dw066 - oVdk & Bunk Data - Discourse of the Other

IkEcht - Songsoverruins (c) 2010
The Japanese artist Ryu has published music on the net label Dark Winter already under different guises. I straddled the fence on the last release and remained neutral. This time he cooperates with Bunk Data / label boss Nathan Larson under the guise of oVdk. The former has a similar history of abract music and soundscapes and I was reasonably enthusiasic about his latest work.

Seeing that the theme of this album is "Discourse Of The Other", it should come as no surprise that distorted vocals, singing, and ghostly snippets of conversations have again been mixed into the music. The first three songs form a shimmering and ever-shifting soundscape of drones and dark ambient. The last two songs also fall in this category. So far so good, but what really got me going was the addition of ethnic influences on "Why Not Sneeze Kangrinboqe?" and "Flight Of The Yameil Jyuravli". Those familiar with the work of Ulf Söderberg / Sephiroth or the artists on the Finnish label Aural Hypnox will know how effective this can be. The first mentioned track delivers dark soundscapes that border on the chaotic and unnerving due to samples of Asian rituals (unfortunately I am unable pinpoint it much more exactly geographically) and blaring outbursts of traditional horns. But my personal favourite is "Flight Of The Yameil Jyuravli" that quickly weaves itself around hypnotic (Tuvan?) throat sining and possesses a slow, repetitive structure that manages to be both utterly dark and oddly ethereal. As far as I'm concerned, this is really where oVdk and Bunk Data shine and produce a track of unsurpassed beauty.

"Discourse Of The Other" has become a successful exercise in otherwordly soundscapes and I would recommend it on the power of the hypnotic "Flight Of The Yameil Jyuravli" alone.

Originally written for the Dutch weblog IkEcht (http://ikecht.web-log.nl/ikecht/), English translation by the author.

prolix.virtualis.lv (c) 2010
Right away looking at the cover you won't understand what this recording is about. Dark Winter's owner Nathan Larson collaborates here with the quite mystical net scene person OVDK also known as Ryuta K. or Ryu, who was earlier up on DW with few remarkable releases, "The Castration" and "The Depressed", "In the Middle of Late Capitalism" and also was selected for one of INQB8R releases. Despite it's not really obvious who is who on this recording. I could conclude that mysterious Ryu supplied kind of very low frequence, deep and raw analogue recordings, and Larson's part was to create high and middle frequence world around them, but I may not be true, and truly, it doesn't matter a lot. The most important is the contrast feeling this recoding gives back. Obviously Larson made a really remarkable attempt uniting different mood tapes into one, and specially aligning impossible substances by sound.

The first track combines closed-to-death breathings with kind of metal pipes surrounded gradually by the deep noisy atmoshperes which can't do anything else but keep stunned. It is like the dark hole growing in your undermind; well, they called it "Distant Refraction" - I don't have ideas what it could mean. Probably, it means nothing. Hold on for 14 seconds somewhere else - here are 14 minutes of a really distant refraction from the perception of anything. Strange, but I definitely heard 80's shadow behind of it all. Are we getting too old?

"Feel thier Pracoxgefuhl". I guess that would be the right term to describe the next feeling I've got from these MP3 files. I don't know what "Pracoxgefuhl" means. And I doubt I would like to know it, really. I'm glad that I actually could "feel thier". Right after the sinking into the world of darkness, here we go further, to something more digitized and organized. Next track journey starts from the moment as if you would be like inside of the powerful electrical shield. You can even hear the deliberate distortions appearing on both sides of ears, which make your head tremoring a bit. Who knows, may be they are just mastering faults, but I doubt that the neigh of the horses, the squeak of the vehicles, and the ringing of the bells in combination with such cinematic moments would be passed by authors. Another six minutes of great visual interpretations through sound.

The third track, "Viscous Self Found in a Vacant Space" (I bet Ryu invented all these mangle titles), unfortunatelly, didn't bring me a lot of pleasure like the first two, because the listening focus started to dissolve. Hearing so many remarkable "Ryuta" echoes recorded in outspace and reminding classical avantgarde schools, I didn't discover nothing except the wish to know what happens next. Seven minutes are really too much for monotony.

"Why Not Sneeze Kangrinboqe?" - why really not, and that's the next question belonging to the 4th track. The steamship is leaving its mooring cables in a kind of eastern port, full of nations from the whole Earth; and who knows, may be it's primary Kangrinboqe's name is Noah... All we know that the noisy cloud finally disappears in the sea frog, and only small sirenes having, again, the artifical or intentional distortions are cutting off my ears. At this moment the power of sound died for me. Sad. The sad feeling, that the ship of everybody freezed somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Six minutes from ten, full of immobility.

