thing that Mr Philips does that makes this all work and disturbing to such an extent is sudden left or right turns in sound, it will be dwelling in feast files sickly drone, before making you literal jump out of you skin by loud vomiting like sound. It's the pure element of surprise and the general odd and sick inducing sounds on offer here, take for example eat beyond taste and sensations, which mixes gurgling vomit and farting sounds, waterworks tingle, metal toilet pipe bang, odd demented moans, animal sounds and all manner of sounds I'd rather not know the origins of, all making a a track that almost makes you feel your going to throw up your self. So really the tracks are either spit into odd cuts ups come bizarre rhythmic works outs or growing and disturbed ambience or a mixes of both camps -it's the context and environments he puts the already disturbing sounds in that triples there effectiveness. One of the most disturbing and odd moments comes in the longest track here Hole\holy, which mixes low down bubble macabre synth tones, layers of female sexual moans, farting and burping sounds. It really almost becomes too much in the end, as the sounds seem to drill deeper into your mind, you start to worry for your sanity One for fans of unnerving ambience or demented cut ups ala Andy Ortmann or Sudden Infant, where both of those artist seem to offer some light relief- Phillips is always complete serious in his attempts to disturbed and sicken the listener, really approach with caution and don't eat before playing. (Roger Batty)

Sooo behind. Perhaps it's an allergy, but Blossoming Noise's consistently superior emissions release such a thick cloud of sonic ink that my senses swell and I find it impossible to arrange my thoughts for days at a time (I still have a Francisco Lopèz double disc to tackle from six months ago). This is a collection of curses, yes, but more so it is a collection of odds and ends from the decade starting 1995; the Swiss Phillips has previously worked as Fear of God and Ohne, dabbling in the dark arts of thrash and black metal, perfecting his vision as instigative noise sculptor. As one might expect from a collection by an artist of Phillips' ilk, this disc is crammed to the 80 minute limit (give or take 20 seconds) with pieces from varied, mostly previously-released (though in this circle, not necessarily accessible) sources with only one “edit” (what's not to hate about an edit?). Though an archive, and despite the man's healthy output, this is my general introduction to Phillips, so perhaps my impressions are poorly formed based on the age-defying nature of this album. Perhaps not. Like John Wiese, Dave Phillips makes “extreme” computer music, crafting cartoonish sketches with organic and synthesized sounds, cut and placed in (seemingly) free-form arrangements that induce varied psychosomatic response in the listener. However, unlike Wiese who suffocates your ears with a relentless torrent of finely-diced inertia, Phillips utilizes blank space by inserting substantial gaps between cuts, creating the impression of relief - though merely the impression, as one instead fills these spaces with anxiety and apprehension in anticipation of the coming transmission. The songs of 'Collection' bear similarities of this meta-production, yet the compositional elements represent a much broader wealth of sound resource. Eschewing chronology for phases, the front-end of the disc is loaded with several collages of concrète sound manipulation, tracks which succeed best to create tension and loathing while exploring the vacant spaces of active listening. The older tracks - mostly found toward the center of the album - logically tend toward safer, more familiar territory, with field recordings of man (“Züri”), and nature (“Complainer”) - though arguably, Phillips attempts to dedifferentiate these as one and the same. Like most Blossoming Noise releases and their artistic affiliations, 'Curses' is heavy with misanthropy, emphasizing human functions (defecation, regurgitation, farting) and sexuality as weakness (peaking with the 15 minute exposition “Hole/Holy”). This antipathy, coupled with the label's subtle animal rights mandate, creates a complex space like a sonic slaughterhouse where the listener must face the ugliness of being, with little recourse. The eight part “Hermeneutics” suite closes the disc (less a final rude coda): rehashing the full-band Fear of God material in clipped, howling bursts, these tracks illuminate with cold light the intrinsic aural qualities which this thrash band equated into Phillips' latter works as a composer and musician. I would like to say this is good 'headphone music'; however it doesn't lend to cluttered, busy environments - too many gaps for outside sounds to interfere with the fine tension that the composition creates. This is instead headphone music in that such forum allows no sensual distraction, but so is a secluded space recommended in which to insulate the music from foreign intruders. Mastered by Tom Smith, the recordings enjoy immaculate engineering to heighten effect, allowing no room to escape. CD comes in a digipak with brilliant, beautiful cover art that reminds me of the days when people used to make cover art. (www.animalpsi.com))

Dave Phillips is an integral cog in Switzerland's Schimpfluch collective, a group dedicated to continuing the extremist traditions and aesthetics of the Viennese Actionists who rose to prominence during the 1960's. The word Schimpfluch translates as 'abuse' in German, and there is undoubtedly a violent current worming its way through this collection of abstracts and outbursts which reach across the last decade of Phillips's career. A Collection Of Curses is crammed full of phlegmatic gurgles, porcine grunts and the sounds of numerous intimate bodily functions - celebrations of animal nature, both theirs and ours. These are punctuated by eviscerating shards of noise and banshee screams that are equal to anything issued recently by Wolf Eyes and their ilk. The results are often unsettling, putting the spooks up anyone who listens too intently. It is the presence of the organic suffocating amidst the synthetic wreckage that truly makes the skin crawl.
But it is on the homeward stretch, with “Fog Scrub” and the “Hermeneutics” series, that the collection really hits its stride. Sourced from tracks by his old hardcore group, Fear Of God, Phillips teases and morphs the material into something even more brutal, creating the kind of blitzkrieg that brings to mind Bay Area train wreckers like Spazz, No Comment and San Diego's almighty Crossed Out. (Spency Grady, The Wire, March 2007)

`I'm sure there are readers of this zine who have some idea what exactly Dave Phillips (of Schimpfluch-Gruppe, Ohne, Fear of God, et al) does, sound-wise, but I'm basically clueless. About the only critical insight I can muster is some variation on "Whoah." The bio on Phillip's MySpace page mentions "psychophysical tests and trainings" and "various trips to Asia for field recordings, especially of insects," which does shed a little light. And sure, I could trot out such bywords as noise, aktion, and bruitism, but I don't really know what any of those mean. Regardless, what really makes it all work for me is the impeccable overall sonic design and attention to detail (which is where things like field recordings of insects come in, though never in an obvious way). This is shocking, meticulously arranged music that constantly reinvents itself, and A Collection of Curses is a very nicely done anthology of all kinds of odds & ends from the years 1994-2004, comp tracks and various unreleased stuff, both a fine introduction to the guy's work and an essential disc for the longtime fan. (Blastitude Magazine January 2007 - www.blastitude.com)

Es ist Blossoming Noise hoch anzurechnen, dass all die verstreuten Tracks von 1994-2005 des Schimpfluch-Mitglieds auf einem Album vorliegen. Original auf allerhand obskuren Compilations oder mini-CDs erschienen, umfassen die 31 Stücke die ganze Palette Phillipscher Unreinheiten: Telefonzwitter und Radiounfälle, stures Insektengefiedel und robustes Hundegebell, Schreikrämpfe, Affengeheul, Klowasser und extrem mitreißende Stille. Oft collagiert Phillips, zerschneidet und setzt zusammen. Aber er schreit, keucht und würgt dabei sein Organ über die Nahtstellen, dass so manchem von uns die Mandeln platzen würden. Mund spricht hier einzig Mund, nicht ein Wort, kein Stottern kommen heraus. Und doch entfaltet sich explizit ein Weltbild, das wohl eher unheilvoll erscheinen will: 'Justice is an Artefact of Custom' heißt der Opener. Schade, dass da so was Altbackenes steht. Weiß doch jeder, dass Gerechtigkeit uns alle überlebt, seit Jahrtausenden mit uns morpht und sogar jedem von uns zu Gute kommen kann. Aal drauf, wichtiges Album. ed **** (Ed Benndorf)

This is a very strange collection of compositions that can only be recommended for truly adventurous listeners. This CD collects 31 pieces recorded by Dave Phillips from 1994 to 2005. Most folks will find these recordings to be strange, alienated, and unlistenable. Phillips records music from a purely artistic perspective. Instead of trying to come up with songs that might appeal to the average listener, he records sounds and ideas that are purely abstract and bizarre. The only possible comparison we can come up with for this music is John Cage...but the overall sound of Dave Phillips' music is actually very different. A Collection of Curses is easily one of the oddest albums we have heard in some time. Some of these pieces are actually rather hilarious ("Pktpl" had us giggling up a storm). Most folks will be turned off by this CD...while a very small subsection of the listening population will be intrigued. We fall into the latter category. Rating: 5+/maximum (www.babysue.com)

μιξάροντας ηχογραφήσεις εντόμων που έκανε κάποια στιγμή στην Ταϊλανδή, ο dave phillips (μέλος της schimpfluch gruppe, ντράμμερ των πάλαι πότε grinders, 'fear of god', κλπ, μας προσφέρει μια από τις πιο δυνατές και τρομερές δουλειές του. αν και τα τελευταία χρόνια από τους αφαιρετικούς ήχους του, έχει περάσει σε ήχους που δημιουργούνται, συντηρούνται και παράγονται από το σώμα του (σάλιο, κλπ κλπ κλπ) το insect αποτελεί μια ηχογράφηση, η δυναμική της οποίας κρύβεται (θα τόλμαγα να πω) στον απίστευτο τρόπο εξέλιξης της. από κει που δε το περιμένεις διαχέονται οι ήχοι σιγά σιγά στο χώρο σου καταλαμβάνοντας τον και στέλνοντας σε τελείως. το θεωρώ ως μια από τις καλύτερες στιγμές του που αξίζει να τσεκάρει κάποιος... τώρα όσον αφορά τα έντομα... την επόμενη φορά που θα θελήσει κάποιος να σκοτώσει ένα ας λάβει υπόψη του αυτά (nicolas, www.tranzistor.gr)

