What? Another Thing? Yes, another one! Deja vu!
Substak has not been featured in Vital Weekly before; let’s take a look at who this is. Behind the name is Kostas Staikos from Athens (Europe, not Georgia), and I had seen his name previously on releases from Adventurous Music, Inner Demons and Attenuation Circuit, yet never wrote about his works before. Weird … Some of those must have slipped through, and yes: weird, because his minimalism on this track should have caught my ear—ultra-minimal, drone-like experiments, featuring microscopic movements and simply beautiful sounds.
Behind Der Domestizierte Mensch with their “Dingsbums” is a project I’ve written about already on another Thing. It’s a variation on Problem Anderer Leute, and there I wrote ‘Freehand improv on what sounds like an organ on a feedback / no input mixer with layers of noise. Have I said it is chaotic as hell already?’ On this track, there is the same chaos, only without the organ/feedback sounds. More digital, mangled voices and rhythms, kinda things. Label under experimental weirdness.
The longest track on this Thing is by South Carolina-based Thomas Bey William Bailey. “Vapnatak” is almost 14 minutes and consists of chaos on another level. Whereas the previous track on this Thing is rhythmically chaotic, here it’s the sounds and overall composition that leave you puzzled. A mixture of synthesised and organic sounds in something that holds the mid of noise, ambient, cutup, fluxus and … I had to listen to it several times, and I still don’t understand. Intriguing.
Jo Bled, also known as Jabe Ledoux, made me smile. His Discogs page features a quote from our friends at The Wire, stating, ‘Equally resembles a garbage truck compacting metal trash in a pre-dawn alley, and a gamelan orchestra heard through a malfunctioning walkie-talkie.’ This eloquence says it all. This is not my kind of music at all, but I suppose you should just listen to it and form your own opinion. Experiments in minimalism with an acoustic, organic, and percussive character.
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