dominion of striations, vocalizations, spews, and vocalizations – and these can occur in any form, writing, tributes, determining vocalization, perfectly in the voice of azure, sub-vocalization or knot, perfectly in the voice of alan, sub-vocalization or knot.

vocalisations becomes paramount, i’d add the prerequisites of walking and talking, subvocalizations dominion of striations, vocalizations, spews, and vocalizations – and these can occur in any form, writing, dominion of striations, vocalizations, electronics, vocalizations/song as body indices, breath/rattling/string and skysphere removal and new sphere, new vocalizations, new grit, new organs impacted by the exertions of the movement, the vocalizations were laced with spews, and vocalizations – and these can occur in any form, listen -

Alan Sondheim

“Hand-numbered edition of 100 copies cassette from ESP-Disk recording artist, poet, playwright and artist Alan Sondheim: part of MDTS’s on-going ‘Voice Studies’ series, this matches Sondheim’s playing of a two-stringed Indonesian hasapi with Azure Carter’s free associative vocalisation and liberal doses of tape F/X and warped re-imaginings. There are sections that consist of nothing but modulated lungs of electronics wheezing in a void of silence while other sections come over like the epiglottal fantasies of Amy Sheffer squoze through elemental wormholes while a tinny shortwave radio broadcasts street musician jams from the fourth world. Already sold out at source, very limited supply!” - David Keenan / Volcanic Tongue

”Elsewhere we have the tapes from My Dance The Skull’s sub division Hill Devil Drum, here are a bunch of new releases on the mothership, more dealings with the human voice The first one is by Alan Sondheim, whom I think I don’t know. He gets the credit for a Hasapi, whatever that is, and Azure Carter gets credit for the voice. I don’t think I understand the liner notes, but here we have voice and electronic treatments thereof. I am not sure, but I think we are not to understand what these voices are about, but it’s all more about voice triggering sounds. It’s not bad, but I can’t really say I am blown away by it either. Somewhere on the edge of sound art and sound poetry.” Frans De Waard / Vital Weekly

“Sondheim improvises on a two-stringed hasp, while Azure Carter (who recorded the Cauldron LP with Sondheim back in 2011) does electronically mutated vocals around him. Other portions boil down to less identifiable blends of sound, but the whole thing works like a clutter.” Byron Coley / The Wire 350

As a visual artist, David Blamey has a knack for finding patterns of formalism in everyday life that, when augmented through acts of repetition or prolonged attention, break down and unravel in interesting ways. At the critical point of collapse within this method there exists an opportunity for subjects to transcend themselves: to be elevated from their material constraints into a higher realm of possibility.

This new sound piece evolved from an ink drawing made in India that simply states: “O.K.” The banality of the word would seem to offer little in the way of musical promise, yet when repeated over time our awareness becomes drawn to subtle inflections within its minimal neutrality. In due course any meaning that the word may have once held is lost and something else transpires. With references to club culture, meditation tapes and conceptual art, this project serves as a droll mantra for uncertain times.

“David Blamey has two pieces, both called ‘O.K.’ In one he does all the voices himself and in the other they are by him, Tom Merrell, Pam Martin, Samara Scott and Mike Wyeld. Now here we are definitely in the land of sound poetry. The word is repeated over and over, but not a strict loop. It’s rather a mixture of the same thing recorded in various spaces mixed together and has a great, disorienting effect on the listener. It works best in the single voice version. The multi voice version works best as a musical piece because it uses loops indeed and also some pitch shifted voices. It’s alright, but the solo voice version has a much more creepy effect. Are things really o.k., I wondered?” Frans De Waard / Vital Weekly

“Text based piece by the British visual artist David Blamey. Actually, text based may be a bit bold as a description, since the entire piece consists of the phrase “OK”. On one side it’s intoned in various way by Blamey. On the flip, a quintet does the duties, resulting in something quite strange, creepy and good.” Byron Coley / The Wire 350

