Remote Outposts – Sounds of the Mission

December 26, 2012 • self-released

I'm a huge fan of field recordings, and that's a kind of sound art that I don't really listen to nearly as much as I should. So I thought I'd plug this little release by punk and DIY blog Remote Outposts. It's a recording of eight blocks of Mission Street in San Francisco. I love the sounds of city life and this little jaunt is a very vibrant sample of such. Street vendors, snippets of Spanish, bits of diegetic music, kids playing in the street, and of course plenty of traffic.

I love cities and even though I live in a pretty big one myself, I don't get to actually walk around and take it in too often—and even when I do, it doesn't sound much like this. And sometimes it becomes a little game to try and guess what various sounds and vehicles are. A very interesting and relaxing recording.

Original article + download

Simon Whetham – Understory

December 2008 • Trente Oiseaux

Man, do I ever need something to clear my ears after all the grindcore I've saturated myself with recently... how about something light and airy; perhaps some field recordings? Simon Whetham's Understory is one of a huge collection of avant-garde material available from the excellent Trente Oiseaux netlabel; unfortunately it's not one of their better releases.

Essentially, Understory contains a wide variety of sounds recorded by a lake in Brazil, both naturally-produced and otherwise, such as birds and insects, storms, and bits of static, noise, musique concrète, etc. The recordings are assembled together, mostly unprocessed, for a sort of "raw" experience of the nature of the area. It's mostly presented in a very quiet, non-intrusive, ambient fashion, the kind of sound you can easily ignore if you want, with a few exceptions scattered here and there (like the sudden metallic noises near the end).

It's an interesting collection of sounds, to be sure, but I'm not really a huge fan. It feels very disjointed and aimless; one sample leads into another with little warning. It feels like watching a slideshow of someone's vacation photos—perhaps there are some that are nice, but stacking them all together doesn't make them any more interesting. I mostly find myself feeling bored listening to Understory. I don't see the appeal; I could go out to the suburbs and make a recording and it wouldn't sound much different.

Perhaps Understory is good as a jumping-off point for taking nature and making something out of it, but that isn't what happened here.

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The Gerogerigegege – Hell Driver

1999 • Dirtier Promotions

The Gerogerigegege is one of those bands that I tell myself I enjoy but is totally hit-or-miss: they can pull off some brilliant albums like Tokyo Anal Dynamite or Senzuri Champion, but sometimes their exercises in self-indulgence can completely flop. Hell Driver is one case which doesn't do anything for me; while it may have good intentions, it winds up being a complete meandering borefest when it's not trying to destroy my ears.

Don't get me wrong; I love listening to field recordings just as much as the next guy, and this band has put out some really nice stuff of its own (again, see Senzuri Champion). But field recordings have to be put to good use to make a good record, and here it all falls short. Take the title track, for example: it's fifteen minutes of wandering (perhaps improvised piano). Now, one could argue that this piece has a very marked atmosphere, one of solidarity, loneliness, agoraphobia, etc., and I can understand that. But to me, the track is simply boring. If it were half as long, I can see it maybe working, but I guess I lost interest in the track too quickly.

But the album's biggest flaw is its monstrous middle track "Moonlight & His Loser Knife"—thirty-five minutes of the most annoying buzzing noise I've ever heard. Even if the other four tracks were brilliant (they're not) this one ruins the entire album. Yes, it does have some semi-interesting snippets of clangings and voices in the background, but the buzzing is so grating that it's impossible to even think about what else is going on. I honestly cannot imagine why they thought this was good (then again, it is The Gerogerigegege; they've always had questionable motives and tastes). Perhaps they wanted to create a despairing and frustrated mood, in which case, congratulations.

The other tracks are mostly non-noteworthy, being more bland field recordings and grating noises that simply don't sound interesting and go nowhere. "Night Is Morning" is practically silent; "Pray Silently" is the same annoying scraping noise for seven minutes that almost redeems itself with some neat noise in the last few seconds; if only it had actually gone in that direction. The first track "_____" is the only enjoyable part of the album, being an unadorned clip of voices and city sounds; if more of the album were like it this review would be completely different. But it's a misleading opener.

My frustration with Hell Driver might partially have to do with the fact that I know The Gerogerigegege have done so much better with similar styles and this one simply sounds like a cheap knockoff of their better material. Some hardcore fans of the group will probably find value in this album, but I'm not into such musical masochism and I don't see it as anything except an irritating exercise in pointlessness. Fortunately, they have better material, and I'll stick to that instead.

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