All kinds of experimental music can be found on Bandcamp: free jazz, avant-rock, dense noise, outer-limits electronics, deconstructed folk, abstract spoken word, and so much more. If an artist is trying something new with an established form or inventing a new one completely, there’s a good chance they’re doing it on Bandcamp. Each month, Marc Masters picks some of the best releases from across this wide, exploratory spectrum. April’s selection includes transfixing solo guitar sketches, unhinged noise-duo improvisation, a portrait of a former explosives factory in West Virginia, and an update of a 24-hour piece involving scores of collaborators.
Dead Door Unit
Abandon
Compact Disc (CD)
It’s probably most accurate to say that Dead Door Unit, the project of Philadelphia’s K. Geiger, makes noise. Each of the six tracks on Abandon contain at least some abrasive or abstract dissonance, more than enough to make this high-level noise. But Geiger also creates enough space to develop noisy ideas into evolving organisms that aren’t afraid to recede or even go nearly silent. That’s why the longest tracks here are my favorites: the 15-minute “Christmas Alley” chops static into pieces that revel in pauses and gaps, while the 19-minute “She Knows How To Reach Us” comes off like a noise opera, opening with a bomb and then continually expanding and contracting, with Geiger never letting his foot off of the pedal.
Kristen Gallerneaux
The McClintic Chorus
Compact Disc (CD)
The second album by Michigan-based artist Kristen Gallerneaux is, as she puts it in the liner notes, “a biography of place”–specifically, a wildlife area in West Virginia that once housed an explosives factory. Gallerneaux made field recordings there for this suite of 12 tracks, and you can certainly feel the environment in the cavernous, immersive atmospheres she constructed. But The McClintic Chorus is more than an aural document. Many tracks have clear, prominent beats; “TNT Chorus” and “Bird Beat” land somewhere between horror movie soundtracks and ominous dance-floor bangers. This tactic works surprisingly well, rounding out a dense portrait of how a location can absorb and reflect the things that happened there—the type of album that reveals something new with each listen.
Eva-Maria Houben & Levin Eric Zimmermann
or other 3
There’s something eerie about these three long improvisations by German musicians Eva-Maria Houben and Levin Eric Zimmerman. Part of it is the tantalizing indeterminacy of their playing, which encompasses thick drone, harsh near-noise, reductionist quietude, and more. But whatever sound or mood they’re diving into, Houben and Zimmerman keep everything tense and even alien, creating an effect on the listener that suggests safety is not an option. It’s impressive that the pair make such unfamiliar music with just two instruments–organ for Houben, electric guitar for Zimmerman–but even when you can clearly hear the plucks and tones, or other 3 remains a beautiful mystery.
HUH
You don’t need magic
Vinyl LP
HUH is a Japanese group favoring unhinged noise and improvisation, so it’s natural to think of bands like Boredoms and Ruins when you listen to them. It’s also a compliment: damaged noise rock doesn’t get much better than those legends, and HUH squarely belongs to that vaunted lineage. You Don’t Need Magic even ups the ante on chaos compared to those forebears, offering seven off-the-rails pieces that never run out of brain-busting energy. Guitarist Kyosuke Terada and drummer Takuma Mori both scream and yelp while bashing away at their instruments, which can’t have survived these sessions. And they both play enough riffs and beats to suggest they could straight-up rock, but they’ve decided that destroying music is more important. After experiencing the maelstrom of You Don’t Need Magic, you’re likely to agree.
Intangible
Wonder Valley
The quartet Intangible sounds quite at home in the upper register of the sonic spectrum. Or at least they did for this recording, a set of “structured and free improvisations” recorded at UCLA for a virtual music festival. Robert Reigle’s tenor sax and Jeff Schwartz’s bass travel through the high end, but Intangible’s trebly tone comes mostly from the playing of Korean-born musician gamin, who uses three wind instruments from her home country: piri (a form of oboe), taepyeongso (a double-reed horn), and saenghwang (a mouth organ). Still, Wonder Valley is mostly leaderless, an even exchange of sonic ideas that entwine seamlessly. Take “Point,” a lively bit of aural calisthenics in which each player darts and dashes like a baton-passing sprinter.
Francisco Meirino
The Mute Fortress
Cassette
Utilizing the full stereo space in abstract music can sometimes be more a dazzling gimmick than a substantial move. But for Swiss artist Francisco Meirino, it’s a way to find new ideas and drive his music down different paths. During the two 20-minute sections of The Mute Fortress, Meirino’s sounds veer left to right, up and down, far away and close, but he never uses this spatial motion as a trick. He builds wordless narratives by spreading out noises, rattles, and static as overlapping motifs, with each section echoing what has come before. The Mute Fortress also works as a headphone album to get lost in, but what sticks for me is how far Meirino has journeyed sonically by album’s end.
Nick Millevoi
Moon Pulses
Cassette
Following last year’s Digital Reaction, which featured many collaborators, Philadelphia guitarist Nick Millevoi came up with a simpler idea. He decided to play just one guitar, creating one melody track and one rhythm track, in service of “something that could leave a listener transfixed by texture.” Moon Pulses certainly achieves that goal, with six pieces that seem to float in and out of each other’s orbits. Each “pulse” has a distinct character—some are fully meditative, while others coat busy notes under clouds of reverb—but the entirety works best when taken all in one sitting, creating an environment that’s as complex as a planetary ecosystem.
Michelle Moeller
Late Morning
Cassette
This is Oakland composer Michelle Moeller’s first album, but it’s the product of many years of work—hence the title, an “affectionate homage to slow movers and late bloomers.” A classically-trained pianist, Moeller creates the austere aura of chamber music, but her music is also burned at the edges with subversive surprises. So while a track such as “Nest” feels like a conventional, albeit still fascinating, solo piano exploration, it’s preceded by the woozy and weird “Crimson,” whose random rattles and warped tones create a kind of cloudy dream. Part of Late Morning was recorded at Mills College, the legendary institution that has produced scores of innovative sonic artists, and Moeller’s probing work echoes that history well.
Alfredo Costa Monteiro
RADIANT
Compact Disc (CD)
The latest work by Portugal-born, Barcelona-based sound artist Alfredo Costa Monteiro is a nearly hour-long continuous piece “inspired by the idea that subjective simplicity can contain objective complexity.” Seems like an abstract concept, but once you dig into RADIANT you will likely get what Monteiro means. The basic structure here–continuous noise and drone–feels simple, but close listening reveals a complexity that’s almost impossible to fully absorb, at least in one sitting. There are distinct sections embedded here, some confrontational, some meditative, but the density of detail is entrancingly consistent. In other words, you’ll hear a lot of different stuff coursing through RADIANT, but you’ll never hear a reason to stop sitting on the edge of your seat.
Mike Shiflet
Tetracosa Ensemble, Volumes 1-4
Tetracosa Ensemble, Volumes 5-8
Six years ago, veteran experimental musician Mike Shiflet released a 24-hour piece called Tetracosa, posted to Bandcamp in eight three-hour editions. As Shiflet put it then, it involved “350 unique sound objects categorized and layered such that no two moments are alike.” Now Shiflet has enlisted a huge wealth of collaborators to make a new ensemble version of Tetracosa, covering the same length of time. It would take more space than I have here just to list every contributor, and listening to the entirety is also a feat beyond my current constraints. But what I have heard of Tetracosa Ensemble is just as interesting and deep as Shiflet’s first foray into this project, while also finding new ground. Wisely, Shiflet has divided the volumes into manageable chunks, so you can really pick any spot and dig in. No matter where you land, Shiflet’s attentive sounds will stick with you.