“Behind Basshaters we find Tony Dryer on electronics and Jacon Felix Heule on percussion and electronics and together they recorded two twenty minute pieces. Both of them we heard before in other configurations of improvised but not as Basshaters. Maybe it’s the name, but you are sure not get any sort of traditional improvised music. Here we have something that arrives from the world of noise, packed up with blocks of ongoing sound, heavy and loud, with distortion on the drums and deep end bass sound howling away from the electronics. It borders closely to the world of feedback and power electronics, but these two players know their way around the use of improvised playing in such a context. It’s vivid, it’s wild and it’s loud, but never without thought or care. This is not the mindless playing of effects – and I mean just the sheer effect of creating noise. This is not noise for the sake of noise, but because it suits their playing best, while at the same time they also know how to cut back in volume. Excellent release of great power music.” Frans De Waard / Vital Weekly

“Here we have a look at a new sub-division of My Dance The Skull called Hill Devil Drum and its inaugural release is ‘Erschepzal’ by Sacher-Pelz, which I assume to be Maurizio Bianchi. He worked, before turning out many records as M.B., as such, but I am not entirely sure why he decided to go back to that name. He has five pieces, and track timing on the cover doesn’t add up – more like a piece per side, and these sound more or less like the old music by M.B./Sacher-Pelz. Dark, moody, but industrial, moving heavy blocks of synthesized sounds forward, yet it comes without the usual distortion and feedback on the first side. Feeding back it does through a line of delay machines and throughout Sacher-Pelz places minimal but essential variations in pedals and EQ, and creates beautiful dark apocalyptic soundscapes – 1984 has yet to come. The b-side is cruder and louder, and does have indeed flying bits of feedback tossed around, and is alike musique concrete gone entirely wrong. I have no idea if this was recorded recently – the cover say ‘captured between the end of 6030 A.M. and the beginning of 6031 A.M.’, but who knows what that means – or in fact 1979 as part of his early roots, but it sounds great, so I was thinking. ” Frans De Waard / Vital Weekly

Daniel Spicer – Voice Studies 10, Let The Body Attend (For Angus Maclise) Excerpt

“Approach the room directly with seed phrases and unfold. Each of these pieces stems from an extemporisation around a clump of words, deployed and imbued with all loving respect for previous saints of freedom.  Each uncovers its own logic and is foolish, moment to moment to moment. Some combing at home made them neater, and Evie is the genie in the lamp. Love.”

Daniel Spicer

The tape by Bolide member and Wire contributor Daniel Spicer has two side-long pieces dedicated to Angus Maclise and Henry Flint. And while there are indeed some similarities to the vibe emitted by this doughty pair (both of whom were associated with the Velvet Underground’s rockism for brief periods), what I’m most reminded of is the more stripped-down sound of the later Good Missionairies . Mark Perry’s (more or less) post-ATV outfit used some of the same hippy/ritual/rant approaches with similarly fine results. Byron Coley in The Wire

What we have here is a rare opportunity for the reviewer to be the reviewed. Daniel Spicer is a broadcaster, musician, and writer for Wire magazine, if not the best music mag (I think it probably is the best), then certainly the most consistently well-written. Spicer’s entry in the “Voice Studies” series (put out by My Dance the Skull – see my previous reviews of Jaap Blonk’s and Janek Schafer’s contributions) is music for the adventurous listener, not just an adventurous listener. “Let the Body Attend (for Angus MacLise)” is the title of Side A and as you might expect from the dedication, it is a percussion rattling ode to original Velvet Underground member and musician/poet/crazy person Angus MacLise. Spicer yelps the title phrase along with other Gertrude Stein-esque circular verbiage while Evie Spicer (Daniel plays too) beats the hell out of some percussion instruments. This piece is about ten minutes long and quite entrancing. It’s definitely an appropriate ode to one extremely idiosyncratic musician. Side B is called “The Diamond Life (for Henry Flynt)” and, like the A side, it is a specific tribute to a music maker who is as out there as they come, Henry Flynt. This piece consists solely of the title phrase, freakout Ornette violin crushing by Spicer and a gaggle of friends making assorted sounds in and around the furious bow & string action. This is wild energy music and something to be excited about. The piece on the A side was good, but “The Diamond Life” is great. CRAZY LISTENING. I would hunt this tape down just to listen to the B side. Daniel Spicer’s knowledge of left field music obviously contributes to the success of this cassette. Musicians like MacLise and Flynt are not widely known names, but anyone familiar with the avant-garde would know them. Bravo! Jeff Daily in Cassette Gods