It would be enough for forty minutes of recording to end at this moment, but the listener is welcomed to spend another half hour in the journey's part two. It starts with quite a wide and deep atmoshpere, "Flight of the Yameil Jyuravli", based on combination of just two accords; by the boldness of sound it slightly reminded me the thing I like in such experiments at most: the right combination of unusual harmonics. It's not a genious composition, but definitely worst checking because of its sound continuity. Still, if I would have power, I would cut the last three minutes from it. But it's all may be because I am too impatient to change my feelings. Obviously, monotony is the thing this duet should avoid if they come up with something similar in the future.

Unfortunately, the closing two ten-minute longing tracks appeared to me not impressive as well. Again, it seemed that they have lower amplitude comparing to others and do not provide the desired sound effect after almost hour of listening.

"Syntactic Incoherence" consists of kind of robotic voice speaking about the things I can't understand; it's like being on the train station in the crowd of unnatural substances from all the Space; somebody is speaking about something, but it's not possible to understand, what it's exactly about. Like no others, I would lost my
interest to perceive information, if it doesn't make sense for me. The only interesting part of this track are brain-washing stereo samples appearing somewhere in the middle and continously during the whole track. In the end, hearing some regular and weak noise, I felt happy.

"Un stazion Centaur" starts wide, but this effect is quickly dissolving, again. The most boring part appears here the Japanese-speaking sample, rotating in delayed echoes around the head. Since I've heard the same many times and know how it's being produced, I doubt I would call it impressive and something new, the same as about multi-echoed combination of various samples following after that. If I wanted to hear music and sound, echoes are not really enough for it, similarly combination of different echoed recordings is not a music.

I may be too critical in terms of the continouty of the release and its general idea; I would be glad if themes would have strong starts and endings. I would also spend more working on the overall impression this recording gives, not leaving some tracks in unfinished mode, at least this is what I felt. But all I could be sure about, that the Web is not full of such releases. In terms of sound, comparing to similar works in the same genre, this one may seem lost in many aspects. But after listening it for the first time, it some way really worked for me. Before listening to it, I didn't perceived music seriously for couple of months. When you have nothing around ears, it's very astonishing to hear something created for, and by other ears. I wouldn't say this is a release for "regular listener" which would look for something unheard, and specially would hold his attention for such long time; but it's perfect western journey in terms of uniting sound of two lands, may be even the most spectacular collaboration achievement for Ryu, and probably a very burning out job for Larson. Take a listen when you are alone at home late night after many days of no listening to music, and you would closely understand what I mean.

Disquiet - Marc Weidenbaum (c) 2010
Dread is rarely as efficient, as sacrosanct, and as suggestive as it is on Discourse of the Other, a collaborative seven-cut album by oVdk and Bunk Data. The record is a sequence of stark gray audio, tracks of manipulated voices (along with other sonic material) that strain to be comprehended. In “Feel Thier Präcoxgefuhl,” the constricted neigh of a horse is more understandable than anything uttered by the muffled minions heard throughout; the hushed voices sound like rough, chaotic crowds — bringing to mind the rushing mall-like prisons of THX-1138, or the nightmarish totalitarian society of 1984. By contrast, “Flight of the Yameil Jyuravli” has a serenity to it, but it’s a serenity whose prevailing mode is that of resoluteness — it’s the serene in stark contrast to the prevailing world; the tones are attenuated, the feeling that of ritual atonement, but it’s shot through with tension and a feeling of foreboding.

Usyukuro Sound Space (c) 2010
It seems The Discourse always belong to only the power such as Hittler ,stalin,Rockefeller,recently Google, microsoft, etc. As We recognize when We had Discourse with author(or no author? ) Ryuta.k (Ovdk). He said i have no Discourse with Big the other during long time. Artwork seems created through neo-dada technique with various famous motif such as malevich,bacon,etc.
Track 01 - Distant Refraction &Track 02 - Feel thier Pracoxgefuhl ; Soon we recognise profound Dark drone of bunkdata style..Then 2019 L.A. motely crowds must breakup with thier Pracoxgefuhl like its cinema . Track 03 - Syntactic Incoherence (Butsumetsu) Sinister male voice with twist ambintal sonic might made us psyco-mentally ill . Track 04 - Why Not Sneeze Kangrinboqe? ; It remember us Why Not Sneeze Rose Selavy? 1921. But you can hear sanct tibetan monks pay thier respect to Mt.Kangrinboqe Nobody can succeed in reaching top. Track 05 - Flight of the Yameil Jyuravli (russian Sick crane) is most musical one,we think.it got eno style with xoomei. Track 06 - Viscous Self Found in a Vacant Space -starts with subtle long black dark drone into totalitalian address and female Vacant twitter and last finish with preseque rien /old female lullaby. Track 07 - Un stazion Centaur (On the Night of the Kentauru Fesitval) starts with calm conversation between Giovanni & kanpanerula on the Train through universe and with moderate ocean-like glitch . The latter stuff seems like realtime raptop live perfomance, very subtle dense.