Dave Phillips began his musical career when he was 17, co-founding the hardcore extremists Fear of God in 1987. As Fear of God developed into Switzerland's answer to Napalm Death or Carcass, Phillips began to see that their faster, shorter, noisier approaches to grindcore were merely a springboard for more psychologically challenging and physically demanding artforms. Soon after Fear of God's demise in 1989, he met up with Rudolf Eb.er of Runzelstirn & Gurglestock and joined the actionist Schimpfluch-Gruppe which has followed the traditions of abjection and transgression as dictated by the Viennese Aktionists (i.e. Hermann Nitsch, Gunter Brus, Otto Muhl, etc.). In performances punctuated with short sharp bursts of noise, the Schimpfluch-Gruppe quite literally plays with vomit, blood, and all of the fluids from bodily orifices. If it sounds juvenile, it is; but both Phillips and Eb.er also manage to make their gross-out sessions numbingly effective manifestations of the nether regions of the human psyche. Along with the official Schimpfluch-Gruppe actions, Phillips has performed with Sudden Infant, PK, and Ohne which had received a considerable amount of acclaim with their Mego debut of electrocutionist musique concrete. On IIIII, Phillips recorded work proves to be just as absurdist, nihilistic, and nauseating as his performances. The noise comes quite sporadically, and when it does, Phillips clobbers you over the head with volatile sick tones and splattered distortion; but the bulk of IIIII waits with a tense silence until wooden hammerings, demonic growlings, blister-pricked ruptures, and unsettling screams shatter the empty spaces. As a result, Phillips' work is far more nervewrecking that maximalists like Merzbow or The New Blockaders. Even if you have a stomach strong enough for R.H.Y. Yau and Runzelstirn & Gurglestock, Phillips makes for very difficult listening. (www.aquariusrecords.org)

Extreme Dynamiken, extreme Wechsel zwischen Stille und konkretesten Noise-Attacken, die wie Schläge in die Magengrube wirken, aber auch ruhigere field recordings & microsounds zwischendurch, das Unerwartete GERÄUSCH ist hier allgegenwärtig. Sehr expressive Geräuschmusik, DAVE PHILLIPS ist ein Meister darin Klänge fast physisch einzusetzen ! 99 tracks !! (Drone Records)

There's something instantly intimidating about popping a CD into your player and seeing 99 tracks flash up, especially when the first of them (called "wec") is completely silent. Quiet rain begins to fall during track two ("an"), but that distant thunder should put you on your guard. The deluge subsides a little, but all hell breaks loose on track 4 ("rut") - for 11 seconds. The first sign of retching appears in track 6 ("zeo"), and it returns on track 9 ("ti"), alternating with some particularly vicious bangs and crashes. Par for the course for Phillips, whose previous work with Fear Of God and the actionist activists Gruppe Schimpfluch is ideal for anyone who needs to be forcibly evicted from their apartment in a hurry. The novelty of IIIII is the element of surprise, as there's at least as much silence as noise on the disc, but the novelty soon wears off and you wish that Dave would just finish emptying his stomach once and for all and go get himself a Milk of Magnesia. Doubly frustrating is the fact that what noise there is tends to come in short sharp bursts - no chance of a good ol' Merz-style extended blowout here. (There are a few exceptions, notably the final track "is" and number 78, "po" - incidentally, if you're wondering about the cryptic track titles, you need only put them together and they read as follows: "we can scrutinize our motives and impulses we can know why we act as we do we can approach a point at which our actions are the results of our choices when we are conscious everything we do will be done for reasons we can know at that point we will be authors of our lives this may seem fantastical and so it is".) If the idea of the disc is to antagonise, it deserves five stars; if, though, the name of the game is enjoyment - ah, how old-fashioned that sounds - you might want to steer clear, unless your idea of enjoyment is having someone vomit in your ear before shooting you in the head with a nail gun. (Dan Warburton)

Field recordings of chirping birds and rushing water go to my head, my heart, deeper still. But what differentiates them besides for the moment in time, the rhythm of the moment? Well in the case of the latest by Dave Phillips, expect the unexpected as the lilting ambience turns to something of a distorted torture chamber in a flippant, immediate way. Creating a collage of pasted parts that conceal just enough and expose the way say, The Gerogerigegege (Juntaro Yamanouchi) does, with quirky voice like interactive happenings and other dramatics. Phillips crams 99, mostly micro-short, pieces into one full-on 74-minute adventure - some tracks are pauses with pure silence, others are tape rewinds and silly sounds ala Woody Woodpecker. Maybe this is for the birds after all. (igloomag.com)

Dass die einzelnen Mitglieder der Schimpfluch-Gruppe nicht immer auf das unbändig Laute und den beklemmenden Rest dazwischen besteht, haben neulich schon G*Park mit ihren Pianostudien beiwiesen (TA067). Entgegen vieler seiner vorangehenden Releases tritt Phillips als Artist hier ebenso zurück und findet seine Geräusche nicht im oder am eigenen Leib. Wildsäue haben es ihm angetan, das piensende Ferkel ebenso wie der blökende Keiler. Über knapp dreißig Minuten begleiten wir die doch recht heimelig und zufrieden wirkende Konversation der Viecher und schnell entsteht der gewinnbringende Eindruck, dass, wenn 'ne Sau dann doch mal lauter wird und 'ne andre Sau kurz kontert, es bestimmt eh nur um den schöneren Ecken in der Dreckmulde geht. Von diesem herrlich unverkrampften Verhalten sollte sich bitte jeder 'ne ordentliche Scheibe abschneiden. (Ed Benndorf)

"IIII is an unusually assembled collage from the Switzerland-based outsider environmentalist and sound artist Dave Phillips. The CD comes in a linen sleeve in a set completed with an anti-meat and corporation screed. Although you'd hesitate to call it 'reflective' or Zen-informed, long patches of silence or extremely quiet sonic happenings curve into sudden noise events that'll have you worrying about the volume. Faint movements, breathing or rustling are followed by a muffled gunshot, and then the bristling and purring of cicadas. Or an insistent electronic hiss, accompanied by a desultory amplified fumbling, grows into a louder pop and clack, and then lurches with a wild cry into an extreme squall of screaming, whooping, and electronic noise that cuts out after half a minute into near silence. Elsewhere, there are odd semi-human snatches of crooning, or a split second of gulping sickness that overdrives into an acid white noise drone before dispersing among recordings of birds. Between minimalism and Dada collage, it's at once spaced out and aggressively splintered." (Matt Ffytche, The Wire Issue 226, December 2002)

Die Schweizer Dave Phillips (ex-Fear of God), Sudden Infant, Ohne, Rudolf Eb.er, sie alle und einige im Geiste Verbundene weltweit bilden ein Gruppierung unter den Noisemusikern, die irgendwo aus stark linksgeprägter Gesellschafts- und Kulturkritik, aus ihrer Suche nach Erhabenheit im ausgesperrten Schmerz und aus hochkarätiger Nächstenliebe ihre Inspiration schöpfen. Sudden Infant aka Joke Lanz bewies dies unter anderem auf seinem geschätzten Album "Bandenkrieg" (SSSM) und Rudolf Eb.er aka Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock aufs unübertroffen Abscheulichste auf der behaarten (!) CD "Asshole/Snail Dilemma" (Tochnit Aleph). Auf Philipps' Album "IIII" bleiben der und das Andere fast unbemerkt ständig präsent: Geflüster, field recordings von der Mücke, der Grille, aus der Küche und vom Bahnhof verfolgen uns über die gesamte Spielzeit. Doch immer wieder, ohne jegliche Vorwarnung und ohne erkennbaren Rhythmus, versucht Phillips das stetig rollende Außen im mal scheißwütenden, mal angewitzelten Schrei um alles oder im Auswurf stehender, elender analoger Kotze zu brechen (weniger aus Wut denn aus Hilfosigkeit oder beidem). Gemäß seiner Aussage im Booklet "Words can be more than words" streift er im Urtrieb jeglichen Versuchs des Redens das vermeintlich Informative zuvorkommend ab und platzt unüberhörbar in die Vorstufe intersubjektiven Erkennens hinein. Einfach ma so, mit dicker Wucht. Phillips bricht das beanstandete Schweigen untereinander letztendlich aber durch nichts. Da das Ohr immer offen bleibt, kommen wir sowieso nicht umhin, die andern zu erfassen und notgedrungen kennenzulernen. Das Außen und der Lärm werden bleiben, noch ziemlich lange und weiterhin uneins. Phillips leuchtet daher natürlich nur kurz zwischendurch auf, es blendet aber betörend gut. (Erik Benndorf)

needs no introduction. this contains the first and early un/released tracks from dave phillips. intense and harsh. sensitive and emotional. simple and straight. very complex and far away from noise making only for noise. there is so much to say to dave phillips' work that i only give you an idea here: it's very from the heart and dp is able to produce it that you can hear it! this is more than noise. one of my faves again and again! (Micha Barthel Recordings for the Summer Newsletter)

This shit's gonna straight up blow your mind. Bassist Dave of eternally godly FEAR OF GOD digitally chopped and re-arranged (or in places flat out demolished) his legendary band's old trax into "new" blasters and occasional harshtronic freakouts. Amazingly, very little remains of the original 16 year old (!) trax via Dave's sheer imagination with a minimum of "studio" tools at his disposal. For example: an added sharpness/trebly production for maximum auditory shockwave-daymare, plus the aforementioned re-chopping bits looped into entirely new structures...though this is achieved with the static originals over remixing the separate trax like lame nu-metal-meets-techno fusion at the mall-googleplex. If yer a grindcore snob (like me) and own all their originals (like me) cuz ya got them when they came out (like me) and you've spun their good name 40,000 times (like me) you WILL discern the trax (for the most part they're mixed as a non-stop horror-noise), but as I've been ranting it's just so much MORE than that! Ok already (for those NOT in the know), "What's all this fuss over a FEAR OF GOD???"...WELL twerpy, they were the WORLD'S FIRST grindcore band (yep, a full year before NAPALM DEATH really got it together for their 2nd LP, which is FAR superior to their 1st in EVERY facet!). I go so far as to call F.O.G. "hategrind" or "true noisecore" (LÄRM coined the term for brutal atonal hardcore, not ANAL CUNT crap). Heavily influenced by MAJESTY, LARM, and fuckin' SWANKYS (!), FEAR OF GOD is just the best band EVER! Kill the lop who questions. (Sean Hogan, Damaging Noise zine/USA)