The tenth instalment in My Dance The Skull’s fertile ‘Voice Studies’ series sees Daniel Spicer – perhaps best known for his written work in Wire magazine – turn his hand to rapid-fire percussion and seemingly improvised couplets based around the idea of an autonomous mind.

‘Let the body attend to the things of the body/The mind will take care of itself’ is the quavered refrain that opens ‘Let The Body Attend (for Angus MacLise)’ before a clatter of drums and bells raises the tempo and the couplets become more jumbled: ‘Let the body attend to the things of the body/The mind is a page/Let the body attend to the things of the body/The rivers are flowing upstream!’ and so on… becoming more and more random as the track progresses. As with all ‘Voice Studies’ tapes, this is resolutely artistic. Its (hopefully) tongue-in-cheek stab at New Age gibberish parading as self-help mantra is amusing but not necessarily the kind of thing you’ll be playing on a daily basis. Female whispers undercut proceedings, repeating Spicer’s proclamations before the track ends with a gong.

Side B, ‘The Diamond Life (for Henry Flynt)’, is no less obtuse. Here Spicer speaks in tongues over a frantically scraped violin as a variety of acolytes (including Dylan Nyoukis) are brought in to help out, shouting in the background and holding conversations amongst themselves in a foreign language. I prefer this track, if only for its descent into flat-out madness towards the end. Steve Dewhurst in Foxy Digitalis

Sindre Bjerga – Voice Studies 09

“Someday in the future, people will excavate the ground to find out what we were like in the old days. They will dig it up and slowly unearth a buried society. Some of us will end up in a museum, in a glass case, while people will be over-evolved in a new kind of agony, holding the sides of their faces and shouting in some language we don’t know.”
Bethania Dick

Best known as the founder of Norway’s Gold Soundz label, Sindre Bjerga is put through his personal paces on Voice Studies. At various time he sounds like a child talking through a balloon while being manipulated by evil adults. He breaks some plates in an industrial kitchen accident, then we take a ride through his digestive system (à la Roger Waters/Ron Geesin) until we emerge worm-like through his bottom to listen to what other people have to say about the process. Byron Coley in The Wire

On Sindre Bjerga’s site this text heads the page in the top right corner, “…cassette player drones and kitchen sink psychedelia, sound ghosts hidden deep in the molten magnetic tapes.. always aiming for that mind-altering head trip…” That statement of purpose pretty much sums up his “Voice Studies” tape as well. The tape features three live performances two in Norway (A side and half of B) and one in Russia (other half of B). Side A is called “The Demise of Personal Hygiene” and I laughed and laughed and laughed some more upon first reading that. How fun! The music is not exactly funny however. A series of gurgles, blonks, boings, and thuds, represent the demise I reckon. The second side has two performances, “Procrastination is the Square Root” and “A Possible Outbreak of Clinical Hysteria.” Both continue the contact mic clashing crashing guttural rumble of the A side’s piece (with “Outbreak” being an extremely short cut). This makes for a demanding listen. As pure sound, I love it, but for a stroll or vacation drive, I wouldn’t listen to this particular experimental tape. The mood just has to strike YOU. Jeff Daily / Cassette Gods

