New Music From TENGGER, Tiny Holes
TENGGER
Spiritual 2
(Beyond Beyond Is Beyond)
The itinerant couple of itta (from South Korea) and Marqido (from Japan) comprises the group TENGGER, formerly known as “10” and since renamed after their son RAAI was born; when pronounced, the new band name means “sky” in Mongolian and “sea” in Hungarian.
In addition to employing a confusing use of capitalization, the band has a sound that draws from such genres as minimalism, drone, ambient, new age, and psychedelic music, but for this writer, the most blatant source of inspiration on the group’s latest album, Spiritual 2 seems to be German Krautrock from the ‘70s.
However, one resists the temptation to dub TENGGER’s style as a cringe-inducing term such as Kimchi-rock, substituting one type of fermented cabbage for another, as influences can be a tricky matter.
Take the example of TENGGER’s “Kyrie”, which offers warm pipe organ drones, evoking a solemn and reverent spirituality; as explained to Dusted, the band had the German group Popol Vuh’s “Kyrie” (from 1972’s Hosianna Mantra) in mind, which features the vocals of Korean singer Djong Yun.
The group also cites Japanese ambient composer Hiroshi Yoshimura and points out how certain American composers, like Terry Riley, drew from Asian sources, while certain Krautrock acts borrowed drone elements from the likes of Terry Riley.
“High” opens Spiritual 2 with a cosmic momentum, bringing to mind Radioactivity-era Kraftwerk with Marqido’s analog synths and artificial beats that sound a little more modern than pure throwbacks. It chugs along with a two-note backbone and itta’s scattered angelic vocal flourishes, and perhaps as a tribute to Krautrock band NEU!’s 1973 album NEU! 2 (in particular, the “remixes” on Side B) the tracks “Middle” and “Low” present the exact same music of “High” but played back at correspondingly slower speeds.
Reflecting its title, the glistening 16-minute “Wasserwellen” (“water waves” in German) uses repeating, effervescent synth notes and drones to evoke the perpetual motion of ocean waves, being meditative and soothing.
This critic hesitates to recommend Spiritual 2 to anyone who hasn’t heard all of the aforementioned artists; with expectations in check, the album isn’t quite as transcendental as one might want, but it works in its own highly derivative yet pleasing way.
Tiny Holes
City of Siege: Olympia
(K)
There’s a difference between a joke and absurdity, and this writer proffers that the Olympia, Washington band Tiny Holes from the early ‘80s can’t be dismissed as a joke band—although it was definitely absurd.
The group formed out of the trio Professional Ethics, which was comprised of musician and producer Steve Fisk (of Pell Mell and Pigeonhed), sound artist Steve Peters and Bruce Pavitt, best known as the founder of the Sub Pop label; with the addition of drummer Phillip Hertz and bassist Paul Tison, the quintet became Tiny Holes, and it played a sort of art-post-punk that didn’t seem to take itself too seriously.
City of Siege: Olympia serves as Tiny Holes’ debut album, coming 38 years after it was recorded at a live performance at Popeye’s in Olympia, for a benefit concert for the community radio station KAOS-FM. At times, the listener might wonder if the performers are playing the same song, with a loose delivery and improvised sounds peppering the basic song structures.
However, on tracks like “Adventure”, the elements come together—a restless bass line, guitar lines weaving in and out, a meandering keyboard—to form an actual song, yet there is the constantly nagging feeling that things could fall apart at any second. This style might seem unprofessional, but one could make a good case that it’s an effective use of tension.
Live drumming competes with drum machine beats, and everything else competes with everything else, including keyboard splashes and singsongy melodies, crisp post-punk/funk bass lines, and electric guitar slashes. The vocals can go from deadpan to fervent, and the Gang of Four-esque “Flying in an Airplane” offers strange operatic singing alternating with a low-key delivery; on “I Love You”, the vocals are delirious and half-awake, clashing with the cheesy beatbox rhythm and perky, cutesy keyboard notes.
The closest point of comparison would be James Chance and the Contortions, particularly with the chaotic style, keyboard tones, sax flourishes and bizarro funk, and Tiny Holes seemed to live happily in its own strange little world for its brief existence—there’s nothing to “get” with its eccentricity and it can simply be enjoyed as the absurd, wild and playful obscurity it is.