Al Karpenter - The Forthcoming & Al Karpenter/CIA Debutante - S/T

 

Having grown-up in a communist family, while I was a primary school kid during the early to mid 90s I used to idolize all sorts of armed struggle and especially worshipped the freedom fighter of the PLO, the IRA and the Basque fighters of ETA. So, it shouldn't be any surprise that I'll shake my ass for anything related to Basque Country music, and more if it involved the great Mattin (check some here). A relatively recent duo of his is Al Karpenter playing with Alvaro Matilla, and The Forthcoming is their new album released by ever/never records. This is hard to categorize; it has too many ideas and styles thrown in, you get improvised skronk rock not unlike The Dead C and with some surprising Scott Walker-like croons, there's psych noise, there's electronic Aphex Twin-y stuff, oooffff. Really nice album. Go over to the ever/never bandcamp and buy it.

Al Karpenter and ever/never released on the same day a collaboration album between Al Karpenter and CIA Debutante, which is equally good or even better. It possesses the same musical references as the Al Karpenter album but it has a little bit more electronic AND bluesy stuff going around. Loving this. Buy it here.

Matthew Bower / Mattin ‎– A New Form Of Beauty (1975)

I don't quite see the Virgin Prunes reference here; is this supposed to be a remix of VP's recording? What you should expect here is searing guitar harsh noise without any let-up. 2007 cd on Bottrop-Boy.

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Mattin - Songbook #7

According to Mattin's liner notes for this release, '“Songbook #7” digs into some of the most important issues today: dissolution and disappointment of the social fabric, the rise of fascism, lack of coherence in a collective vision for the future and the shortcomings of democracy in a capitalist system.' The sounds assembled hereby (which were recorded live) effectively mirror the lyrical/thematic concept, presenting a - seemingly - incoherent and agonizing mood, with vocals/screams attacking without prior warning, showcasing this insecurity, lack of stability, and absence of strong political bases for the oppressed to lean against. It's quite important that Mattin makes parallels between the first six months of 1917 in pre-October Revolution, Russia, where the emergence of a bourgeois-democratic revolution could not sustain a coherent revolutionary program against war, oppression and reaction, and the presence of a supposedly fully democratic globalized society, where war breaks out everywhere and Islam is being targeted as the enemy of the "civilized world." I am referring to these two words as they are screamed in the second unsettling track in the recording amid screams of something about Lenin. If I could relate the mindset here to a specific quote, that would be from Adorno and Horkheimer in the preface to Dialectic of Enlightenment, where they say that "critical thought, [...] does not call a halt before progress."

Musically, this is a combination of spoken words with enveloping ambient/noise electronics (track 4 starts with an impressive manipulation of what sounds a field recording of crow), free jazz/avantgarde/atonal breakouts on clarinet. Though I could parallel this journey to what recent Faust are doing, there is too much breadth and exploration for a listener to pay attention to, something that can't be encapsulated in a short review. The good thing is that Mattin has made this available for free on his bandcamp, so you can go over there and be immersed in this weird ocean of sounds. 2018 lp due on Munster Records.

Regler ‎– Regel #4 (HNW) cd

Regler is the project of Anders Bryngelsson of Brainbombs and Mattin. The idea of Regler is to play a variety of music genres just with rock instruments, particularly guitar and drums, and to deconstruct them at their basic core. Notable experiments include their amazing drone piece, a recent blues album, dbeat hardcore punk, and an outrageous take on classical music. The album here is a dissection of Harsh Noise Wall, without any walls of electronic distortion, but just with a truly punk-spirited savage noisecore annihilation of drums and guitar, albeit never going into grindcore mode. Arguably this is much more compulsive, unpleasant and unlistenable than almost all HNW works. As Vomir says in his liner notes this is Hardcore Wall. 2015 cd co-released by Pilgrim Talk, Decimation Sociale, Rapid Moment, and At War With False Noise.

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