New Music From Torschlusspanik, Thollem/Clouser/Chase
Torschlusspanik
Weakness on Exposition
(Orb Tapes)
Self-described as “harsh, maximalist electro-acoustic,” it could be argued that Luna Mitchell’s one-woman band Torschlusspanik from Cleveland, Tenn. has more in common with French 20th century masters of electro-acoustic music—music that relies on electronic recording technology—than harsh-noise contemporaries in today’s musical underground.
While Torschlusspanik’s work does incorporate bits of noise, it’s not an impenetrable wall of sound; instead, a more fundamental aspect is how each composition is meticulously arranged, often using tiny samples that thrust a piece forward serially, like a container hurtling through a pneumatic tube down a very specific path.
Torschlusspanik's latest album, Weakness on Exposition, released digitally and on cassette on the Pennsylvania label Orb Tapes, is another fascinating and constantly stimulating offering, drawing from Mitchell’s seemingly infinite catalog of sounds that are fired at the listener while ominous drones and tones skulk with an uneasy presence.
“99 Black Clouds” features a dizzying array of sounds—metal pieces being tapped, things being dragged, watery sounds, uncomfortable buzzes, rattling, sawing, electronic blasts, power tools, and much more—and it begins with a woman discussing her Asperger’s and how people don’t give others sympathy unless they’re relatable.
“The Most Critical Mess in Your Life” is the sound of disintegration and collapse, with jarring squeaking and squealing alternating with rustling noises, and a rare rhythmic moment is supplied from the sound of haunted machinery before the jumbled, disorderly ending.
Rather than a sequential unfurling, “Crinkler” uses two or three simultaneous sound-streams for another dimension of complexity, and it ends with a monologue from a British man talking about an acquaintance who can’t find employment after being displaced by the Fukushima nuclear disaster; “Sometimes if you’re outside the mainstream and you come back in, it’s very hard,” he says, perhaps appropriate for this world of music.
While this is difficult music, Mitchell has the rare ability to sustain interest in the listener by tirelessly pushing things forward; each small sound fragment is a link in a chain, seemingly with the intention that each tiny moment is allowed to be felt and heard, not obscured. It may be too much of a sensory overload for the uninitiated, but for this critic, it taps into an ineffable talent that goes beyond the elements of conventional music such as rhythm, familiar structures and melodies.
Thollem/Clouser/Chase
Dub Narcotic Session Vol. II
(Personal Archives)
Don’t be fooled by the track list of Dub Narcotic Session Vol. II—although it features three long tracks, each around 14 minutes long, there are dozens of encapsulated ideas within fragments and moments, edited together with its own internal logic that favors variability rather than conformity.
The album is the result of the convergence of the mind-bogglingly inventive and prolific keyboardist Thollem on Rhodes electric piano, drummer Brian Chase (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and guitarist Todd Clouser (of A Love Electric) at the legendary indie-pop label K Records’ Dub Narcotic studio in Olympia, Wash.
Thollem and Chase collaborated previously on Dub Narcotic Session Vol. I and are two-thirds of the trio Whistling Joy Jumpers, which features the inimitably playful eccentric Jad Fair of Half Japanese.
The new album, released on the Iowa label Personal Archives, sports quick transitions and ever-shifting moods, and typically, rather than each performer going off on his own radical, individual tangents, their exploratory ventures shift as an ensemble with a near-instantaneous mind-meld intimacy.
The three song titles take inspiration from the artist China Faith Star, who supplied the album’s artwork, and are enigmatic enough to cover the disparate jaunts. The first track, “It’s a Drab,” features one of the album’s most synchronous passages, where Clouser’s guitar stabs match Chase’s bombastic and crunchy pounding, while Thollem slithers through the spiky obstacles.
On a segment of “Obituary of the Unknown,” Chase locks in with Thollem’s keyboard vamp, freeing Clouser to take the spotlight with soloing, and on “Cell Rejuvenation,” halfway through, Clouser generates sparks with squealing notes and string bends.
Arresting, attention-grabbing moments lead to more reflective, reserved movements, like one marked with Thollem’s downward, chiming cascades, and there are spacious, palate-cleansing sequences with a satisfying, genuine tenderness.
Much of the album is free from genre, although distortion effects (even on the drums) sport a rock attitude, and elements of jazz fusion, funk and psychedelia are felt at various times. With swift changes and room to breathe, there’s an appealing kind of uncertainty on the album that alternates between daring and sensitive.