The Hermeneutics of Fear Of God" MiniLP (auf Tochnit Aleph, Berlin) ist nun auf dem Markt! Die ersten 50 Kopien enthalten einen hübschen Aufnäher. Um keine Zweifel aufkommen zu lassen: Diese Platte ist etwas vom brutalsten, was je gehört wurde! Dave hat alte Fear Of God Aufnahmen zerschnippelt und wieder zusammengebaut (ohne fremde Elemente beizumengen) und es dabei fertiggebracht, einen völlig eigenständigen Sound zu entwickeln, der einfach alles niederwalzt in seiner dichte und Gehetztheit. Meisterlich, wahrlich! (www.heavymetal.ch)

Finally, Dave Phillips' “The Hermeneutics of Fear Of God” is available again! What can I say? Of all the “extreme” music I heard in my life, from poststructural noise to Grindcore, from Death Metal to Hardcore Thrash, this has got got to be the most vicious, aggressive and torturing record that I know. Dave obsessively inspected, dissected, turned around and reassembled the sonic remains of our old band FEAR OF GOD and thus created a bastard noise version of it that leaves me breathless still. One seriously wonders with which results the same method would twist, revolt other already “extreme” sounding music and we can only hope for Dave Phillips, the modern day Frankenstein, to lay more corpses on his experimental scaffolds, cutting and stitching and pestering them, thus deliberately creating more bastards to haunt our nights (when reason is put to sleep).
Order the expanded vinyl version (58 songs, 500 made only, 100 on colored vinyl) or the CD version (Digipack, 61 songs plus a short but lovely bonus Video) from Absurd Records (greetings to Marcelo!). As you can see, the minimalistic but affectionately done LP comes with insert (not visible on the photos), stamped innersleeve and sticker. (Erich Keller - http://www.goodbadmusic.com)

Dave Phillips live, or Dave Phillips live and then edited? I don't know. Are those mouth noises on turntable, or mouth noises and turntable, or both? I don't know that either. A close look reveals that Phillips' style is dissimilar from Eb.er's, but certainly related. The 'attack' style of editing is less punching and stabbing here than it is recurring orchestra motifs. Phillips might be the Alban Berg to Eb.er's Schoenberg, a slight easing up on the hard math (so who gets to be Webern?). Like his previous two full-lengths, this is beautiful and, I think, soulful experimental music, but experimental in the sense of testing or analyzing something, not hitting it with a hammer to see if it breaks. Very few of the characteristic "SLAM!"s until minute 9 (out of a 15 minute disc). The Bigfoot recording on Stomach Ache comes to mind sometimes. Also unlike Eb.er, Phillips can't seem to resist going for a BIG! finish. The "audience" sounds miles away, in an editing sense, not emotionally! This is a primer for those wishing to unlock the beautiful mysteries of his "III+" and "IIII" full-lengths, which, though I named the latter one of the best 15 discs of last year, I admit are still a bit beyond my comprehension. (christopher m. sienko)

dave phillips III+ cdr (tochnit aleph) demands a witness for his cruel and unusual execution of sixty-one homicidal turkeys (all of which have it coming). in the gain-attendant trandition of consciousness-captains runzelstirn & gurgelstock and schimpfluch-gruppe, gorked-up splats leap out of nowhere and try to permanently damage internal potentiometers by abusing the far reaches of impact detection. III+ enforces awareness of annexation of all empirical data receptors with magnifying glasses (or a suitably sexy analog). as in all great works of literature from the macrobiotic punctuation school, it's all about the crossing and the dotting. (seymour glass, bananafish 15, 2000)

haben ost-berlin und das schweizer schäferdörfchen aarau irgendwas gemein? na ja, arschlöcher gibt's überall; und somit auch menschen, die das ertragen müssen und sich vielleicht einen gewaltigen arschloch-schein aneignen, um den richtigen arschlöchern eins vorn latz zu knallen oder oft einfach nur aus spass an der freud' mit dreck. yop, frech hat deutlich hochkonjunktur. der chi.pflug-schweizer dave phillips ist - aber hallo! - ein kandidat für den soundtrack zur schmerzendsten wurst aufm klo, aber auch zur untermalung langsamer rhythmusstörungen im oder am schritt. phillips wuchtet schreie hervor, gefolgt von schreien und geschrei, wurzelt seinen eigenen sack faltig und loopt in stille daumenschrauben ausm aal. neulich führte jemand in einem gespräch über tochnit aleph den vergleich heran, dieses label schliesse in punkto wirkung an die konsequente fortführung grosser weltreligionen an. ganz so ernst war's nicht gemeint, vermute ich, aber was dave phillips hier produziert, erinnert schon sehr an sündhafte ehrerbietung abgeschlagenen köpfen und bestechlichen juden gegenüber und verbreitet ohne frage den widerspruch einer neu ausgerichteten, universellen erfüllung im schmerz. grosse, grosse CD. (Erik Benndorf, we poy 2, 2000)

It began with some footage beaming slogans on the dismal state of the human predicament in between crunchy recordings of animals being tortured... grotesque! As dave cued a bunch of found sounds of various animals in pain. He walked through the crowds of intrigued people, with a mic tacked to his jaw as he blew up a balloon, making a strange emulation of breathing... it increased until the ballon burst in his face covering some people with his saliva and a rude awakening. His montage was utterly terrifying as he cued some ghastly sounds to the film spontaneously. He was not even watching the footage, so it was crazy how well it synched. At one stage there was a home video of an elephant that had escaped from a circus and started crushing people under its wrath. Dave began making unbelievable sounds by screaming and punching himself in the throat. Then there was films of pigs being tortured and maimed and dogs that had been skinned alive… The girls in front of me started to cry. It was really deep. His slogans blasted the obvious symbolism of how man has become detached from nature by attempting to dominate it. He really hit it home for many people. You could see the concern in their faces. (Brisbane 070706)

…such near meditative solace is shortlived however, when we're fronted with the first of the final two headlining acts: Dave Phillips from Switzerland. Appearing like a cross between a Hare Krishna and an East Berlin serial killer and with his microphone headset wired through to a harrowing array of distortion filters; he proceeds to rasp, howl, contort his frame and scream to a soundtrack of broken piano, farm animals, whip crackings and gunshot sounds whilst on screen behind him a series of increasingly harrowing holocaustic film clips flash by in rapid succession featuring everything from pigs getting their throats slit, baby chickens being battered and tumbling down machinery, monkeys tortured for medical science, elephant tramplings and other acts of gross animal barbarity of increasing intensity that become too eye-gougingly terrifying for me to possibly put into words (although constant "subliminal" commentary was helpfully provided throughout on screen as text in case the message wasn't LOUD enough). Living through this littany of abuse was quite like a cross between the tortuous mental reprogramming Malcolm McDowell received in A Clockwork Orange, the shrieking terror that was the eye of Sauron from Lord Of The Rings boring into your soul, that garbled beserker video transmission from the beginning of the movie Event Horizon, fat nazi guy's face melting at the end of Indiana Jones and the Raiders Of The Lost Ark and staring deep into the gaping abyss of Hell incarnate. Truly, without a doubt this was the most terrifying mindfuck I've ever seen all year, saying I actually ENJOYED this would be quite like saying I'd love to be the victim of a slow and painful disembowellment by fishhooks whilst rats eat me alive. The pain! OH THE PAIN!! MAKE IT STOP!! MAAAAAKE IT STOP!! (and yet I can't look away! guuh!). (Adelaide 070709)

The night began with Dave Phillips, from Switzerland, and a piece about insects. Gettting to very high pitches and volumes i assume all the noises were those of insects - distorted , amplified to show their finer detail and sometimes manipulated - to create a wall of ambient sounds and noise. As the song was about to end he walked into the audience and handed everyone a small piece of paper and then his first set ended. The words on the paper discussed the importance of insects for the world, The things they do for the human species and how without them it would be impossible for life and the world to exist.
After a set by the amazing and totally brilliant/insane Justice Yeldham (From Melbourne?) Dave Philips did another piece, Combining his music with a video projection, this piece was about human treatment of animals , how we fail to give to other animals the things we accept as norms for ourselves - such as dignity and respect , and how ignorance and general ideas of social norms and a blank mind to reality make NOT making decisions easier than making change - whats "normal" is obviously what is right? No?. The video show was a horrendous collage of animal death footage mixed with statements about human nature, dignity, respect... and what it means to be human, juxtaposed to say : If this is what we want, who are we to think it is not worthy of other animals? The footage showed animals trapped in claw traps struggling for life, being killed for food, tortured for experiments and the likes , cutting of throats of pigs and cows, blood gushing everywhere as the flailed and choked and died, closed bolt shooting to the heads of pigs , and standing on piglets unneeded by factories to suffocate them, deformed animals in mass factory farming enviroments, the mass pulping and binning of baby chicks and gestating eggs, and the clubbing and skinning of live baby seals (the showing of the skinned seals writhing in the snow still alive) , cats having their brains partially gouged out of their skulls with scalpels while alive and replaced by cotton balls and electonics to make them move and react to electric stimulus, or in cages being thrown around like they were already dead and ending up as food, the electrocution of mice and rats, the rigging up of sensors to monkeys brains to stimulate them with electrodes and then a metal clamp snapping their necks to monitor resonse, and far far more , All to a noise sound track of disorted sounds and yelling then Animals gurgling and dying , screaming pigs and choaking sheep and cows as they drowned in their own blood, cats, dogs and chimps in agony and the main musician screaming over the top. A large section was punctuated by animal death noises and the sound of a closed bolt gun or pistol going off at full volume as words like Dignity, Respect, Family, Love, Security, Choice and other statements flashed on the screen Needless to say when this ended everyone just sat there is shock, unable to stand or move and an awkward clap slowly went through the crowd. If you have the chance to see this guy I highly recomend it. This particular piece i know would be too confronting for many but his other works and what he stands for are well worth checking out. (Perth 070716, Brown Windsor)

…Contraposed to all of this hippy longhair'dness were the more theatrical performances: Dave Phillips, Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, Sudden Infant, Justice Yeldham & the Dynamic Ribbon Device, Glamorous Pat & Mokinox and HAZMAT. While everyone at the fest was putting on a "show", for better or for worse there were some acts where keeping your eyes closed would have been of significant detriment to the experience (Macronympha as well, but for different reasons.) … The most anticipated, and in my opinion, two of the most fulfilling performances were those of the Schimpfluch-Gruppe: Dave Phillips and Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock. I'd seen Sudden Infant - the third Schimpfluch member- play on the Thursday prior to the festival, and wasn't so into it: covers of songs like Roxy Music's "In Every Dream home a Heartache" and Cabaret Voltaire's "Nag Nag Nag", via turntable loops, babydoll microphone with accompanying vocalist/cymbal smasher, Anne Stubbs. Dave Phillips' was in every way, the best performance I saw during the festival. John Hegre of Jazzkammer did the sound, which accounts for the clarity and massive dynamic range (it went from quiet to LOUD). Phillips played alongside an unabashedly polemical video: footage of animals being slaughtered, tested upon, and abused, interspersed with short slogans attacking those who treat animals as a means, and bourgeois values. The sound came from a variety of sources, his amplified heartbeat, sounds from the throat/vocal chords, samples of insects, and electronics. Halfway into the performance Phillips walked into the audience and blew up balloons until they popped right in audience members' faces. There was an intensity of discipline and focus, a rigor which never again came up in the fest, as Carlos Giffoni wrote in an email to the Hanson_American board; "Dave doesn't fuck around." The seriousness, the intensity tempered with menace was a bracing contrast to the looseness and openness of the much of the other music in the festival, an antidote to the hippy vibe that was present in mercifully few of the acts. Fucking heartstopping stuff. (NO FUN FEST 2005 (Brooklyn NY), NIRAV SONI)

Dave Phillips' set was one of the more troubling ones to play out over the course of the weekend. Performing solo, he stalked the left hand side of the stage, bellowing forth a heavy and punishing din. He was accompanied by a visual projection that featured a series of penetrating questions geared at the arbitrary organization of mankind's rules and laws inter-cut with footage from several different types of slaughterhouses and animal testing laboratories. I highly doubt those images were news to anyone, but the seemed a bit heavy-handed and over done, invoking the type of tired sloganeering and elementary punk/hardcore social riffing ("Humans are like animals to the slaughter" et al.) that seems to have done countless times over. Make no mistake, the sounds Phillips supplied were thoroughly engaging and excellent, but his use of imagery seemed a bit too over the top at times. Although, granted, that was most likely the point, as any display of chickens being beheaded and monkeys being tortured isn't exactly shooting for the sublime. (NO FUN FEST 2005 (Brooklyn NY), MC, Dusted Magazine www.dustedmagazine.com)

--- Day Two: Dave Phillips projects large-scale videos of animal slaughter scored to his guttural wail against and its sonic equal, the power of which is felt in yon pocketbook as the barbeque salesman behind the club is overheard saying, “They played these videos of people killing animals - my sales went to shit”… (No Fun Fest 2005 - Signal Magazine)

Otro de los que procesan su voz, pero de una manera muy distinta es Dave Phillips (ex-Fear of God), quien presentó su performance junto a un acompañamiento visual que no fue apto para los vegetarianos en el público. Diferentes animales siendo degollados, torturados, exterminados en masa, pietaje de experimentos que se hacen con gatos y otros animales. La combinación entre estas referencias visuales y el ruido creado por Phillips ("sampleando" su voz en tiempo real y creando una excelente y muy variada pieza sonora) hicieron que algunos volvieran a tomarse un respiro en el patio del Hook. El elemento visual fue intercalado con algunas palabras y preguntas que se proyectaban en la pantalla de vez en cuando. Un comentario social muy extremo por Phillips. Quienes se ofendieron, realmente no estaban prestando atención. Phillips también se desplazó entre el público con su micrófono inalámbrico aún amarrado a su oído. (No Fun Fest, The Hook, Brooklyn, NYC, 18-20 de marzo, 2005 www.mannonnetwork.com/noctambulo Puerto Rico)
(translation: Another artist processing his own voice, although in a very different way, is Dave Phillips (ex-Fear of God), who presented his performance accompained by some visuals that turned out to be not suitable for the vegetarians in the audience. Animals being beheaded, tortured, mass-exterminated, footage of experiments on cats and other animals. The combination of these visual references and Phillips's noise (which he created by sampling his own voice in real time and then arranging it into an excellent and fairly varied sound piece) forced many to take a break in the Hook's backyard. The visual element was complemented with extremely political comments by Phillips himself. Those who got offended by the performance were really not paying attention. Phillips also walked among the public with his wireless mic still attached to his ear.)

A sense of anxiety hung over the first few people through the door of the Brudenell, for they knew that Masami Akita's journey from the capital to Leeds was proving to be something of an ordeal. The original plan had been for him to attend a signing session and possible instore performance at the Small Note. Sadly due to a number of set backs this fell through. In the end he got to the venue for around 10pm. This being the case, Ascension and Schimpfluch's set were slightly tainted with the concern that one of my heroes wouldn't actually get to the venue in time. Maybe being at the Brudenell a good hour before they came on, seeing them soundcheck and go out for a takeaway and some booze dulled the impact for me, but Ascension were something of a let down…(…) Schimpfluch were astounding. Actually better than Merzbow, which I would not have expected to think. Their set was basically split into three separate performances. Dave Phillips, the first member up, was walked on to a stage stripped of all equipment bar Schimpfluch's line of FX pedals, boxes, processors etc. With the lights down low, the atmosphere took on a darker hue as he proceded to shout and scream into his head-mic. Becoming ever manic, his screams grew more frantic as he threw himself at the equipment, looping, delaying, amplifying, distorting and generally fucking up his screams and shouts - like a kind of lycanthropic transformation. If noise as catharthism has any real argument, then this was a case in point. Still dark, but with a touch of humour, his bandmate, Joke Lanz aka Sudden Infant, effectively brought the baby doll obsessed artwork of Trevor Brown (Whitehouse, Venetian Snares) to life. With microphones and pick-ups buried in disfigured, naked toy dolls, he screamed into these and manipulated the results, adding bursts of pre-recorded harshtronics to create and build a sense of tension. The cajoling of Emil Beaulieau and fellow band mates from the audience added to the spectacle. Schimpfluch ended their set with a piece of performance art. Three rickety old chairs were placed on stage which the threepiece promptly sat on. Silence then reigned for a long few seconds. Only the hum and click of the amps, or so it seemed. When the clicks and cracks began to match the movements of the three seated Swiss, it was revealed that their chairs were actually covered in contact mics. Slowly building, Schimpfluch began to jump up and down ever more vigarously, every strike and hit sustained by the three chairs sending a barrage of noise from the speakers. Ending in true rock'n'roll style, they smashed up their chairs to soundtracks of amplified destruction. For me Schimpfluch stole the show. They were sonically much more dense and interesting than what Merzbow did, and were very entertaining/disturbing/funny to watch. (Schimpfluch-Gruppe, Sudden Infant, Dave Phillips - live at ’Termite Club 20th Anniversary Festival’ (with: Merzbow, Emil Bealieau, Ascension) at the Brudenell, Leeds, 21.11.2003 Review by Jamie Stephenson, on Termite Club website)

Packed in a jewel case with wrap around, all lovingly designed by Leif Elggren, comes a collaboration between Dave Philips and Randy Yau. Philips is a member of Ohne, Fear Of God, Sudden Infant and Schimpfluch gruppe. Yau is known from his various releases on Ground Fault and 23Five Incorporated and plays a kind of noise music that is not too dissimilar from Philips. 'Illusion Is A Natural Condition' was recorded over a period of five years, and all the even tracks on this are by Dave Philips reworking Yau, and the odd tracks are vice versa. There are no less than thirty seven tracks on this, some of these are very short. Both artists have taken notion of the Schimpfluch sound: lots of voice related sounds, burps and belches, cut very short, with likewise cut short electronic and analogue sounds. Although occasionally there are longer tracks, such as number seventeen (no titles). Even when this could be seen as noise music, it's rather physical action music. Somehow I don't think these boys sit behind a desk to record whatever they are doing. Rather, it seems to me, they perform all sort of actions, involving sounds and their bodies to create the source material, which is then used by the other (and in which case they might sit down and work on it, but perhaps they perform more actions around them). Yau performs the somewhat longer tracks than Philips, but throughout it's not easy to follow who did, and I deem this is not very important either. It's a very intense disc, leaving the listener rather breathless. Powerful, good noise. A rarity! (Frans De Waard, VITAL)

These guys have been smacking away at this collaboration-by-mail noise freakout tennis match for five years. Let's say that again: FIVE YEARS. That's a long time to pass recordings back and forth, in the process whittling once mighty redwoods of sound down to needle sharp audio-toothpicks suitable for piercing the eardrums of woodlice. Such fidelity to the cause of unholy screaming and hyper-tight edits is all too rare amongst fickle scenesters, and should be applauded. Plus, they make a dashing couple: respectively they hold the European and American crown in post-aktionist extreme vocal performance (conveniently, Rudolf Eb.er lives in Japan, so he can fight for the Asian title with Masonna). Here they let the backwards gurgles and clogged-drain lung abuse soften you up before they start the panic and bust loose with a disorted flare of pitch shifted growled screaming that successfully turns human beings into lions. Good things are worth waiting for. (Drew Daniel)