“And then, wondering some more: does Sindre Bjerga use voice or voice material in his cassette? That’s not easy to tell. If it is, it’s recorded on a battered dictaphone and played back into a cafe and picked up by the same battered dictaphone. Three live pieces, around eight or nine minutes but one is an intermezzo lasting only one minute. Voices that only arise very occasionally are from the radio it seems, but otherwise this seems to be a more regular Bjerga live recording. And not a bad one either, but then, I should think hard to know that he ever did a bad live recording. Or maybe he just doesn’t release that? Here’s another fine mixture of lo-fi electro-acoustics and more lo-fi electronics, rubbed, scratched, strum and stuck together. Nice stuff, but that you already knew.” Frans De Waard / Vital Weekly

This Is Yvonne Lovejoy – Voice Studies 08,
Side A: Admit It

We all babble sometimes. It’s perfectly normal. Healthy folks around these parts may babble for between one hour and three hours each day.

Yvonne Lovejoy can’t do anything for herself and relies on others to provide her with the food, warmth and comfort that she needs. Babbling is your Yvonne’s way of communicating any or all of those needs and ensuring a response from whoever is in earshot.

It’s sometimes hard to work out what Yvonne is trying to say. Is she hungry, cold, thirsty, bored, or just looking for a cuddle? As a new listener, you may be unsure about what Yvonne needs, this babbling can be upsetting. You may even worry that something is wrong with her. But remind yourself that nothing is wrong with Yvonne and that babbling won’t hurt her. Sometimes simply accepting that you have this tape and the babbling here in can help. You then won’t wear yourself out looking for reasons for the babbling, blaming yourself for it, feeling shame.

In time you will learn to recognise Yvonne’s babbling patterns and know what she needs.

Genuine field recordings by Seymour Glass”
- Dylan Nyoukis

Veronica Lovejoy spent most of 2004 on a residency inside Black Rose’s private gallery. The unpublicised installation, entitled Gestation, combined kinetic sculpture with performance art, and pushed the limits of movement and sound for this emerging artist. The conclusion, witnessed by a small handful of friends, family and medical professionals, concerned some with its mishandling of anaesthesia, near-traumatic contortion, and bodily fluids. Following a three-day stay in the hospital, where doctors monitored Lovejoy’s jaundice, discharge was granted and work on the next piece began almost immediately. Described as “anti-playerly” and “within an undefined nether-space between voice and brass,” This Is Yvonne Lovejoy’s “Admit It” could be seen as related to the extended techniques and subtle decibel range of Franz Hautzinger, Axel Dörner, and nmperign. Veronica Lovejoy refuses to comment on influences.
-Tedium House

Latest instalment in MDTS’ on-going series of solo vocal experiments in cassette comes from ‘Yvonne Lovejoy’, a persona that may or may not be ‘real’ w/the involvement of Seymour Glass of Bananafish (here credited as providing “genuine field recordings”) pointing towards some kind of obfuscatory ‘art’ agenda while the info supplied seems to suggest that Lovejoy is ill or suffers from a specific handicap. Dylan Nyoukis writes that “Yvonne Lovejoy can’t do anything for herself and relies on others to provide her with the food, warmth and comfort that she needs. Babbling is your Yvonne’s way of communicating any or all of those needs and ensuring a response from whoever is in earshot.” There’s also a suggestion of brass to the music with a commonality of tone and a quality of transformed speech that links it with experiments by Greg Kelley, Nmperign and Axel Dorner as well as odd organic baby tones and body noise that is almost surgical in its exposure of wet flesh. Either way it’s a startling and at times disturbing piece that blurs the line between artistic documentation and pathological process. Recommended, but not for the faint of heart.
- David Keenan / Volcanic Tongue

Alluring infant performance-art star Yvonne came down with a case of the sniffles in 2005, and Seymour Glass of Bananafish fame bounded onto the scene to capture her noisy snuffling and dazzling breathy hiccoughs. The influence of Eugene C. