Joey will review a new record of Tim Berne‘ s Snakeoil, Gregs will maybe – I can only guess – make some remarks about Peter Handke’s new narrative / essay „Versuch über den Pilznarren“. I will publish a small interview with Wolfgang Muthspiel sheding some light on the ECM album „Traveling Guide“. Then, I have to tell the readers something about a beautifully packaged vinyl box of an Australian underground band of the early eighties, Laughing Hands. More surprises in the near or distant future by Bob, Martina, Joey, Henning and Ian – you never know!
2013 17 Sep
Forthcoming on this site: From Snakeoil to Laughing Hands, from Mr. Muthspiel to A. Sheppard
von: Michael Engelbrecht Filed under: Blog | TB | Tags: Laughing Hands, Paul Schütze | 1 Comment
1 Comment
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Michael Engelbrecht:
**Embossed boxset holds four LPs, one double gatefold jacket and two individual jackets plus DVD and certificate of ownership. Individually numbered edition of 500. All faithfully restored from original tapes by Anders Peterson**
From the untrodden annals of Industrial history, V-O-D pulls out the seminal ‚Tape-Works 1981-1982‘ of Melbourne’s Laughing Hands and The Invisible College. Centred around Paul Schütze (who would go on to release classic dark ambient, drone and experimental records thru the ’90s) along with Gordon Harvey, Paul Widdicombe and Ian Russell, the group operated on the cusp of post-punk and post-industrial with a definitive streak of eclectic, experimental improvisation rightly likened to everyone from Dome to Eno, to Gray and Cabaret Voltaire.
You’ll hear all that in on the first double vinyl reissue of their 1981 cassette ‚EE: The Welder’s Bible‘, strafing headlong from the almost junglist ethno-electro flux of ‚Guitar Boats‘ or ‚Red Ropes‘ to the Zoviet*France-like primitivism of the side-long ‚Five Songs From The Razor Bridge‘ to more stripped, artmospheric and minimal pieces clearly redolent of early Chris & Cosey circa ‚Trance‘.
Also included is their sole album as The Invisible College, exploring a lusher sound pairing those same skittish machine patterns with skilled jazz strokes and a 4th world-wise imagination at times recalling General Strike’s dubby ciphers gone cyber-hyper.
Finally, their 1982 tape, ‚Nights‘ – now issued on vinyl for first time – exhibits a whole other side, pushing beats back into the mix as textures in a narcotic mesh of crowing trumpet, clanks and ritualist Prophet ambience – a sound which would manifest more prolifically later in Schütze’s career.
Essentially, for many of us, this is a privileged introduction to a place out of time, like being given the keys to a rare, exotic alternate dimension, for a price, of course. Highly recommended.
To order via Vinyl-on-demand or Boomkat
I can only say: i love this music (m.e.)