Wow, this came as a surprise. I popped this puppy into the player and I was immediately impressed with the vibration emanating from the cones. R.H.Y. Yau is an artist that has been around for quite some time now and has an extensive discography included releases on RRR and Groundfault. I have both those releases and have seen him live once before which is a whole other experience (in a good way). Dave Phillips has at least one release on Groundfault which I have never heard and besides that is complete unknown to me. The noise they create on this collaborative effort is a mixture of fast cut-up harsh noise, musique concrete, pseudo-ambient and electro-acoustic music. This is release has been expertly crafted and is a fascinating and engaging listen using many elements that would usually be a recipe for disaster, but instead make this a perfect testament that even “farting into a microphone” can be art. The bulk of this disc consists of material that ranges from quiet manipulated mouth samples and field recordings to intensely loud quickly changing harsh noise spurts almost always in the most unexpected places. The tracks trade off with R.H.Y. Yau remixing David Phillips material on the odd tracks, and Dave Phillips remixing Yau on the even. Generally the even tracks are the noisiest which isn't surprising considering that most of Yau's material would reside in the harsh noise realm. Although I have to admit I have previously found Yau to be a mixed bag. I wasn't too keen on the albums I have previously heard (the RRR and Groundfault) release. Not to say they were bad but the combination of lo-fi mouth noises mixed with almost harsh noise never completely did it for me. This however, a few years down the road seems to be a refinement of his style and combined with some of the best production I have ever heard in a noise release the sounds come across loud and clear as they never had before. The most significant thing about this release is its consistency. From the moment you set eyes on the high contrast artwork (some of which can be seen on the promo sheet linked above) you get a sense that this release is making things seem simpler then they actually are. But low and behold the “high contrast” aesthetic is followed directly with the sounds translating into a “loud/soft” method of arranging sounds. This subtle relationship between artwork and sound is something that rarely is seen with underground releases and it really adds a depth to the concept that is just plain impressive. On top of this the packaging is also an example of minimalist artwork done right. For music that generally resides in the abstract realm these sounds are very clear in their intent. When listening, you instantly get a feeling of blood and sweat, of the human body up close and personal. Not only all the things you love about it, but all the things you hate as well, all the things that gross you out. In fact, in track 28 they even go as far as to explore farting and burping noises which on one side gets a little silly, but with the lack of lyrics or any other traces of comedy this falls into a much more absurd school of thought then anything going for a cheap laugh. There is also an internal angst lurking underneath all of this when one steps back and sees it all as a whole; the drawings with all the faces scribbled over, the sounds that always end in a violent orgy of spastic noise. This release has a depth that reaches beyond where most music and art attempts to go, and when they do attempt to go there they do not successfully delve as far as R.H.Y. Yau and Dave Phillips have on Illusion is a Natural Condition. (existest.org/bloodties/viewtopic.php?t=61)

Five years in the making, Illusion Is a Natural Condition brings together two of the finest noise artists the world has ever witnessed. Sure, Merzbow and Hijokaidan can hit you with their molten sounds of psychedelic excess; but San Francisco's Randy Yau and Switzerland's Dave Phillips achieve their tempestous recordings through a violent dichotomy between silence and sound. This sharp contrast effectively puts you on edge throughout the listening experience, as you never know when the next attack is going to arrive. In any given track, Yau and Phillips pack together recordings of their gutteral screams and dribbling gurgles of one of the actionists shoving something down his throat that just doesn't belong there. Occasionally, the sound of flies circle around the sickened vocalizations, as if investigating a hospital patient with a sucking chest wound. Pigs squeal. Demons roar. All of these sounds are compressed into tracks rarely longer than a minute, punctured by extended silences and ruptured by terse blasts of motorized noise and absurdly rendered ultra-violence that would bring joy (or is that pain?) to die-hard Wolf Eyes' fans. Recommended noise for those with a very strong stomach. (www.aquariusrecords.org)

数々のプロジェクトで地下を暗躍する ex.FEAR OF GOD/Dave Phillips によるワンマン doom ユニット,1曲入りCDR! ひび割れた minimal 暗黒 sonic doom drone でカッコイイです! "聴く"というより大音量で体感するべきアンチコマーシャル音楽! (Nat Records, Toyko)

I'm more likely to appreciate the contrast in a drawing if it's straight up black-and-white than polychromatic. In music, contrast can be heard clearest between sound and silence. This is fairly obvious stuff, but I was never really aware of how important silence could be unless I was hearing some bullshit like John Cage's 4' 33" (is it safe to say that yet/again?). The use of dynamics within sound level can be an interesting way to provide contrast, but it's no match for the stark atmosphere that the difference between sound and silence evokes. The silence I'm referring to is in between the songs on Fear Of God's self-titled 1988 debut. For the most part it's just silence in between the song-to-song transitions, but there's also silence within the more jarring songs. The silence's power is somewhat proportional to that of the music, which is some of the most powerfully abrasive shit I have ever heard, hyperbole be damned. I have this ritual for when I really want to "absorb" an album, where I'll turn the speakers on my desk around to face my bed, turn the volume up really loud, then just lie in bed to take it in, no homo. I did that for this album before I had really known what to expect... so when it first started playing my jaw dropped several times and I kept getting the urge to get out of bed and down the beer I was saving for later. There's no comfortable way to listen to this album, but lying in bed, naively trying to "absorb it" is probably the most alien. I've been lacking in my ability to describe music lately, so I'll try to do that. Fear Of God are usually referred to as a grindcore band, and back in the late 80s that style was a lot clearer (and better) than it is now. They meld a bunch of aspects of heavy music and come out with this rotting mess of drastically shifting tempos, harsh, tape-distorted vocals and spastic rhythmic accents. It's mixed with the vocals way loud and everything else creating this sometimes doomy, sometimes punky muck in every crevice. And all the members occasionally provide layered backup vocals, which creates a nice depth. The bass is also surprisingly strong for what I would expect from an album like this and really adds to the few head-nodding parts they have. With the vocals as loud and distorted as they are, it only gets more abrasive as you raise the volume. Emphasis on abrasive, be warned. To finally address the silence, you can't help but notice it among the grinding onslaught. Between tracks are pauses just long enough for you to catch your breath. I actually was exhaling melodramatically between tracks on that first bedridden listen. It was out of both ecstasy and relief. To generalize on why it stands out, it's maybe that with the technology available, people are less concerned with silence than packing as much sonic power they can into every second. That means songs that lead directly into one another and an unrelenting flow of sound. Certainly cool in its own right, but it makes albums like Fear Of God all the more remarkable in hindsight. The pacing of the album rises and falls with these silences. Music that is full-on damaged and disturbingly present becomes dynamic when the stark contrast is employed. Maybe it's also got something to do with the ears tiring after being exposed to a monotonous sound level, so whenever they're allowed to rest it's like a palette cleanser. Refreshing! Anyway, I hope this is a noticeable quality in the music. I find it funny that it's taken me this long to even really think about silence as a part of the music, even if only a little bit. (http://josephlovesit.blogspot.com/2008/03/fear-of-god-and-silence-in-between.html)

This originally came out in 1988 as a 7”. It has 21 songs, most under the 30 second mark. The guitars and bass are downtuned, the drums are spastic, the vocals are growled/screamed. Most of the songs seem to be over before they've really started. Every once in awhile there is a slow, grinding riff before things kick back into overdrive. My favorite song of theirs is the monumentally grinding World Under My Fingernail. Unfortunately, it's not on this disc. At the time this was released, very few bands sounded like this - Napalm Death and possibly a handful of others. Now, in 2006, when too many bands sound like this, I still get a kick out of listening to Fear of God, if mostly for the sake of nostalgia. It is definitely good catharsis music for when I'm experiencing moments of extreme frustration or anger. Can't listen to it much around the house though because it scares the kids and the pets. Fear of God, and music like this in general, is a bit of an acquired taste. During the eighties, when I was constantly on the lookout for ever more extreme types of music, Fear of God was reached via a series of stepping stones like Venom, Swans, and a whole slew of early eighties European punk bands too numerous to mention. After hearing Fear of God and their ilk, I discovered that I'd reached a dead end as far as that particular type of extremity went, so I had to turn around and venture down other musical avenues. In a different way, their vocalist, Erich Keller, opened up other musical avenues for me through tape trading, introducing me to bands like Death SS (and Paul Chain), Laibach, and incongruously enough, Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares, as well as many others. Erich was also responsible for the fanzine, Megawimp, which brought him to the states on research missions during the eighties. He, with a couple of friends, even stayed at my house one Christmas (back when I lived with my mom, no less). I never could read the magazine though, since it's all in German and I am hopelessly monolingual. Oh, this cd comes with the original liner notes, and I recently noticed/remembered that I'm thanked there. How punk of me! My only complaint is that this reissue should have come with an hour so worth of bonus tracks. Fear of God recently reformed, but I think maybe they've since broken up again. (Crow)

The ultimate in raw aggression. Two 1988 recordings, one obviously live, the other is possibly also, but its hard to tell. This band was brutal, ugly and way the fuck "ahead of its time", whatever that means. We got the 7" and then we got this LP in Swizterland in the '90s from the record store where the drummer had worked, where we heard Rudolph from Runzelstirn and Gurgelstock did too. That might tell you a little about where this is coming from. Makes almost anything calling itself "heavy" now seem a bit sad and goofy. (Web Of Mimicry)

tom you din't get the point when you call dp remixes grindcore. eric's vocals are the strongest meanest ever. his style was legendary and many tried to copy it. when i saw fear of god live in italy in 2003 i realised that he doesn't use any effects at all. i was shocked. the gig was so extreme people waited outside the hall. never heard so much negativity. after the gig the band had a britney spears song played on the p.a. mixed with distortion. they left the stage went outside walked around a bit and peple were so intimidated nobody talked to them at first. after 10 minutes or so the britney spears noise mix was over and it was quiet in the hall. i have never seen something like this. nobody could understand what these guys just did to them. some of the concert goers who are friends of mine told me that it took them a few days to get down from the vibes. everybody i know who was there says this concert was so devastating that its hard to imagine how people must have felt in 1986 or 87 when fear of god played with henry rollins. maybe that's why the band's popularity has grown so much over the years although records have never been easy to get. grindcore? they may have defined that genre but they never were grindcore. (Fear Of God live in Cremona, via dp – hermeneutics of fear of god discussion on www.goodbadmusic.com review by Davide Cremona)

Tom Smith has said to me that he could never return to the ways of To Live and Shave in L.A. And by indication of his latest effort, Ohne '1', he isn't kidding. For this band, Tom teams up with Reto Mader, Daniel Lowenbruck and Dave Phillips. This is a rare record. Not numbers-wise, but rare in the sense that it manages to traverse an incredible amount of terrain yet remain solid and intact. And it's an immensely sensitive record with sounds embedded in sounds, barking dogs wrapped living in industrial plastic (the kind we're supposed to duct tape our windows and doors with here in the States), muffled ecstasies, scatological seductions and aktionist shifts. Every song (and yeah…these are pretty close to songs) fits together in a sick tapestry of multitudinous and fragmented depictions of both our baser and our cognizant emotions and impulses. Add to this the billions of colors which bleed across these aural images, illuminating our personal catastrophes, our successes and our vulnerabilities, and you have a sublimely discreet and discriminating document. Cover up nice and warm, because while this record does seem cozy for these fellers, it isn't without its attacks, beratings, cruelties and batteries. It still bears that concupiscence that Smith has explored in the past with cuts like the 7th song (all titles are simply the initials of the prime writers). On this track, Tom's lascivious and, er, orgasmic vox is accompanied by a brooding piano, indigo bruises all across our brains, severed and discarded sexual organs thrust at us out of the dark. At times this record is downright astonishing in its care and thoughtful constructions. It's sly, funny, forthright and brilliant. And while there is outright collision present, the recording seems to be more about thoughtful explorations into disjunctive symmetry. Which may speak to the way in which it was put together. It was built virtually, via files emailed and exchanged back and forth online. The hours and hours of meticulous treatments and syntactical blurs illustrate a deep understanding of how sound, while ostensibly serene and muted, can be disruptive and unsettling. The wit and intelligence with which these songs were built shows a deeper understanding of psychoacoustics. These guys turned a corner; a very sharp and poignant corner. (Kelly Burnette, 'Broken Face' zine, Italy)

a truly original work of extremely ugly-beautiful half-assed genius-stupidity, and something that no one can afford not to investigate right now - at the risk of suffering the form of brain-rot reserved for neglected tropical goldfish floating in a bowl. I think this OHNE release comes close to fulfilling the Mego compact, in an unexpected way. my wild supposition is that the label's founders (Pita Rehberg in particular) always wanted to make a totally absurdist statement, and plumbed for releasing the most extreme examples of digital electronica possible, simply in order to attract attention, piss people off and provoke a strong reaction. needless to say the joke backfired, as soon as Christian Fennesz became identified as the 'talent' of the label and praised by all and sundry as a serious artist. the other players in the Mego catalogue - and there are many - tended to be appraised by timid critics in the light of this discovery. the Mego hardcore shock-troops tried to retaliate with such grotesque absurdities as 'The Magic of Fenn'O'Berg', Pure's 'The End of Vinyl', Hecker's reductionist monstrosities, the General Magic pranksterism, and the patently ridiculous naked guitar band Fuckhead. But still the critics raved (myself among them). well, suck on this. maybe this intolerable beast of burden will silence everybody once and for all. belched out from a nameless orifice in the studio by four marginal loons. one of them, Daniel Löwenbrück, is known to me - he produced an astonishing piece of aural nonsense called 'Luxury Discreet Surroundings' in 1999, whose profound meaning-lessness haunts me to this day. Daniel also manages the Tochnit Aleph label in Germany, home to fine noisy wildmen. the other buffoons in this OHNE circus are Dave Phillips of Schimpfluch-Gruppe, Om Myth (i.e. Tom Smith) of To Live And Shave in L.A., and producer of some of the most unlistenable recordings ever made; and Reto Mäder of RM74, whatever that may be. composed mainly of voices of the three performers, maltreated through the mixing desk by Mäder, OHNE's CD is a perplexing and indigestible mess of incomprehensibility. it's one of those rare recordings that it's virtually impossible to remember anything about it, and might even appear to be new and different every time you play it - assuming you're prepared to air it more than once in your life. it makes no sense whatsoever. wrapped in horrendous sleeve art which might depict an unpleasant object somewhere between a cancerous liver or an aborted foetus (or a malevolent plasticine scultpture which aspires to depict both), this OHNE record presents us things - like these diseased interior organ-viscera elements - which we would rather not know about, the manifestation of bad thoughts which we would prefer to burry in a ditch. the disjointed, random methodology in the editing and the general quesiness of the vile sounds will induce nausea in the listener - I certainly wanted to vomit more than once. no conventional 'pleasure' at all, just a big dose of mind-altering and body-damaging weirdness, like chewing on a huge chunk of deep-frozen sick laced with LSD. even the very typeface of the Mego logo has been distorted to fit the band's name. 'deal with it, you bastards', snarls the aggressive press release. now, will everyone finally get the point? (Ed Pinsent, 'The Sound Projector' zine, UK)

...is like an unstable chemical compound, ready to collapse at any moment. Maybe if the track did crumble to pieces - and lay decomposing for a long long time - it would sound a little like OHNE's 1. OHNE, a quartet who cheekily copped the MEGO logo for their own band's branding, go digging through a sandpile of bleeps, clicks, hiccups and fragments of song, scooping it rudely into bags like investigators after a catastrophe. Odder still, a voice like Leonard Cohen's appears occasionally, slurring a dirge-like commentary. The CD cover pictures what might be some unidentified human organ, but ohne's sound ultimately suggests the bleakest naturalism ever, a landscape so sublime it would've sent Turner lunging for the absinthe. (AUSTRO AUDIO : New Music from Vienna www.neumu.net)

Full on noise attack from this international "supergroup" of sorts. Featuring ex-members of To Live And Shave In LA, Fear Of God, Sudden Infant and Schimpfluch-Gruppe (who, along with Runzlestirn & Gurgelstock, collaborated with noise giant Masonna a while back on the "Arschloch-onna" disc on Japan Overseas), the group utilizes the human voice as the main source of sound, employing a multitude of electronic manipulations guaranteed to destroy eardrums as well as irritate the fuck out of your neighbors. Totally retarded and highly recommended to fans of the above or those needing a fix for what was once the consistent output of the dearly missed RRRecords of Massachussets. On the newly established Ohne label, a subsidiary of the acclaimed Viennese power electronics tastemakers Mego. (www.aquariusrecords.org)

Das Coverpainting von Rudolf Eb.er zeigt ein ekliges, gequollenes Oberschenkelhalsknochenknorpelding. Dazu dei Stimmen (+electronics) dreier Stageperformer - Dave Phillips (Schimpfluch-Gruppe, ex-Fear Of God), Om Myth (ex-To Live And Shave In L.A.) & Daniel Loewenbruekck (Tochnit Aleph Label, Noise Of Gaki) -, die durch den Livemixreisswolf von Reto Maeder (rm74, Hinterzimmer Label) gejagt wurden. Dichtes Faserknäuel aus organischen und anorganischen, abstrakten und konkreten, gesampleten und live erzeugten Geräuschen, die Stimmen nur in unkenntlichen Festzen oder extremster Verfremdung. Maeder fertigte eine Noise-frottage an mit nicht identifierbaren Reliefmustern, splittrigen Einschlüssen. Informel-Kunst aus Knistern und Rumoren, unerwartet diskret mit Dreamscapemomenten - etwa wenn bei Icon 6 eine weit entfernte Musik zu gurgeln scheint, die dann ine einem Schlund verschwindet. Piano-Samples kehren als Traumreste wieder und werden von einem abrupten Harsh-Noise-Sandstrahl an die Wand gesplattert, Gelächter wird von spitzen Elektroniknadeln aufgespiesst. Mit dem Collagenhaften wächst das Surreale. (Bad Alchemy # 40, august 2002)

Natürlich interessiert es mich, was aus alten Grindcore-Helden so wird. Dave Phillips von Fear Of God macht mit ein paar anderen Typen Ohne: Om Myth (ex-To Live And Shave In L.A.), Daniel Loewenbruekck (Noise Of Gaki, Tochnit Label) und Reto Maeder (rm74, Hinterzimmer Label). Radikal und durchaus harsch, aber weniger den alten Grind-Tugenden Geschwindikeit und Kürze entsprechend, lärmen die Vier elektronisch, mal merzbowig, mal düster ambienten. Verfremdeete Stimmen, gemeine Angriffe auf unschuldige Gemüter, vermeintlich harmloses Terrain. Zirpen, Schlürfen, Klappern, Ein tiefes Rumpeln. Ein Klavier schlägt langsam beschleunigend einen Takt, während sich drüber bösartige Frequenzen breit machen, untermalt von Schlägen. Eine Kettensäge im Wald. Dein Nachbar wird zwar sagen, dass das jetzt aber nun wirklich keine Musik mehr ist, aber das hat er auch schon bei deinen Grindcore-Platten gesagt… (Stone, Trust # 95, august 2002)

