Friday, October 17, 2008

LAST DOMINION LOST sessions II


Some more roughs from the same three sessions as the previous post. Unmixed, unedited.

The full 15 minute version of Die Like The Carp: Ash Wednesday, Julian Percy, Jonh Murphy, Sawade.

Lalka: Murphy, Sawade, Percy. An excurse on german tragedy.

...und noch mal ertrinken: Percy, Sawade, Guerin, Murphy. A meditation on "Drowning Man".


Get it here: http://rapidshare.com/files/142424708/last_dominion_lost_mixII.rar.html



Plus Last Dominion Lost have a Virb (not myspace) site: http://www.virb.com/lastdominionlost

Last Dominion Lost sessions and Berlin Bruit Review


Here we have a small selection of rough mixes from recent rehearsals and recording sessions. These are very unpolished, recorded directly from multitrack to minidisk, and as there is about 20 hours(!) of recorded material, I have no idea how representative it is... but eventually a finished product will be cobbled together. Given that recording/rehearsals were spread over about 10 different sessions, these are drawn only from the first three. All are live improvisations with no overdubs. I can make no apology for the "jammy" nature of some of this, I just wanted to run some tracks up the flagpole, so to speak.

Anmerkungen: Track one features Ash Wednesday (keyboard player with Einstürzende Neubauten, ARP synthi), John Murphy (Kaos Pad, sampler), Julian Percy (guitar) and Sawade (MS20 synthi, FX, tapes). The title refers to the doomed breakout of interned japanese P.O.W.s in Australia during WW2.
Track two features Ash Wednesday, Julian Percy and Sawade only.
Tracks three to five feature Percy, Sawade and Murphy only.

All these tracks available here: http://rapidshare.com/files/141761485/LDL_sessions.rar.html


Here are a few impressions of the Berlin Bruit event of 30 August:

First to perform was Werkbund, otherwise known as Uli Rehberg (who used to run Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien, a label from the early 80s which released SPK's Auto-da-Fe and the earliest Laibach records. He also records under the alias of Mechtilde Von Leusch). This was a strange performance consisting of him reading a rather grotesque narrative (with a rather nice table-lamp for illumination) and concluding with some rather good music-concrete noise. For a taste of his medicine, go to http://www.myspace.com/donnersperg

Second on the bill was Z'ev ( who deserved a better placement, in my opinion. He said he didn't mind playing so early in the evening... 10.00 or so). Excellent organic industrial, but I expect he needs no introduction. The audience chattered all the way through his set, which was disappointing (philistines). Here's Z'ev's myspace: http://www.myspace.com/rhythmajik

Column One next, although I only caught about 5 minutes of their music ( I couldn't even get close to the stage, the venue was too packed, hot and airless). My impression was of a tape-loop
reciting gibberish, that still seemed to be playing 20 minutes later. They must have done some kind of performance art, because the stage was covered with lumber at the end of their event. Sorry, can't really comment here. Prowl through their website http://www.column-one.de/

Last Dominion Lost played next.

5th act was nEGAPADRES 3.3., a very strange (some would say satanic) industrial band. Known perhaps more for their belgian EBM project aGRUMH, they played a kind of old-school industrial that I found quite pleasing. The vocalist spent a lot of time crouching and singing stuff like "sacrificio" and "satanus" etc, that, though silly, was refreshingly non-political. Apparently splatter-director Jörg Buttgereit designed their stage show. I can believe it, because they had three decaying sheep's heads pinned to posts on the stage. It stunk like the plague. Listen to one of their tracks on http://www.myspace.com/berlinbruit

Finally, the excellent Suttcliffe Jügend finished things off, allowing the (mostly) male percentage of the audience to mosh, stage-dive and generally hoot about. Pretty intense feedback material, a few messianic poses ( Philip Best comes to mind ) and a healthy dose of misanthropy topped of with epilepsy-inducing strobelight. Great fun. Catch an earfull here: http://www.myspace.com/sutcliffejugend

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

LDL to play Berliner Bruit Festival


The good folks from ironflame.de have asked Sawade and John Murphy (currently residing in Berlin due to circumstances not of his making) to play the Berlin Bruit Festival on August 30th. Although it's uncertain if the project title will be Last Dominion Lost (Dominik Guerin, the third member, is still in Australia and may not be present...), the general agreement is to interpret some of the tracks on Tyranny of Distance, as well as some new ritual-electronic material. More news will be posted when more information is forthcoming...

