CAROLONE MCKENZIE / COLDSORE [splittape]
"WELL now. Lots of incredible noise sounds here, transmutated and destroyed and corroded and refashioned, from mundane and traumatic life experience to high art. Any money made from this release will go towards the crew of the Iuventa, a rescue ship/crew that saved the lives of refugees in the Mediterranean when no one else would before the ship was siezed by Italian authorities and the crew charged with facilitating immigration, effectively branding them smugglers...." > Bandcloud
"WELL now. Lots of incredible noise sounds here, transmutated and destroyed and corroded and refashioned, from mundane and traumatic life experience to high art. Any money made from this release will go towards the crew of the Iuventa, a rescue ship/crew that saved the lives of refugees in the Mediterranean when no one else would before the ship was siezed by Italian authorities and the crew charged with facilitating immigration, effectively branding them smugglers...." > Bandcloud
CAROLONE MCKENZIE / COLDSORE [splittape]
"A split tape from Glasgow artist Caroline McKenzie and Helsinki-based Coldsore aka GRMMSK. McKenzie's side, made up of three tracks entitled 'the temperature of the stars' in three parts, is clanky and unsettling and ominous. Strange reverberations abound. Subtle distortion is played like a piano with the soft pedal down. Coldsore's side, a single piece called 'wench with scythe', which matches the tape's cover, leans towards yawning chords and sonorous drones, crunchy sounds like fog enveloping all." > Bandcloud
"A split tape from Glasgow artist Caroline McKenzie and Helsinki-based Coldsore aka GRMMSK. McKenzie's side, made up of three tracks entitled 'the temperature of the stars' in three parts, is clanky and unsettling and ominous. Strange reverberations abound. Subtle distortion is played like a piano with the soft pedal down. Coldsore's side, a single piece called 'wench with scythe', which matches the tape's cover, leans towards yawning chords and sonorous drones, crunchy sounds like fog enveloping all." > Bandcloud
WIZARDS TELL LIES / STAPPERTON / COLDSORE
"GRMMSK, aka COLDSORE, is one of the few noise musicians I’ve met in the inked flesh. I caught him on his 2018 UK tour, which he kicked off with a set in West Croydon. According to Islamic doctrine, the archangel Mikael once visited West Croydon and was so horrified by what he saw, he never laughed again. Snap. In his book The Riddle Of Prehistoric Britain, Comys Beaumont claims that Jesus was born in Somerset and crucified just outside Edinburgh – cunning Romans claimed it all happened in the Middle East to hoodwink the Brits, y’see. West Croydon was the ‘desert’ where Satan tempted Christ with wine, women and Italo Disco for 40 days. It’s a bit grim, is all I’m saying.
That night, Coldsore performed a half-soothing/half-disturbing droney set using handmade gadgets, while eye-bleeding, scrambled images of...Fukushima clean-up squads? fish flapping around on a trawler deck? telly magick transmissions?...towered above him. I enjoyed it, my only annoyance being the obligatory ‘noise audience’ tendency to squat on the floor, school assembly style, during the performance. I got hip-ache and pins and needles, and spent the set worrying about someone kicking my drink over. What d’you mean, “OK, Boomer”?? I’m fag-end Gen X for your info, brateen.
I missed his next set in Tottenham, which was a pity as I heard there were Jah Shaka-levels of PA rattle ‘n’ brzzzhhhhm involved. But we met again the next night at artisinal vegan quiche pop-up Café Oto, to watch a sprightly Japanese man play an amplified turnip. I don’t know if Thurston Moore was there that night, but I couldn’t tell you what he looks like anyway – I never liked Sonic Youth. Baby by Wasted Youth...now THERE was a tune. Reminds me of this girl from Kentish Town who had three...anyway, expensive beer aside, it was a good night, though I mainly impressed on GRMMSK what a crap anarchist I am:
“If you’re staying in Brixton, you should get some jerk chicken,” I offered. “Thanks, but I don’t eat dead flesh,” he replied.
“Yeah, me neither...” I lied. “Anyway...let’s get pissed!”
“Actually, I don’t drink,” he said.
Well, I wouldn’t dream of faking sXe credentials. What’s all this got to do with the review, you ask? Bugger all! But I figured you might be bored gazing out of the window, watching the hordes charging down the pub and shopping en masse, and playing kabaddi in the park and spitting into each other’s mouths...so, there y’go. Killed a couple of minutes of quarantine for you.
So, here’s a three-way split, ‘name your price’ (ie, you’ll pay nothing you tightwad, let’s be frank) release on GRMMSK’s Totstellen label. We start off with WIZARDS TELL LIES. Do they? Hi honey, I just flogged the car for a fairy tree! Really, who sold it to you? Couple of blokes with beards, floppy hats. Oh, and you tested it, right, cos it looks like a dead spider plant to me? Oh...fuckin’ wizards done me over again. WTL’s track reminds me a bit of the time I was given a tour of an Estonian boatbuilding facility, in an old Soviet construction complex. Boiler room industrial. That echoey
‘workshop under the railway arches’ thing that early NWW had going on. Even a bit of guitar before it goes all static wave wipeout/grind-your-bones-down-in-the-MOT-pit messy. Nice.
STAPPERTON I mainly know for the fact that he’s served time in a) Luton b) the post office, which means, like me, he’s guaranteed a spot in Heaven. Haven’t we suffered enough? His 2017 split with Bir on Lurker Bias was one of my favourite ‘noise’ / ‘no audience’ (God, I hate that term now) releases in living memory. You can still get it on tape for 6 bucks, or leech it for free like the bogroll- snatching ponce your parents disowned.
On this track, however, Stapperton goes full shortwave radio on us, joining such luminaries as John “but I thought I pressed ‘record’!” Cage, John “lol, I shagged a corpse” Duncan and Philip “CO-OPTED BY CUNTS! CO-OPTED BY CUNTS! CO-OPTED BY CUNTS! CO-OPTED BY CUNTS!” Best. Why bother with fancy synths and pricey pads when you can get that bubbling Great White Death bass and Angus MacLise-style trebly drones off the shortwave spectrum for free? Radio noise is cool, and so is this track.
COLDSORE’s song starts off like metallic mosquito helicopters exploring a mineshaft, and ends like a thirsty two-headed Chernobyl wolf licking water from a burst pipe in a bombed-out building. In between, there’s a lot of phased ascending/descending swoops with plenty of reverb ‘n’ clatter. I wouldn’t recommend listening to this on psychotropics, unless you want to feel like a cosmonaut tumbling into the void. Though, however you get your kicks...
There’s something a bit United Dairies about this release, which I can’t put my finger on right now, but I may well be talking junk. You can get it at the link below and judge for yourself, and maybe throw ‘em some of the money you were gonna squander on sunburst-vinyl Gang Of Four EPs on Record Shop Day – oh COVID-19, do we owe you a smidgeon of gratitude for nixing that, if nothing else! Now please skedaddle outta here and leave us be. I know, I know... you all think I’m lying about the Japanese man with the turnip." > Batflu
"GRMMSK, aka COLDSORE, is one of the few noise musicians I’ve met in the inked flesh. I caught him on his 2018 UK tour, which he kicked off with a set in West Croydon. According to Islamic doctrine, the archangel Mikael once visited West Croydon and was so horrified by what he saw, he never laughed again. Snap. In his book The Riddle Of Prehistoric Britain, Comys Beaumont claims that Jesus was born in Somerset and crucified just outside Edinburgh – cunning Romans claimed it all happened in the Middle East to hoodwink the Brits, y’see. West Croydon was the ‘desert’ where Satan tempted Christ with wine, women and Italo Disco for 40 days. It’s a bit grim, is all I’m saying.
That night, Coldsore performed a half-soothing/half-disturbing droney set using handmade gadgets, while eye-bleeding, scrambled images of...Fukushima clean-up squads? fish flapping around on a trawler deck? telly magick transmissions?...towered above him. I enjoyed it, my only annoyance being the obligatory ‘noise audience’ tendency to squat on the floor, school assembly style, during the performance. I got hip-ache and pins and needles, and spent the set worrying about someone kicking my drink over. What d’you mean, “OK, Boomer”?? I’m fag-end Gen X for your info, brateen.
I missed his next set in Tottenham, which was a pity as I heard there were Jah Shaka-levels of PA rattle ‘n’ brzzzhhhhm involved. But we met again the next night at artisinal vegan quiche pop-up Café Oto, to watch a sprightly Japanese man play an amplified turnip. I don’t know if Thurston Moore was there that night, but I couldn’t tell you what he looks like anyway – I never liked Sonic Youth. Baby by Wasted Youth...now THERE was a tune. Reminds me of this girl from Kentish Town who had three...anyway, expensive beer aside, it was a good night, though I mainly impressed on GRMMSK what a crap anarchist I am:
“If you’re staying in Brixton, you should get some jerk chicken,” I offered. “Thanks, but I don’t eat dead flesh,” he replied.
“Yeah, me neither...” I lied. “Anyway...let’s get pissed!”
“Actually, I don’t drink,” he said.
Well, I wouldn’t dream of faking sXe credentials. What’s all this got to do with the review, you ask? Bugger all! But I figured you might be bored gazing out of the window, watching the hordes charging down the pub and shopping en masse, and playing kabaddi in the park and spitting into each other’s mouths...so, there y’go. Killed a couple of minutes of quarantine for you.
So, here’s a three-way split, ‘name your price’ (ie, you’ll pay nothing you tightwad, let’s be frank) release on GRMMSK’s Totstellen label. We start off with WIZARDS TELL LIES. Do they? Hi honey, I just flogged the car for a fairy tree! Really, who sold it to you? Couple of blokes with beards, floppy hats. Oh, and you tested it, right, cos it looks like a dead spider plant to me? Oh...fuckin’ wizards done me over again. WTL’s track reminds me a bit of the time I was given a tour of an Estonian boatbuilding facility, in an old Soviet construction complex. Boiler room industrial. That echoey
‘workshop under the railway arches’ thing that early NWW had going on. Even a bit of guitar before it goes all static wave wipeout/grind-your-bones-down-in-the-MOT-pit messy. Nice.
STAPPERTON I mainly know for the fact that he’s served time in a) Luton b) the post office, which means, like me, he’s guaranteed a spot in Heaven. Haven’t we suffered enough? His 2017 split with Bir on Lurker Bias was one of my favourite ‘noise’ / ‘no audience’ (God, I hate that term now) releases in living memory. You can still get it on tape for 6 bucks, or leech it for free like the bogroll- snatching ponce your parents disowned.
On this track, however, Stapperton goes full shortwave radio on us, joining such luminaries as John “but I thought I pressed ‘record’!” Cage, John “lol, I shagged a corpse” Duncan and Philip “CO-OPTED BY CUNTS! CO-OPTED BY CUNTS! CO-OPTED BY CUNTS! CO-OPTED BY CUNTS!” Best. Why bother with fancy synths and pricey pads when you can get that bubbling Great White Death bass and Angus MacLise-style trebly drones off the shortwave spectrum for free? Radio noise is cool, and so is this track.
COLDSORE’s song starts off like metallic mosquito helicopters exploring a mineshaft, and ends like a thirsty two-headed Chernobyl wolf licking water from a burst pipe in a bombed-out building. In between, there’s a lot of phased ascending/descending swoops with plenty of reverb ‘n’ clatter. I wouldn’t recommend listening to this on psychotropics, unless you want to feel like a cosmonaut tumbling into the void. Though, however you get your kicks...
There’s something a bit United Dairies about this release, which I can’t put my finger on right now, but I may well be talking junk. You can get it at the link below and judge for yourself, and maybe throw ‘em some of the money you were gonna squander on sunburst-vinyl Gang Of Four EPs on Record Shop Day – oh COVID-19, do we owe you a smidgeon of gratitude for nixing that, if nothing else! Now please skedaddle outta here and leave us be. I know, I know... you all think I’m lying about the Japanese man with the turnip." > Batflu
[TOTFORM27] GRMMSK - REALITY ASYLUM [vinyl]
"MONDAY MUSIC: today I’ve got the deconstructed ‘doom-dub’ of finnish anarchists GRMMSK. nihilistic reggae versions stretched and distorted in the deep woods of Finland into haunting new forms. It sounds like decay and entropy, but in a chill way. Deceptively simple yet deeply textured and rich, these dubbed out jams are like nothing I have heard. Highly recommended! There are a few projects from this collective to check out at this page, as well, such as Cold Sore and Totstellen (both noise acts)…all formats are available from this DIY operation…CDs, vinyl, tapes, digital, pick your poison, but be sure to swallow something!" > themodernfolk.net
"MONDAY MUSIC: today I’ve got the deconstructed ‘doom-dub’ of finnish anarchists GRMMSK. nihilistic reggae versions stretched and distorted in the deep woods of Finland into haunting new forms. It sounds like decay and entropy, but in a chill way. Deceptively simple yet deeply textured and rich, these dubbed out jams are like nothing I have heard. Highly recommended! There are a few projects from this collective to check out at this page, as well, such as Cold Sore and Totstellen (both noise acts)…all formats are available from this DIY operation…CDs, vinyl, tapes, digital, pick your poison, but be sure to swallow something!" > themodernfolk.net
[TOTFORM31] SLEEPMASSK
"The ever enigmatic Finnish label Totesformat delivers another winner in the shape of Sleepmassk and not just because the cassette and the cassette box itself are etched. Yes, etched. Have you tried etching a download? It may seem mere novelty but it does do its bit in going towards making this another exceptional Totseformat release.
Totseformat or GRM to give him is proper name, lives in a forest in Finland. I know this because I’ve seen pictures. GRM isn’t his real name of course. I have no idea what his real name is and there’s about three projects running under the one label which could all be the work of the same person. GRMMSK, Coldsore and now Sleepmassk which is credited as the work of Kek-W and GRM.
What we have is an hour long dub noise Industrial drone groan journey in five parts as begat by the experimental wing of Godflesh meets David Lynch. Imagine a later Godflesh album stripped of everything except the feeling of being incarcerated in a damp cellar in Prague in the middle of winter and you’re there.
What starts out as deeply foreboding slab of depth charge wasteland wash ends with a sawing like drone, all cast so as to bring forth a very dark and disturbed sleep. That's them there on the cover putting on your sleep mask. One to listen to on a cold night with the covers pulled up tight after watching something particularly disturbing on TV. A nightmare, or a ‘WAKEmare’ to misquote one of the tracks. This being the second which begins with stuttering machinery before folding in on itself to the sound of muffled heartbeats and the steady, wailing groan of lost souls.
I’ve also seen pictures of GRM’s equipment which he keeps in his shed in the forest in Finland. Analogue synths and homemade gear by the looks of it. I know nothing. Lots of wires and flashing lights and knobs. An electrical fire looking for a home. What Kek-W contributes I’m not sure but the pair work seamlessly. Last track ‘sleepMASS’ is a throbbing 16 minute drone of all fingers holding down the keys proportion, a broken Harmonium gasping its last, the pitch wavering as its journey finally comes to an end.
A crying shame that so few copies exist." > IDWAL FISHER
"The soul music continues with the self-titled SLEEPMASSK, which provides an unnerving subcutaneous vibration which somehow feels corrective." > RADIO FREE MIDWICH
"The ever enigmatic Finnish label Totesformat delivers another winner in the shape of Sleepmassk and not just because the cassette and the cassette box itself are etched. Yes, etched. Have you tried etching a download? It may seem mere novelty but it does do its bit in going towards making this another exceptional Totseformat release.
Totseformat or GRM to give him is proper name, lives in a forest in Finland. I know this because I’ve seen pictures. GRM isn’t his real name of course. I have no idea what his real name is and there’s about three projects running under the one label which could all be the work of the same person. GRMMSK, Coldsore and now Sleepmassk which is credited as the work of Kek-W and GRM.
What we have is an hour long dub noise Industrial drone groan journey in five parts as begat by the experimental wing of Godflesh meets David Lynch. Imagine a later Godflesh album stripped of everything except the feeling of being incarcerated in a damp cellar in Prague in the middle of winter and you’re there.
What starts out as deeply foreboding slab of depth charge wasteland wash ends with a sawing like drone, all cast so as to bring forth a very dark and disturbed sleep. That's them there on the cover putting on your sleep mask. One to listen to on a cold night with the covers pulled up tight after watching something particularly disturbing on TV. A nightmare, or a ‘WAKEmare’ to misquote one of the tracks. This being the second which begins with stuttering machinery before folding in on itself to the sound of muffled heartbeats and the steady, wailing groan of lost souls.
I’ve also seen pictures of GRM’s equipment which he keeps in his shed in the forest in Finland. Analogue synths and homemade gear by the looks of it. I know nothing. Lots of wires and flashing lights and knobs. An electrical fire looking for a home. What Kek-W contributes I’m not sure but the pair work seamlessly. Last track ‘sleepMASS’ is a throbbing 16 minute drone of all fingers holding down the keys proportion, a broken Harmonium gasping its last, the pitch wavering as its journey finally comes to an end.
A crying shame that so few copies exist." > IDWAL FISHER
"The soul music continues with the self-titled SLEEPMASSK, which provides an unnerving subcutaneous vibration which somehow feels corrective." > RADIO FREE MIDWICH
[TOTFORM21] KEMIA / OLLIJOHANNA
[TOTFORM22] RST - HAIKUS
[TOTFORM18] LIBBE MATZ GANG / COLDSORE - [0+0=0]
"Tapes come and go in the room where I type out these words and when I’m done with them I put them in a box. Sometimes I pass them on or, if I’m feeling devilish, I take them down the chazza where no doubt ladies of a certain age pick them up and look at them with a curious squint before asking a colleague if they still sell cassettes or not.
For the last few weeks and months these four cassettes from the Finnish label Totes Format have been whirring away in the background, clicking over from one cassette to the other via the wonders of a trusty twin cassette deck. If I’m concentrating on something computer wise I can often hear the same two sides of the same two cassettes all evening and when I’m hearing sounds as enigmatic and captivating as these I sometimes feel as if I’ve been held in some kind of a trance. Some people have streaming media players and suggestion algorithms, I have recycled cassettes from Finland and a JVC twin cassette deck.
What makes this all the more compelling is that I have no idea who any of these people are. I’ve had Totes Format releases through these hands before and excellent they were too with GRMMSK [I have a feeling the label head here] running around bald, naked and painted white within bridge structures making along the way some amazing sounds with a homemade string instrument and a drill. That was about three years ago now which judging from their website makes for a very steady release program. Editions don’t run to many numbers and as you see we’re in hand made recycled territory here with hand stitched, reclaimed material sleeves and the use of old circuit diagrams as seen in previous TF releases. Its a stance to be applauded.
Out of this dark sea of ambience and dark electronic sounds the last track of three by German artist Kemia got to me the most. It might have been artistic judgement, kismet or a recording made on an inspiring day when the sun just about rises over the horizon and the temperature barely budges above zero but ‘untitled 3’ [never has a track of such beauty been given such a mundane title] did for me like a Novocain shot in a dentist’s chair. A dreamy and blissful decay wrung from an only dreamt about Basinski/Prince collaboration where a series of underwater detonations reverb out to coda on bed of dreamy muffled voices and celestial treated harp. Hypnogogic pop eat your heart out. The preceding two are bleak low hertz blasts and nocturnal ritualistic electronics and something I need to investigate further but track three … let me play it just one more time.
On the flip comes Ollijohanna and two tracks of stunning black industrial ambience. Here is all cavernous drones and desolate electronic skree, hollow roars and stripped wastelands, the sounds of distant explosions and their aftermath.
Coldsore appear twice each time creating dark and foreboding atmospheres that focus on both depression and pollution. On the Libbe Matz Gang split ‘0+0=0’ there’s mention of Largactyl and a quote by Wittgenstein and it is of course suitably wrist slitting. Pollutant’s four tracks contain various synth atmospheres accompanied by sampled dialogue, the odd disguised PE vocal and air raid sirens all leading me to think that these tracks were recorded by someone who hadn’t been listening to disco for a while. Depressing, sombre works no doubt recorded in the depths of a Finnish winter at three in the morning.
‘Under the Chemical Cosh’ is where we find Libbe Matz Gang and a short side of swirling flanges and lower key synth blurp that would no doubt pop the woofers on cheap paper cones. A fitting flip to the Coldsore track. While RST’s ‘Haikus’ consists of two live tracks as recorded this year, the first a constant stream of low end flutter and tundra storms perforated with granular crumble, dark, random pulses and eerie ritualistic melodies, the second an empty room filled with angular resonating electronics.
Putting these releases in a box seems criminal and the chazza is definitely out. Perhaps I’ll leave them on display for a while before giving them another outing on the JVC." > IDWAL FISHER
[TOTFORM22] RST - HAIKUS
[TOTFORM18] LIBBE MATZ GANG / COLDSORE - [0+0=0]
"Tapes come and go in the room where I type out these words and when I’m done with them I put them in a box. Sometimes I pass them on or, if I’m feeling devilish, I take them down the chazza where no doubt ladies of a certain age pick them up and look at them with a curious squint before asking a colleague if they still sell cassettes or not.
For the last few weeks and months these four cassettes from the Finnish label Totes Format have been whirring away in the background, clicking over from one cassette to the other via the wonders of a trusty twin cassette deck. If I’m concentrating on something computer wise I can often hear the same two sides of the same two cassettes all evening and when I’m hearing sounds as enigmatic and captivating as these I sometimes feel as if I’ve been held in some kind of a trance. Some people have streaming media players and suggestion algorithms, I have recycled cassettes from Finland and a JVC twin cassette deck.
What makes this all the more compelling is that I have no idea who any of these people are. I’ve had Totes Format releases through these hands before and excellent they were too with GRMMSK [I have a feeling the label head here] running around bald, naked and painted white within bridge structures making along the way some amazing sounds with a homemade string instrument and a drill. That was about three years ago now which judging from their website makes for a very steady release program. Editions don’t run to many numbers and as you see we’re in hand made recycled territory here with hand stitched, reclaimed material sleeves and the use of old circuit diagrams as seen in previous TF releases. Its a stance to be applauded.
Out of this dark sea of ambience and dark electronic sounds the last track of three by German artist Kemia got to me the most. It might have been artistic judgement, kismet or a recording made on an inspiring day when the sun just about rises over the horizon and the temperature barely budges above zero but ‘untitled 3’ [never has a track of such beauty been given such a mundane title] did for me like a Novocain shot in a dentist’s chair. A dreamy and blissful decay wrung from an only dreamt about Basinski/Prince collaboration where a series of underwater detonations reverb out to coda on bed of dreamy muffled voices and celestial treated harp. Hypnogogic pop eat your heart out. The preceding two are bleak low hertz blasts and nocturnal ritualistic electronics and something I need to investigate further but track three … let me play it just one more time.
On the flip comes Ollijohanna and two tracks of stunning black industrial ambience. Here is all cavernous drones and desolate electronic skree, hollow roars and stripped wastelands, the sounds of distant explosions and their aftermath.
Coldsore appear twice each time creating dark and foreboding atmospheres that focus on both depression and pollution. On the Libbe Matz Gang split ‘0+0=0’ there’s mention of Largactyl and a quote by Wittgenstein and it is of course suitably wrist slitting. Pollutant’s four tracks contain various synth atmospheres accompanied by sampled dialogue, the odd disguised PE vocal and air raid sirens all leading me to think that these tracks were recorded by someone who hadn’t been listening to disco for a while. Depressing, sombre works no doubt recorded in the depths of a Finnish winter at three in the morning.
‘Under the Chemical Cosh’ is where we find Libbe Matz Gang and a short side of swirling flanges and lower key synth blurp that would no doubt pop the woofers on cheap paper cones. A fitting flip to the Coldsore track. While RST’s ‘Haikus’ consists of two live tracks as recorded this year, the first a constant stream of low end flutter and tundra storms perforated with granular crumble, dark, random pulses and eerie ritualistic melodies, the second an empty room filled with angular resonating electronics.
Putting these releases in a box seems criminal and the chazza is definitely out. Perhaps I’ll leave them on display for a while before giving them another outing on the JVC." > IDWAL FISHER
[TOTFORM23] COLDSORE - POLLUTANT
"In Vital Weekly 1044 I first came across the music of Coldsore, which is the same guy as Totstellen and GRMMSK and here we have something political again, as the music deals with environmental pollution. The first edition apparently contained toxic materials, but the one I have here is a regular edition. It says on the cover: "recorded in 2016, while digging out from the ruins of TEPCO's Daiichi NPP. We hear the sounds from under the debris inside the slowly collapsing sarcophagus containing reactor 4. COLDSORE uses mostly handmade electronic equipment: sound generators and -deformers powered by disastrous memories of the future and dirty electricity", so you never know what is really true about such things, but I am sure there is a genuine concern here. In the pieces they use cold synth bleeps, airy electronics and sometimes a bit of voices, all to mark off a sense of a post nuclear landscape, via some nicely primitive ambient industrial music. Music, in general, which slowly builds up with some shimmering frequencies to make up a sense of violence and treat. I say 'primitive' to indicate the kind of instruments they are using here. I would think much of this comes through a bunch of humming monotrons and a couple of stomp boxes, plus perhaps a 2-bit sampler, older than the current owner and full of dust; all neatly taped on a cassette for that extra layer of roughness, which is not lost in translation back to the CDR. The website mentions this as fifty-minute tape, but I have here a sixty-three minute CDR; the final piece being a twenty-two minute live recording at the Anarchist Black Cross in Helsinki, in which everything goes up a bit and the group/project sounds a tad more industrial. This is surely a sonic wake-up call." > VITAL WEEKLY
"In Vital Weekly 1044 I first came across the music of Coldsore, which is the same guy as Totstellen and GRMMSK and here we have something political again, as the music deals with environmental pollution. The first edition apparently contained toxic materials, but the one I have here is a regular edition. It says on the cover: "recorded in 2016, while digging out from the ruins of TEPCO's Daiichi NPP. We hear the sounds from under the debris inside the slowly collapsing sarcophagus containing reactor 4. COLDSORE uses mostly handmade electronic equipment: sound generators and -deformers powered by disastrous memories of the future and dirty electricity", so you never know what is really true about such things, but I am sure there is a genuine concern here. In the pieces they use cold synth bleeps, airy electronics and sometimes a bit of voices, all to mark off a sense of a post nuclear landscape, via some nicely primitive ambient industrial music. Music, in general, which slowly builds up with some shimmering frequencies to make up a sense of violence and treat. I say 'primitive' to indicate the kind of instruments they are using here. I would think much of this comes through a bunch of humming monotrons and a couple of stomp boxes, plus perhaps a 2-bit sampler, older than the current owner and full of dust; all neatly taped on a cassette for that extra layer of roughness, which is not lost in translation back to the CDR. The website mentions this as fifty-minute tape, but I have here a sixty-three minute CDR; the final piece being a twenty-two minute live recording at the Anarchist Black Cross in Helsinki, in which everything goes up a bit and the group/project sounds a tad more industrial. This is surely a sonic wake-up call." > VITAL WEEKLY
[TOTFORM18] LIBBE MATZ GANG / COLDSORE - [0+0=0]
"Music for Lorazepam.
Libbe Matz Gang's “Under the Chemical Cosh” opens with what I imagine the traffic in Ballard's Concrete island sounded like – Bedford vans and 1970's arctic-trucks slowly circling some sunken roundabout, exhaust-pipes flanged into a hyperimagined rumble-drone heard from, I dunno, inside a drainage conduit or underpass but ////let's stop this metaphor before it goes all Mark Fisher; though I do remember a friend in a barge bunk-bed, late summer, 1980, sing-speaking “There's no one driving...” in his sleep: John Foxx lyrics inserted into 3am somnambulic mumble; it was funny-but-fucking-freaky; thoughts surfacing, an anxiety-dream colliding with a song-lyric and oozing out into the world like cotton-wool ectoplasm hanging from the mouth of a bogus Edwardian spiritualist//// but, of course, LMG's music sounds absofuckingnothing like traffic whatsoever – I'm just projecting; everything reminds you of something else, right? – it's a throaty FX-laden pad, not 70's traffic, not a roundabout on the M23 that you're trying to hitch from (a rusty white van turns up, the doors open and ) – but it goes roundandround slowly in the mix – roundandround inside your head like a bad small-hours negative-thought-loop that won't go away until
At around 4 minutes, fluttering wings of treble enter the mix and you think it's gonna turn into hi-hats – like, here come the drums – but the reverse happens: the bass-drone recedes, like traffic-noise at night or a dream or a perceived threat, leaving muted flutterings – insect-wings heard on an old transistor radio; a drug-numbed tongue trying to speak – I remember what constituted so-called 'anti-depressants' in the late-70s; they were filthy fucking horrible drugs, barbiturate-like emotion-flatteners that left you low and dry, spittle-less, impotent, constipated, watching the world through a thick-bottomed brown Mackinsons bottle, a telescope the wrong-way-round, its lens covered in rancid butter everything reminds you of something else synth-modulations come and go, try and take hold, stick to something, but never quite grip – sounds / words / thoughts / emotions that can't quite surface.
8 minutes in, something truly awful arrives: a demonic bad-thought-voice clawing its way thru the cellars of your mind, switching lights on and off, pulling the drawers out of yr furniture, searching for something horrible, something you meant to lose; a memory you don't fucking want to have. The oscillations grow progressively nastier, more unpleasant, more fuzzy and furred up – taloned thought-forms scratching at your brain from within, their claws clogged with cobwebs, sharp/but/soft.
A machine that'll never make you better.
Coldsore's “The Significance of Nothing” starts all creamy, drifty, slide-y sinewaves – an ECG that turns into a slow-motion air-raid siren. Hints of early Tangerine Dream (Alpha Centauri-ish era? Atem?). Someone's reading your thoughts. They've got a machine that's teaching itself to do that. A voice, possibly imagined, low in the mix – your conscience, guilt, mother, a hypermediated world? - who knows, but something “is no longer available.” The tones flatten, shift to a lower register, become more 'machine'-like; they pulse, shift, whirr, move up and down relative to one another – not noisy, not nasty, but there's a vague sense of unease in the air and I find myself worrying, “Who is tending to them, these devices and gadgets? Who is in charge here?” Aircraft pass overhead – there's a threat of war – but it never quite materialises (symptoms of mediated 'fear' in a post-millennial world: there's always another 'war', another 'threat', another symptomless 'panic'; we live in a state of constant low-level anxiety – chimeric threat near-manifestation – the news-cycle lock-stepped with the frequencies of fear. Talk-show indoctrination; the right way to think. It's not that the world is too fast – it's too... wrong. Media spits out mixed messages, uneasy narrative u-turns, propaganda-as-neural-aggitator, sewing the seeds of confusion. RightSpeak, ReWrite, WrongRead, DoubleTalk, HorrorHorrorHorror. Some of us handle it better than others). At 11 minutes in, a voice croaks a complaint / moan of pain / request for medication. It sounds like Allen Ginsberg with terminal throat cancer, a street-drinker reaching out, reaching upwards from the shadows, hand outstretched, towards you. A cracked-voice plea fallen on deaf ears. Lifts move up and down shafts, infrastructure hums, a woman tells us she “wants it to stop.”
But it never does." > KEK-W
"Themed around the medical treatment of juvenile delinquents these two artists share a side each on this gnarly tape, presenting some dark electronic meditations on sinister control and repression mechanisms through medication. The only vocals evident are disturbingly delayed speech lifted from instructional tapes (?) discussing amongst other things Largactyl or Chlorpromazine - anti-psychotic medication with the ability to flatten and pacify with some unpleasant side effects: drooling stiffness and involuntary movements, commonly used to treat psychosis it was / is used in prisons to control aggression. Libbe Matz Gang’s, ‘Under the Chemical Cosh’ makes explicit its theme as a bruised and persistent sustained tone deviates into the spiked and poisonous sting of a scorpion, crackling with ill intent. We have moved from the cold-sweat-dread of a general anaesthetic administered by faceless medics with dead eyes and ended up at the wrong end of a sterile corridor in a Dead Ringers style body horror. The high-pitched whine that closes the storm is what you hear as the anaesthetic wears off - you wake alone in surgical gown, slowly sitting up to take-in your grotesquely transformed reflection. Cold Sore’s track is a grey and eerie bombed-out fug of barbiturate hangover. 'The Significance of Nothing’ limps into existence as a drowned air-raid alarm sounds forlornly while an impassive female voice rises from the murk, looping in sad resignation. While the Libbe Matz Gang track seems to represent the panic and terror of a young person in over their head, no longer in control of their actions, the Cold Sore track is the cold sedation of a forced intramuscular injection. Like being dropped into a restless sleep from which you may never wake. You are alone, you don’t know where you are, who these people are or what they want." > RADIO FREE MIDWICH
"Music for Lorazepam.
Libbe Matz Gang's “Under the Chemical Cosh” opens with what I imagine the traffic in Ballard's Concrete island sounded like – Bedford vans and 1970's arctic-trucks slowly circling some sunken roundabout, exhaust-pipes flanged into a hyperimagined rumble-drone heard from, I dunno, inside a drainage conduit or underpass but ////let's stop this metaphor before it goes all Mark Fisher; though I do remember a friend in a barge bunk-bed, late summer, 1980, sing-speaking “There's no one driving...” in his sleep: John Foxx lyrics inserted into 3am somnambulic mumble; it was funny-but-fucking-freaky; thoughts surfacing, an anxiety-dream colliding with a song-lyric and oozing out into the world like cotton-wool ectoplasm hanging from the mouth of a bogus Edwardian spiritualist//// but, of course, LMG's music sounds absofuckingnothing like traffic whatsoever – I'm just projecting; everything reminds you of something else, right? – it's a throaty FX-laden pad, not 70's traffic, not a roundabout on the M23 that you're trying to hitch from (a rusty white van turns up, the doors open and ) – but it goes roundandround slowly in the mix – roundandround inside your head like a bad small-hours negative-thought-loop that won't go away until
At around 4 minutes, fluttering wings of treble enter the mix and you think it's gonna turn into hi-hats – like, here come the drums – but the reverse happens: the bass-drone recedes, like traffic-noise at night or a dream or a perceived threat, leaving muted flutterings – insect-wings heard on an old transistor radio; a drug-numbed tongue trying to speak – I remember what constituted so-called 'anti-depressants' in the late-70s; they were filthy fucking horrible drugs, barbiturate-like emotion-flatteners that left you low and dry, spittle-less, impotent, constipated, watching the world through a thick-bottomed brown Mackinsons bottle, a telescope the wrong-way-round, its lens covered in rancid butter everything reminds you of something else synth-modulations come and go, try and take hold, stick to something, but never quite grip – sounds / words / thoughts / emotions that can't quite surface.
8 minutes in, something truly awful arrives: a demonic bad-thought-voice clawing its way thru the cellars of your mind, switching lights on and off, pulling the drawers out of yr furniture, searching for something horrible, something you meant to lose; a memory you don't fucking want to have. The oscillations grow progressively nastier, more unpleasant, more fuzzy and furred up – taloned thought-forms scratching at your brain from within, their claws clogged with cobwebs, sharp/but/soft.
A machine that'll never make you better.
Coldsore's “The Significance of Nothing” starts all creamy, drifty, slide-y sinewaves – an ECG that turns into a slow-motion air-raid siren. Hints of early Tangerine Dream (Alpha Centauri-ish era? Atem?). Someone's reading your thoughts. They've got a machine that's teaching itself to do that. A voice, possibly imagined, low in the mix – your conscience, guilt, mother, a hypermediated world? - who knows, but something “is no longer available.” The tones flatten, shift to a lower register, become more 'machine'-like; they pulse, shift, whirr, move up and down relative to one another – not noisy, not nasty, but there's a vague sense of unease in the air and I find myself worrying, “Who is tending to them, these devices and gadgets? Who is in charge here?” Aircraft pass overhead – there's a threat of war – but it never quite materialises (symptoms of mediated 'fear' in a post-millennial world: there's always another 'war', another 'threat', another symptomless 'panic'; we live in a state of constant low-level anxiety – chimeric threat near-manifestation – the news-cycle lock-stepped with the frequencies of fear. Talk-show indoctrination; the right way to think. It's not that the world is too fast – it's too... wrong. Media spits out mixed messages, uneasy narrative u-turns, propaganda-as-neural-aggitator, sewing the seeds of confusion. RightSpeak, ReWrite, WrongRead, DoubleTalk, HorrorHorrorHorror. Some of us handle it better than others). At 11 minutes in, a voice croaks a complaint / moan of pain / request for medication. It sounds like Allen Ginsberg with terminal throat cancer, a street-drinker reaching out, reaching upwards from the shadows, hand outstretched, towards you. A cracked-voice plea fallen on deaf ears. Lifts move up and down shafts, infrastructure hums, a woman tells us she “wants it to stop.”
But it never does." > KEK-W
"Themed around the medical treatment of juvenile delinquents these two artists share a side each on this gnarly tape, presenting some dark electronic meditations on sinister control and repression mechanisms through medication. The only vocals evident are disturbingly delayed speech lifted from instructional tapes (?) discussing amongst other things Largactyl or Chlorpromazine - anti-psychotic medication with the ability to flatten and pacify with some unpleasant side effects: drooling stiffness and involuntary movements, commonly used to treat psychosis it was / is used in prisons to control aggression. Libbe Matz Gang’s, ‘Under the Chemical Cosh’ makes explicit its theme as a bruised and persistent sustained tone deviates into the spiked and poisonous sting of a scorpion, crackling with ill intent. We have moved from the cold-sweat-dread of a general anaesthetic administered by faceless medics with dead eyes and ended up at the wrong end of a sterile corridor in a Dead Ringers style body horror. The high-pitched whine that closes the storm is what you hear as the anaesthetic wears off - you wake alone in surgical gown, slowly sitting up to take-in your grotesquely transformed reflection. Cold Sore’s track is a grey and eerie bombed-out fug of barbiturate hangover. 'The Significance of Nothing’ limps into existence as a drowned air-raid alarm sounds forlornly while an impassive female voice rises from the murk, looping in sad resignation. While the Libbe Matz Gang track seems to represent the panic and terror of a young person in over their head, no longer in control of their actions, the Cold Sore track is the cold sedation of a forced intramuscular injection. Like being dropped into a restless sleep from which you may never wake. You are alone, you don’t know where you are, who these people are or what they want." > RADIO FREE MIDWICH
[TOTFORM13] GRMMSK - [dirty] SNOW
"Oops. With some of that weird spelling on hand written covers, I mistook Grmmsk for Graaaask in Vital Weekly 813. They are from Helsinki and play heavy slow dub music, which is even furthermore deconstructed than one would expect. The music seems, again, to have been lifted from reggae records and played through more effects, slowing it down in the process. Just what exactly is it that these guys are doing when creating their music, other than smoking another spliff? Less noisy than the previous release, quite dark and haunted. Oh and slooooooow, ma'n. Actually I like it quite a bit, but then I always had a weakness for dub music." > VITAL WEEKLY
"GRMMSK kehrt derweil wieder Babylon den Rücken mit dirty snow (TOTFORM 13, C-24). ‘[prison| EVERYWHERE’ und drei weitere im grauen Alltag von Helsinki wie auf Valium ausgebrütete Tracks drehen die Dub-Schraube gegen Null und entziehen der Musik jeden Götterfunken. Die ‘CRAZY [boneheads]’ können lethargisch nur noch lallen, dass ihnen das Hirn mit Leim gewaschen wurde, und tapsen als Zombies durch den Matsch. ‘BETTER [must come]’? Die Botschaft hört man wohl, aber als ausgeleierte Phrase. Oder verzerrt, mit einer Matschbirne, die im Zementmixer umgewälzt wird, während Presslufthämmer Verbesserungsvorschläge machen. ‘[what] NEXT’? Ein Aufstand mit Tamtam? Oder der alte Trott, mit Tamtam beschleunigt zum Joggertrab?" > BAD ALCHEMY
"two tapes, made in the typical Totes Format-[un]fashion. These copies are showcasing GRMMSK move forward to a special direction, reprocessing jamaikan dub into slowed and hazed version of themself. Ghostly music but wearing the typical signature sound of a long lost era. The remade versions are creeping inwards with their broken surface and rendered vocal partitions, splittered and refragmented. This is not noise, nor glitch in the common sense of nor glitch in the common sense of the word, this is the clever filtering of hidden bassnotes and delightfully spreaded frequencies. GRMMSK is replacing the meaningful origins of the basic tracks and tells a new story based upon the source material. “Unfrei” means not free and depicts the situation of nowadays mankind perfectly in one word. Maybe that is the deeper meaning, maybe GRMMSK leave it up to the listener and receiver to reflect about that." > THORSTEN SOLTAU
"This is Grmmsk from Finland with two cassettes of his own odd version of dub. Fluttering, stretched and cut vocals, clanging metallic riddims and sirens, organs buried deep in a hounding cold lo-fi atmosphere – industrial glitch reggae, dub from iced Helsinki. Both tapes came in different limited editions with different handmade packaging and designs. The releases are also available as download on their bandcamp site. You’ll need long johns inna babylon." > DATACIDE
"Oops. With some of that weird spelling on hand written covers, I mistook Grmmsk for Graaaask in Vital Weekly 813. They are from Helsinki and play heavy slow dub music, which is even furthermore deconstructed than one would expect. The music seems, again, to have been lifted from reggae records and played through more effects, slowing it down in the process. Just what exactly is it that these guys are doing when creating their music, other than smoking another spliff? Less noisy than the previous release, quite dark and haunted. Oh and slooooooow, ma'n. Actually I like it quite a bit, but then I always had a weakness for dub music." > VITAL WEEKLY
"GRMMSK kehrt derweil wieder Babylon den Rücken mit dirty snow (TOTFORM 13, C-24). ‘[prison| EVERYWHERE’ und drei weitere im grauen Alltag von Helsinki wie auf Valium ausgebrütete Tracks drehen die Dub-Schraube gegen Null und entziehen der Musik jeden Götterfunken. Die ‘CRAZY [boneheads]’ können lethargisch nur noch lallen, dass ihnen das Hirn mit Leim gewaschen wurde, und tapsen als Zombies durch den Matsch. ‘BETTER [must come]’? Die Botschaft hört man wohl, aber als ausgeleierte Phrase. Oder verzerrt, mit einer Matschbirne, die im Zementmixer umgewälzt wird, während Presslufthämmer Verbesserungsvorschläge machen. ‘[what] NEXT’? Ein Aufstand mit Tamtam? Oder der alte Trott, mit Tamtam beschleunigt zum Joggertrab?" > BAD ALCHEMY
"two tapes, made in the typical Totes Format-[un]fashion. These copies are showcasing GRMMSK move forward to a special direction, reprocessing jamaikan dub into slowed and hazed version of themself. Ghostly music but wearing the typical signature sound of a long lost era. The remade versions are creeping inwards with their broken surface and rendered vocal partitions, splittered and refragmented. This is not noise, nor glitch in the common sense of nor glitch in the common sense of the word, this is the clever filtering of hidden bassnotes and delightfully spreaded frequencies. GRMMSK is replacing the meaningful origins of the basic tracks and tells a new story based upon the source material. “Unfrei” means not free and depicts the situation of nowadays mankind perfectly in one word. Maybe that is the deeper meaning, maybe GRMMSK leave it up to the listener and receiver to reflect about that." > THORSTEN SOLTAU
"This is Grmmsk from Finland with two cassettes of his own odd version of dub. Fluttering, stretched and cut vocals, clanging metallic riddims and sirens, organs buried deep in a hounding cold lo-fi atmosphere – industrial glitch reggae, dub from iced Helsinki. Both tapes came in different limited editions with different handmade packaging and designs. The releases are also available as download on their bandcamp site. You’ll need long johns inna babylon." > DATACIDE
"The use of computers in modern music is of course everywhere and not limited to glassed boys who would called nerds in high school. Also in more grimm surroundings of the musical spectrum we find them, and Totstellen is one of those projects which are somewhere on the border of electro-acoustic music, ultra dark ambient and noise. On 'Komaschine' they (?)* use voices and sounds from the movie Institute Benjaminata, which I haven't seen, but in fifteen minutes Totstellen know how to depict a strange world with some well chosen dialogue, some piercing sounds towards the end, some finely shaped drones and in the middle a cut-up/collage. This is a great piece of some fine radiophonic quality. Almost like radioplay on German radio. It is in fact not that grim, I think and easily the best work so far by them." > VITAL WEEKLY
"Es gibt kein Entkommen, keinen Ausweg...
some are attached to cables and tubes, others are attached to other things. everything runs smoothly, the dying and the less dying work deliberately together for an eternal life of something else, that no one even knows by name... Damit versetzt einen Gerda Grimm, grimmig wie gewohnt, ins Innere der Matrix. Nein, da sind wir ja bereits, sie macht es mit Komaschine (Totes Format, TOTFORM 11, 3" cd-r) nur bewusst, indem sie den Verblendungszusammenhang benennt. Klanglich bedient sie sich einer besonders interessanten Quelle, nämlich der Tonspur von Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life (1996). Die Brothers Quay inszenierten da, mit dem Shakespeare-Mimen Mark Rylance, Alice 'Borg Queen' Krige und dem Fassbinder-Star Gottfried John in den Hauptrollen, Robert Walsers Roman Jakob von Gunten als traumhaftes Mysterientheater. Man hört die Stimmen von Jakob und von Lisa Benjamenta, die als Internatszögling und Lehrerin durch eine vom Prinzip Hoffnungslosigkeit beherrschten Schule der Entmündigung und Entsagung taumeln. Dazu erklingen kaskadierender Klingklang und wie geträumte Drones. Walser selbst hatte von sich gesagt: Ich büßte zugunsten einer Ordnung einen Klang ein. Die polierte Ordnung erhält sich durch Täuschung, durch Flucht vor dem Gedanken, durch Bewusstlosigkeit. Roberto Calasso nannte es in seinem Walser-Essay 'Der Schlaf des Kalligraphen' (in: Die neunundvierzig Stufen) eine abnorme Sorte von Schlaf, freilich mit der Volte, dass sich der Schläfer dem peitschenschwingenden Denkzwang entzieht. Es ist da eine doppelte Verneinung im Spiel. Wenn 'Wachsein' eine Illusion in der Matrix ist, dann werden Schlaf und Traum zu einer Möglichkeit, 'daraus' zu erwachen. Bilder (und Klänge) in ihrem Eigenleben kommen als Diebe in der Nacht, um einem wegzuführen vom besinnungslos 'wachen' Mitmachen im Betrieb. In Walser hallt - so Calasso - niemand anderer wider als Melvilles Bartleby mit seinem kategorischen "Lieber nicht." > BAD ALCHEMY
"...But perhaps the most remarkable release of them all is Komamachine. Sampling dialogue and music from the Quay Brothers film ‘Institute Benjaminata’ this is a chilling and eerie ride into queasy dark ambient territory courtesy of some fine moaning from manacled lost souls and the creaking of leather straps [I’ve not seen the film but I intend to, anything that gets compared to Eraserhead goes down on the to do pile round here] chuck in some sorrowful viola, throbbing industrialania and you have something that would bare comparison to Gavin Bryars ‘Sinking of the Titanic’ writ large on a screen of David Lynchian making. Having watched the Tunnel/Brucke video on the Totstellen website I urge you to do the same. This is urban exploring with a wider remit. This is trying to make sense of your urban surroundings through sound and imagery." > IDWAL FISHER
"Es gibt kein Entkommen, keinen Ausweg...
some are attached to cables and tubes, others are attached to other things. everything runs smoothly, the dying and the less dying work deliberately together for an eternal life of something else, that no one even knows by name... Damit versetzt einen Gerda Grimm, grimmig wie gewohnt, ins Innere der Matrix. Nein, da sind wir ja bereits, sie macht es mit Komaschine (Totes Format, TOTFORM 11, 3" cd-r) nur bewusst, indem sie den Verblendungszusammenhang benennt. Klanglich bedient sie sich einer besonders interessanten Quelle, nämlich der Tonspur von Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life (1996). Die Brothers Quay inszenierten da, mit dem Shakespeare-Mimen Mark Rylance, Alice 'Borg Queen' Krige und dem Fassbinder-Star Gottfried John in den Hauptrollen, Robert Walsers Roman Jakob von Gunten als traumhaftes Mysterientheater. Man hört die Stimmen von Jakob und von Lisa Benjamenta, die als Internatszögling und Lehrerin durch eine vom Prinzip Hoffnungslosigkeit beherrschten Schule der Entmündigung und Entsagung taumeln. Dazu erklingen kaskadierender Klingklang und wie geträumte Drones. Walser selbst hatte von sich gesagt: Ich büßte zugunsten einer Ordnung einen Klang ein. Die polierte Ordnung erhält sich durch Täuschung, durch Flucht vor dem Gedanken, durch Bewusstlosigkeit. Roberto Calasso nannte es in seinem Walser-Essay 'Der Schlaf des Kalligraphen' (in: Die neunundvierzig Stufen) eine abnorme Sorte von Schlaf, freilich mit der Volte, dass sich der Schläfer dem peitschenschwingenden Denkzwang entzieht. Es ist da eine doppelte Verneinung im Spiel. Wenn 'Wachsein' eine Illusion in der Matrix ist, dann werden Schlaf und Traum zu einer Möglichkeit, 'daraus' zu erwachen. Bilder (und Klänge) in ihrem Eigenleben kommen als Diebe in der Nacht, um einem wegzuführen vom besinnungslos 'wachen' Mitmachen im Betrieb. In Walser hallt - so Calasso - niemand anderer wider als Melvilles Bartleby mit seinem kategorischen "Lieber nicht." > BAD ALCHEMY
"...But perhaps the most remarkable release of them all is Komamachine. Sampling dialogue and music from the Quay Brothers film ‘Institute Benjaminata’ this is a chilling and eerie ride into queasy dark ambient territory courtesy of some fine moaning from manacled lost souls and the creaking of leather straps [I’ve not seen the film but I intend to, anything that gets compared to Eraserhead goes down on the to do pile round here] chuck in some sorrowful viola, throbbing industrialania and you have something that would bare comparison to Gavin Bryars ‘Sinking of the Titanic’ writ large on a screen of David Lynchian making. Having watched the Tunnel/Brucke video on the Totstellen website I urge you to do the same. This is urban exploring with a wider remit. This is trying to make sense of your urban surroundings through sound and imagery." > IDWAL FISHER
[TOTFORM11] GRMMSK - [the end] PROPHECIES
"The sounds on the tape lived up to the contents of the letter. Echo and reverb in the snow. The intensity of breakcore pitched all the way down, rasta vocals used to signify cosmic dread rather than urban street cred. Familiar reggae vocals twisted and made beautifully bleak. 'Downtempo' doesn't do it justice - one track features the riff from Dawn Penn's 'No No No' oozing along at the speed of a glacier" > TURBULENT TIMES
"[...]Behind GƦΛΛΛΛϟK we find the same guy who does TOTSTELLEN, but instead of field recordings and heavily processing, he uses here his sampler to plunder all kinds of music, but mostly deconstructing - heavily - dub and reggae records. Don't expect anything traditional. Things are slowed down, EQ-ed to the max, with lots of overload. An almost noisy release at times, especially when GƦΛΛΛΛϟK isolated a single shot on the drums, or the toasting voice and stretches it out, along with some smaller blocks of the same thing as a rhythm. Quite a weird release and I am sure it wouldn't appeal to anyone who likes the genuine Jamaican stuff, but on the other hand - and I am on this side - if you like weird things done to music already out there, say roughly the edges of all sort of plunderphonics, then you might, just as I did, quite enjoy this. Strange stuff." > VITAL WEEKLY
"The sounds on the tape lived up to the contents of the letter. Echo and reverb in the snow. The intensity of breakcore pitched all the way down, rasta vocals used to signify cosmic dread rather than urban street cred. Familiar reggae vocals twisted and made beautifully bleak. 'Downtempo' doesn't do it justice - one track features the riff from Dawn Penn's 'No No No' oozing along at the speed of a glacier" > TURBULENT TIMES
"[...]Behind GƦΛΛΛΛϟK we find the same guy who does TOTSTELLEN, but instead of field recordings and heavily processing, he uses here his sampler to plunder all kinds of music, but mostly deconstructing - heavily - dub and reggae records. Don't expect anything traditional. Things are slowed down, EQ-ed to the max, with lots of overload. An almost noisy release at times, especially when GƦΛΛΛΛϟK isolated a single shot on the drums, or the toasting voice and stretches it out, along with some smaller blocks of the same thing as a rhythm. Quite a weird release and I am sure it wouldn't appeal to anyone who likes the genuine Jamaican stuff, but on the other hand - and I am on this side - if you like weird things done to music already out there, say roughly the edges of all sort of plunderphonics, then you might, just as I did, quite enjoy this. Strange stuff." > VITAL WEEKLY
[private release / no TOTFORM cat.nr]
müllGRMM - TÜTEsk
"to avoid confusion i should have called this a split, but it isn't. it is, however, the coolest thing to pass my ears this month. berlin's MÜLLTÜTE are given the business by finnish act GRMMSK, resulting in a total mind fuck that barely treads water and pushes not just the boundaries of what is punk, but what is music. damaged dub and industrial noise reinterpretations of a killer hardcore band is something i can absolutely get behind" MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL
"Mülltüte, das sind Aahnt und Maak in Berlin. PunkKeinPunk-Punks, Paranoiabrigadisten, Schimmelzombies. Ihre Schnittmenge mit dem von Totstellen zum finnischen Doomdub-Projekt evolvierten Noise-In-Opposition-Macher Grmmsk ist hoch. Und einig in der grimmigen Diagnose (des Schlaraffenlands): Wir fressen und scheiszen Müll. Danach schlafen wir unruhig. Weil wir nicht wiszen können, ob es morgen noch was gibt. Klopf- und Knatterbeats, Gitarrenschrapnells in kaskadierendern Wellen, geschriene und gestöhnte Vocals, mulmiges Low-fi, Verzerrungen und Feedback zeichnen einen Ort, der von außen betrachtet als Orkus verschrien ist, als Wohnviertel der Orks ('suchen', 'enden'). Von innen ist es dort nicht unsexy, vor allem wenn da ne exzessive Party angesagt ist ('sexy') und die Kunst des schönen Scheiterns beherrscht wird ('scheitern'). TÜTEsk gebellte Parolen rufen Gelächter im Kellerloch hervor. Müde ist man nach der Party ('müde'). Sonst nie. Denn es stehen weitere Stürme bevor ('sturm' [als digitaler Bonustrack])." > BAD ALCHEMY
müllGRMM - TÜTEsk
"to avoid confusion i should have called this a split, but it isn't. it is, however, the coolest thing to pass my ears this month. berlin's MÜLLTÜTE are given the business by finnish act GRMMSK, resulting in a total mind fuck that barely treads water and pushes not just the boundaries of what is punk, but what is music. damaged dub and industrial noise reinterpretations of a killer hardcore band is something i can absolutely get behind" MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL
"Mülltüte, das sind Aahnt und Maak in Berlin. PunkKeinPunk-Punks, Paranoiabrigadisten, Schimmelzombies. Ihre Schnittmenge mit dem von Totstellen zum finnischen Doomdub-Projekt evolvierten Noise-In-Opposition-Macher Grmmsk ist hoch. Und einig in der grimmigen Diagnose (des Schlaraffenlands): Wir fressen und scheiszen Müll. Danach schlafen wir unruhig. Weil wir nicht wiszen können, ob es morgen noch was gibt. Klopf- und Knatterbeats, Gitarrenschrapnells in kaskadierendern Wellen, geschriene und gestöhnte Vocals, mulmiges Low-fi, Verzerrungen und Feedback zeichnen einen Ort, der von außen betrachtet als Orkus verschrien ist, als Wohnviertel der Orks ('suchen', 'enden'). Von innen ist es dort nicht unsexy, vor allem wenn da ne exzessive Party angesagt ist ('sexy') und die Kunst des schönen Scheiterns beherrscht wird ('scheitern'). TÜTEsk gebellte Parolen rufen Gelächter im Kellerloch hervor. Müde ist man nach der Party ('müde'). Sonst nie. Denn es stehen weitere Stürme bevor ('sturm' [als digitaler Bonustrack])." > BAD ALCHEMY