Aggressive ins't the word - Mars alone knows what is - but I was left feeling ambivalent about this debut download/pile-up from the quartet of 'Om Myth' (aka Tom Smith of To Live And Shave In L.A. et al), Dave Phillips, Daniel Loewenbrueck and Reto Maeder. It's a great sprawling, grating, thrashing, electrocuted octopus of haz-e boy NOISZE which, unlike other entires here - Grillo, Mattin/Parlane, Muslimgauze - has no frame text or puncept or theory kickback, so pushing you to take it in on its own stark sonic terms. A bit TOO full-on to pull in too many new ears, realtime performance is the best place to sample Ohne's one-stop apocalypse. (The Wire # 221, July 2002)

Negli ultimi tempi l'etichetta austriaca Mego non ha solo intensificato la frequenza delle proprie pubblicazioni, ma ha pure dato una decisa sterzata (lo dicevamo nel numero scorso) in direzione più o meno rumorista, un cavallo di ritorno che evidentemente si rivela in tutti i sensi maggiormente redditizio rispetto all'estetica microelettronica ormai in declino. Ecco allora le estenuanti deflagrazioni di "1" a firma Ohne (esponenti di gruppi minori quali To Live and Shave in L.A., Schimpfluch, Fear of God etc.), schegge e frammenti di un sentire enigmatico e fuori-di-testa, registrazioni ambientali, seghe circolari e stridii inclusi, che a tratti abbandonano l'aggressione noise a favore di canzoni (?!) deformi declamate con improbabile afflato da crooner e voce raschiata a metà tra Nick Cave, Tom Waits e Residents. (Nicola Catalano, Rumore Italy, November 2002)

Ohne, the rarely-seen Euro-American confusion collective featuring Tom Smith (of To Live and Shave in L.A., Peach of Immortality and prepubescent Pussy Galore "fame"), launched the musical portion of Avanto. The trio - reduced from a quartet due to Reto Mäder's health-related woes - was preceded by a selection of Kurt Kren's and Ernst Schmidt Jr.'s 1960s Viennese Actionist films, in which hilarious, often grotesquely sexual barrages of naked torsos doused in paint, food, carnage and gore race across the screen. The pairing was impeccable; Ohne's needling collage of performance art and treated amplifications of the human body loosely fashions itself as a punk-schooled sonic parallel to Actionism's ocular overload. When the vignettes ended, an insistent loop of a ticking stopwatch and galloping hooves ricocheted around the darkened Kiasma theater. Mocking spotlights shined down on Ohne's vacant microphones. Ten minutes later… absolutely nothing happened. The stage remained empty; the polite customers grew palpably restless. Gradually, a few anonymous rabble-rousers began grousing, booing, or screaming "bullshit!" from the aisles. Someone coughed. Another guy clicked his tongue. A can sailed through the air. "Do something! Come on!," the voices shouted in flawless English. Suddenly, it became obvious that the members of Ohne were responsible for the yelling. They had blended in among the audience to heckle their own production. The instigators urged the onlookers to hurl forth insults, but only a handful of detractors actually joined in. And nobody accepted the invitation to get onstage. A few malcontents headed for the exit. That reaction says a lot about the stereotypically reserved and stoic Finnish character; in the U.S., mass jeering would have ensued. But in Helsinki, the crowd suppressed its mild annoyance and either patiently waited for the payoff or silently fled. Who knows what might have transpired had the patrons bum-rushed the show and taken matters into their own hands? Had Ohne walked off without touching its laptops, the gig would have been an amazing triumph: a total refutation of the very notion of performing. But maybe the ensuing fracas was just a deliberate anticlimax? The set began in earnest when Daniel Löwenbrück, who had recorded the heckling introduction, played back his cassette of the episode while strolling among the rows of seats. From the stage, a bored-looking Dave Phillips triggered a plethora of strident samples. Smith attached contact mikes to his churning stomach and initiated an array of gargles, chokes and gags. Eventually, he would ham it up with his trademark lounge-lizard histrionics. The three men enacted a series of rituals - aiming the house lights directly at people's eyes, sprinkling powder everywhere, rinsing their soiled hands in a bucket, hammering nails into cloths on the floor and doing pushups until exhaustion set in - served with a dense, feverish squall of deflating balloons, sawing cellos, artillery and thunder. The spectacle always engrossed the eyes, yet occasionally tired the ears. Smith, Phillips and Löwenbrück admirably capture the essence of both punk and Actionism - to incite, vex and destroy - but it was a minor disappointment that such a hostile crew even deigned to play. It would have been far more infuriating (i.e. effective) to let the tension build without any resolution whatsoever. Given their reputations as infamous troublemakers, they'd probably agree with that opinion. (OHNE live at Avanto Festival Helsinki 2004. Jordan N. Mamone for Dusted Magazine www.dustedmagazine.com)

Ein Wasserhahn tropft, seit fünfzehn Minuten schon. Auf der Bühne passiert nichts. Der Wasserhahn tropft weiter, minutenlang, bis das monotone Ploppen in ein verfremdetes Gerülpse übergeht. Es folgen natürliches Gerülpse neben verzerrtem Gerülpse, Gerülpse, das an einen Löwen erinnert und Gerülpse, das kaum mehr als solches erkennbar ist. Irgendwann, eine gute halbe Stunde nach dem ersten Tropfen aus dem Wasserhahn, betreten ein paar Männer die Bühne: Dass sich der Engländer Dave Phillips, der Schweizer Reto Mäder, Daniel Löwenbrück aus Deutschland und Tom Smith aus den USA hier nicht als Musiker verstehen, wird den wenigen Besuchern im «Parterre» spätestens jetzt bewusst. Tom Smith singt zwar, überzeichnet, trunken im Raum herumtorkelnd, von Melodie kann an diesem Abend aber nicht die Rede sein. Stattdessen irren die Protagonisten mit Trillerpfeifen umher, sie blasen Ballons auf, bis diese platzen, sie lecken die Nacken von unaufmerksamen Zuschauern, und dies zu andauernden Rückkoppelungen, ohrenbetäubendem Pfeifen, Kratzen und Dröhnen aus den Lautsprechern. Es wird geschrieen. Die Schreie werden live durch Sequenzer reproduziert und übereinander geschichtet. Es herrscht das absolute Chaos, aber nur scheinbar. Denn das heillose Durcheinander wird stets durchbrochen, sobald es die Schmerzgrenze zu überschreiten droht. Plötzlich erklingt das beruhigende Plätschern von Wellen, eine Harmonika spielt leise, während sich im Hintergrund bereits das nächste Donnerwetter anbahnt. Es ist eine minutiös getimte Performance an der Schnittstelle von Krach aus Mischpult und Computer, Gesang, Improvisation und Provokation, eine Show, die unterhält, die keine Sekunde langweilt, auch wenn so gut wie keine Sequenz klar durchstrukturiert ist. Das Publikum wird gefordert. Nur, wozu? Die Frage nach dem Sinn einer derartigen Performance drängt sich auf. Die Strukturen von Theater und Musik aufzubrechen, kann kaum alleiniger Zweck sein. Das kennt die Welt schon seit den 50er Jahren. Das interessiert heute niemanden mehr. Ist die Provoka-tion von «Ohne» reiner Selbstzweck? Oder sollte die Frage nach dem Sinn hier gar nicht erst gestellt werden? Vielleicht liegt der Sinn im Unsinn. Unterhaltsam wäre dieser Unsinn allemal, was wiederum Sinn machen würde. ("Gerülpse als Selbstzweck?" Marko Lehtinen, 07.06.2002 Basler Zeitung, zu OHNE im Parterre, Basel 5.6.2002)

"Does anybody remember laughter?" This pithy line from Led Zeppelin's concert movie THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME seems to have extra resonance when one puts it in context of this collaboration between ol' iron tonsils Maso Yamazaki (generally dba Masonna) and the Swiss hack n' slash kung-fu teen idols Runzelstirn & Gurglestock. The first thing you hear on this 41 minute disc is giggling and outright laughter - when was the last time a noise disc laughed? And harsh noise this is - those of you who know these names will no doubt know that both groups have a well-deserved reputation for high-speed editing and fast changes, the difference being the Masonna's cut-ups tend to be a non-stop blare, while the average R & G record will see the chaps tirelessly (and inventively) reworking the same pieces of sound - a dog barking, the sound of a fist punching, a hacking cough, a shout -- always just a nanosecond before or after you expect it, but generally splashing around in a large pool of silence. It should then come as no surprise that when this disc takes off into noisy waters, it's truly hellish in the best sense... fierce and relentless, hyper-precise (as long as we're playing super editor super-gruppes, why not add Andy Bolus [aka Evil Moisture] to the line-up, eh?), a thousand changes where most would expect *. "I was under an illusion as if was watching the opera or the musical," says N. Hayami (in the bilingual liner notes) of the live performances that this disc was edited from. Sonically, in a world where the average noise fan doesn't mind listening to a 70-minute CD that may have only one or two really huge change-ups in sound, a record like this must truly sound like a trash-compacted Ring Cycle. Constant bursts of Maso studio noise and gargling are also broken up with hyperquick (like .3 second) bursts of the patented Runzelstirn sounds: the punch, the bark, the groan... if you've heard a R & G CD, you'll see 'em comin' a mile away. What is somewhat surprising is the amount of humor that runs through all this. A very long oscillator noise that slowly winds up two or three octaves is ended with a quick punch, while fragments of Maso's trademark yowl are interspersed with R & G mainman Rudolv Eb.er's belches and gagging noises. New initiates might be hard pressed to get any "jokes" out of this Space Mountain with a bent track and no attendant recording, but they are there. Also there, and here, and all around, are untreated bits of the live aktions (The "Shimpfluch-Gruppe" credit on the CD cover refers to the Vienna-style Aktionist elements of Eb.er's group, which includes Dave Phillips, former member of some group called Fear of God, who are apparently not the American Fear of God, so say he in interviews) [tmu: He's from the hardcore FOG from either Germany or Italy, or maybe Switzerland, i forget which, not to be confused with the metal band led by now-deceased singer Dawn Crosby who recorded one of DEAD ANGEL's all-time favorite albums, WITHIN THE VEIL] that provided much of the record's raw material. Again, laughter is the unifying element. This time it's the audience laughing. The performance seems to involve a lot of yelling and "accidentally" breaking things, maybe knocking on a door, I don't know. I've heard spaghetti is liberally used/slurped/spat, and the cover shows their distinctly Hermann Nitsch-like piles of rotten fish run through with microphone cords and equally rotting electronics. Everyone remembers Nitsch's piles of rotting meat and shrill atonal orchestra music that went on for WEEKS at a time during his Aktions in Vienna, but less people remember that much of his work was not only about the ugliness about life, but about really having a good laugh at the expense of our bodies. In that way, Schimpfluch-Gruppe are well-balanced with those essential performance nutrients. It's funny, it's ugly, it frequently "gets on you" if you're in the front rows. While already a few years old, I've not heard much in the supposedly fast-evolving noise music scene that has even acknowledged a recording like this, let alone expand on it. Noisers like Pain Jerk and Kazumoto Endo are indeed finding new ways to make the pedals fly faster and farther, but sometimes it takes the editor's splice, a pound of spaghetti, a few gaps in the sound (all loud all the time; good idea, they'll never expect that) and a good knock-knock joke or two to move you past ha-ha funny and into sending 'em out on a stretcher. (christopher m. sienko - www.monotremata.com)

At the end of 2006 the Swiss label Schimpfluch existed twenty years and thus also the musical activities of Rudolf Eb.er, erstwhile known as Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock, but these days also known under his own name. Perhaps it also marked twenty years of Sudden Infant, whose early material was also released on Schimpfluch. Here Sudden Infant, also known as Joke Lanz and Eb.er team up with their more recent associate Dave Phillips and produced together 'Schimpfluch-Commune Int.' Lanz and Phillips provide what is called on the cover 'elemental recordings and pre-compositions' and Rudolf Eb.er with the same as well as 'allover mutation and final composition'. The three of them collect acoustic sounds, picked up with a contact microphone as well as open microphones their actions and sounds from the mouth, which are they meticulously edited into music. This is noise music plus. Other than a sheer wall of noise, this is collage music, cut and pasted together, through ultra short editing, swift changes and dry sounds. This is not laptop heavy plug in music, if at all made with computers, as I would rather expect these boys to use a splicing block and a demagnetized razor blade to physically cut magnetic tapes, but a rather 'old fashioned' electro-acoustic record. A great one at that, actually. If noise is like this, I'd sign up again. (FdW - Vital)

Schimpfluch Commune Int. brings together the demented sonic minds of Dave Phillips, Joke Lanz(Sudden Infant) and Rudolf Eb.Er( Runzelstirn & Gurgelstøck). To give one of the most deranged, Strange and freakish collection of sound worlds ever committed to audio, this been a reissue of the cdr album that came with their 20th anniversary box set, which is now out of print. On offer is just over 50 minutes of audio madness, sickness and depravity. Used to make up this sick collage world we have all manner of body sounds be it: Burping, Grunts, Vomiting, gurgling, groans, sex sounds etc, Along with Animal sounds like dog barks, baby bird sounds ect. Stirred in are traces of noise, rhythmic, electronic textures, demented fair ground like musically moments and the odd sickened drone. What set's this apart from other audio demented terrorist is the clever balance between been deranged, musically, entertaining and of course often surprising and shocking. A few favourite moments come in the form of : The opening track Fehlstartprinzip which mixers together looped and circling laughter tracks,comic slapping sounds, merry go round music, shouting and screaming, burping and sick making- all to make a truly deranged opening shot. Pig Buggie(Sau) which mixers the sound of whippings and slapping with sexual moans, cartoon type crash and bang sounds, tinny musical moments and glass tinkering which is both disturbing and funny. But most of the tracks have there appealing moments. It’s all topped off with great Artwork by Rudolf Eb.Er of various human orifices with eyes beeping out from with-in or around the side. A fine example of these three audio artists/perverts conjoined mayhem, that will equally appal, amuse and puzzle. (Roger Batty, http://www.musiquemachine.com)

'Macska Leves' CD
A new treat for those adventures readers out there seeking something new and truly innovative. Manufacture Records various artists compilation titled 'Macska Leves' is filled with experimental soundscapes that are guaranteed to impress you.
Macska Leves is a brilliant compilation produced by Manufacture records in celebration of the labels twentieth release. Macska Leves showcases a variety of Manufacture bands as well as a handful of bands that the label admired enough to include on the compilation. The compilation is a deep and thorough investigation into the current underground experimental / noise music scene. Artists participating in the compilation include Dave Phillips, Bastard Noise, Sudden Infant, and Completely *censored*ed Up Society. This is a small selection of the fifteen artists that comprise the CD.
The first rack on the CD performed by Dave Phillips tilted „Eat beyond taste and sensation” grants the listener a somewhat odd introduction to the strange and boundless world of experimentation contained in the Macska Leves compilation. Dave Phillips composes a track accented by the sounds of belching, farting, shitting and puking? It is hard to determine the origin of these strange noises that plop in and out of this minimalist composition. Instruments beyond bodily functions include some percussion, plucked strings and a rush of noise at the end of the song. Taking innovation and experimentation well beyond what many might expect David Phillips offers a polished and surreal introduction to an equally beautiful and bizarre album.
Macska Leves is everything you would expect from an experimental noise compilation and a lot that you would not expect. Songs vary from highly charged tracks with fierce screaming or shouted vocals backed by walls of noise and power electronics fully unleashed to quainter songs where the emphasis is on a more subtle exploration. The CD experiences drastic mood swings from one song to another. Strange bodily sounds are followed by a delicate spoken word song which in turn is followed by noise and anger. Variety and diversity are given full reign on Macska Leves which delivers a well rounded experimental sound experience ranging from the strange and silly to utter darkness and rage. If it something new, experimental and creative that you seek look no further. Radical Faeries addicted to experimental composition and new thinking about what‚s possible with sound and music while remaining interesting should take advantage of this release. The music is tame to insane and will leave you cut up and mixed up long after your listening experience. Faeries that dabble with electronic music or Faeries completely burned out on repetitive and stale music genres should check out the other side of the rainbow and give Macska Leves. Macska Leves could be challenging listening for those seeking familiar song structures and traditional / comfortable soundscapes. Though the music is experimental it is completely engaging and rewarding for the open minded and adventures listener. (Malahki Thorn / www.heathenharvest.com)

Phillips started out in the shortlived grindcore band Fear of God and then fell in w/ Rudolf Eb.er and the Schimpfluch/Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock crowd. I 'm sure there 's some kind of indirect Dada (I wouldn 't say Schwitters specifically) influence on their performances and certainly on the Schimpfluch records, more than a few of which were unplayable objects. But the Vienna Aktionists are probably a much more apt comparison, though one the Schimpfluch people are quick to downplay. I read an interview w/ Eb.er where he mentioned that he was much more influenced by the writings of a certain Buddhist monk who was "much more extreme" than the Aktionists were. (No, I have not been able to track down anything by said monk and even I 've forgotten the name.) He 's also talked a lot about breathing techniques (Eb.er teaches an esoteric brand of martial arts in Japan) which induce certian psychological states. This kind of breathing certainly plays a large part in Eb.er 's work and I 'd say Phillips as well. These techniques and the use of space they entail (there are a lot of various breathing patterns for certain kinds of meditation that involve long stretches of holding your breath, counting to 100, etc.) are very prevalent in a lot of Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock recordings and are one of the dominent aspects of their influence on a lot of musicians today (a lot may be exagerrating, but I know more than a few who 've been highly influenced by them). The combination of this and the absurdity of Dada and the Aktionists, and the bodily extremity of the Aktionists bring you a bit closer to the Schimpfluch way. Then add the lo-fi, cheap, transgressive aesthetic of the burgeoning noise scene in the 80s and we 're getting somewhere. With Phillips, beyond the general extremity, psychological tension, induced states, punk, anti-art, etc. there 's also a strong political/anarchist angle which was part of Fear of God as well. He 's passionate about animal rights (a vegan I believe), human rights, civil rights, etc. which (may or may not) give the frustration, anger, whatnot a more purposeful focus. So... on to 'IIIII ' - I listed it as one of my favorites of this year. I think it 's a fantastic recording. I also get a bit concerned when I see 99 tracks on a CD, but since it 's a Dave Phillips CD, I wasn 't worried. It makes perfect sense. A lot of his work has the taut, fragmentary, broken, almost binary (complete silence or in the red) quality of the finest Schimplfluch works where the sounds themselves are aaaaaallmmosst arbitrary and the compositional/psychological rhythm and form they create are much more important. A lot of the Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock recordings used almost the exact same sounds even. R & G fans will easily recognize the infamous short scream/hitting oneself on the chest sound that were all over countless R & G recordings. This was partially comic, partially referencing the arbitrariness of the sounds themselves and partially lazy? (80s noise we-don 't-give-a-fuck ethic). This is or was also a technique of Lionel Marchetti 's tape music for a while. The 'swooshing of a switch through the air ' sound was ever present on his recordings, to the point that it became a point of tension/composition when and if it arrived. It seems like he hasn 't used it in a while - I miss that sound! At any rate, yes, there are some familiar sounds happening. The Schimpfluch folk are probably responsible for the popularization of the retch sound you mention. Part of Phillips ' set up involves a contact mic in the mouth and the performative qualities of bodily extremity certainly play a part in his music and you can read into this in a number of ways as being some kind of abject body horror transgression, a statement on dehumanization or whatnot or you can treat it like a sound. A sound that turns up often enough in Schimpfluch-related recordings (Yau is certainly influenced by these guys - I 'm not sure where else you've heard this sound). But like the sax slap tongue, a bowed cymbal or a "gamelanesque" plucked note on a prepared guitar in free improvisation, simply part of the lexicon. (Elk, www.bagatellen.com)