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

MERGE: CURSED


Another strange one from the archives... CURSED was an unfinished soundtrack project from 1990. The main instruments were two Technics tape recorders running with crystal-sync, with a single tape stretched between them both... leading to a kind of endless echo or "Friggertronics". Other than that, turntable, shinei, synth, tapes and vocals... Memory fails me on this one. All I can remember is the definite involvement of Tone Generator and possibly John Murphy (on vocals?), but I can really no longer be sure. As I recall, only 3-4 minutes were ever excerpted from this recording for soundtrack purposes. So here it is, rescued from obscurity...
Get it here: http://rapidshare.com/files/71086074/CURSED.rar

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

T4 :HEILPFLEGE


For those who like their electronics cold (with just a dash of Laibach), we present T4's only recorded outing. Personnel:
ADAM: Vocals
ISSIDOR: Vocals
MEINEID: Programming
SAWADE: Programming, Synth, Guitar
MEISEL: Triggered Percussion

Here's the blow from the press-release:

Bands like T4 were very scarce in 1994, the year the project was formed. The members came from various "industrial" groups: ADAM from Electric Ooze, ISSIDOR from Fleischmann, SAWADE from Last Dominion Lost and MEISEL and MEINEID from Zerreissprobe. With typical sensitivity, they named themselves after the notorious Nazi undertaking T4 (T4 was the code-name for the secret extermination of the crippled and mentally unfit) and proceeded to create the appropriate soundtrack. An extremely aggressive unit, T4 succeeded in alienating most people in Techno-obsessed Berlin... this was not a feel-good band by any means. Tensions within the band led to the inevitable implosion, but not before they had made a lot of people very unhappy... Times change and it is sometimes difficult to remember how self-saturated and hippy-like the 90's were... T4 was the perfect antidote.

Get it here: http://rapidshare.com/files/61642383/T4_HEILPFLEGE.rar

Monday, October 8, 2007

LAST DOMINION LOST alt.and live



The roughest of the rough. Here is an alternate mix (from the same cassette as a previous post) of "Hell To Pay"... very dodgy condition, wow, flutter and drop-out inclusive. The pristine 8-track original remains to be dusted off and released one day! The most "SPK-like" of the LDL recordings, personnel: Tone Generator (D. Guerin), A. N. Other (J. Murphy), Sawade (J. Evans).
The lyrics are courtesy of Chairman Mao TseTung.
"Flying Angels" is Generator and Sawade live in 1990, and "Drowning Man" is from the only extant live recording of the full combo, also 1990 (an execrable quality recording, btw. Included only for purposes of historicity).

Get it here: http://rapidshare.com/files/61220544/LDL_kurios.rar

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Wolf Eyes, Black Dice and Battles reviewed.


I'd like to preface this review by stating: A) I am not a journalist: B) I have given up writing these things because I'm crap at it. Also, a review I wrote of Mark Stewart and the Mafia was painfully deconstructed on the On-U Soundsystem website, complete with comments such as "Fucking Journalists!" and "Wrong again, dumbo!". Ouch: C) I wrote these things for the free tickets that were provided. No money changed hands and I am not to be bought. This is pirated from a webzine that I don't wish to name for certain reasons (basically self-protection).This review is full of absurd assertions, ill-researched assumptions and childish prose. It should serve as an example of how NOT to write music reviews. That said, I post it for the sake of hopefully inspiring some critical comment or feedback.

I shimmied home.
Wolf Eyes, Battles and Black Dice at the Volksbühne

So once again an evening of Noise in the chasm of the Volksbühne. I mean, hats of to the VB for booking these kinds of concerts, but it’s also un-rock’n’roll to have to remain seated for these events. And make no mistake, Noise is rock’n’roll. Groups such as TG and SPK always maintained they were punk bands, and so they were.

The much-maligned Whitehouse, for example, employ the full bag of rock-tricks: audience provocation, sex issues (it’s usually large amounts of spunk that are being issued in these cases), a “sexy” lead singer, massive volume and the traditional championing of the underdog (in their earlier days, serial killers and child-molesters, but undeniably underdogs)… in other words, perfect rock. It doesn’t matter that you may not be able to endure a single minute of their music. Some bands are simply more important than how they sound.

Which brings us to Wolf Eyes, the bastard offspring of Throbbing Gristle and Sonic Youth (with just a dash of Metallus Diabolus thrown in). That this band played first is only one of the many peculiarities of the evening. Lanky Nate Young strolls leisurely onstage, followed shortly thereafter to his left by John Olson (peroxided and slightly portly, he handled some of the more poignant grey noise, tweaking his anything-box and later playing some kind of amputated guitar) and Aaron Dilloway (ditto the funny-box and guitaro, unfortunately bearded… why do they do it?) flanking on the right. With a subtle crackle and fizz and we’re off into a Precambrian seascape, delicate electric ripples stirring up the silurian silt, playing with the trilobites… In the depths, the Globster stirs (note: a Globster is like a hairy Kraken which occasionally washes from fuck-knows-where onto distant shores… last observed in Tasmania in the 1970s).

We morph to a dusky, blurred film-noir soundtrack, complete with pretty convincing alto-saxophone wailing and keenings from Olson and then its back to the electric ooze… this is good stuff for sure. Ring-modulated, fuzzed out, perfectly formless… I’m getting a stiffy just thinking about it. After ten years of doing this stuff, these guys have got it down. No sentimentality, no phony coyness, just aggrevated air molecules doing their thing. They have correctly analysed and distilled the tenor of Rock, keeping the good stuff (feedback, dissonance, dynamic) and throwing away the worthless (melody, harmony and discernable lyrics). Right on. 25 minutes into their short set (40 minutes at most, folks), a slight concession to tradition: guitar-like things appear and Olson and Dilloway do some formation headbanging. Thankfully, it was just the silhouette of a song, not the letter. Some things are better hinted at than sketched out in detail. As the crescendo (or paroxysm) was obtained, all three began to scream in deranged unison. “Thanks, we’re out of here” said Young in a ruined voice, and that was that. Really majestic.

Next up, Battles. Oh boy, how I hated their guts. A “Super-Group” featuring John Stanier from Helmet (couldn’t they afford a drum-machine? He played like one) and the son of free-jazzer Anthony Braxton ( a pity he didn’t inherit his father’s form-destroying instincts). Like “Live at the Fillmore” without Miles, without anything. The guitarist to the left of stage was gumming and jawing like he was on the drugs I wanted to score (Chlorpromazine, of course), simultaneously hammering his guitar with the one hand while playing Jan Hammer lines on the keyboards with his other. Please. This kind of turgid jazz-rock should have been consigned to Hades (or the Knitting Factory, whence it came) eons ago. Makes me shiver just to think about it. Just as I was thinking they should be vapourized, I realised they were going down well with the audience. Hmm. Need a bigger Vapourization Chamber. Negative reviews are best kept short, so goodbye, Battles ( or does the indefinite “s” in their name mean I’ll see them again? I thought the war was over…).

A deep breath and on to Black Dice. I wanted to like them… hell, I think they wanted us to like them! Having just released another accessible noise-dance record on the trendy DFA label (recorded in the Australian hippy-belt of Byron Bay), the brothers Bjorn and Eric Copeland, plus either Sebastion Blunck or Aaron (Copeland? Is this a joke?) were burning to bring us their Evangelium (it was Easter Monday, after all). Lots of hand-played samples and mangled tapes/synth/whatever, itchy scratchy high freq. percussive babble with a kind of lurching rhythmic feel. These guys aren’t bad… and they do seem to wanna make noise… but they’re hippies. They just didn’t convey that same whiff-of-leather sleaze and spite that Wolf Eyes hinted at… to be fair, having to be seated detracted somewhat… maybe if I could have, ah, shimmied to it… Party music, basically, and no bad thing in itself. It has its moments of ugly attraction, its insect funk and rude pop. Skinning-up music. Went on and on. The video-feedback projected behind them was a close enough analogue to their music, I guess, but the guys were as interesting to watch as an aquarium. But I’m sure the music could well blow its swell load in a funkier environment, like some sleazy smoky speakeasy… oh yeah, you can’t smoke and watch bands at the VB.

So Wolf Eyes should have been heaped with tribute and spoils on this night. Besides, they have the better songtitles:”Stabbed in the Face”, anyone? They should have played last,of course. I shimmied home.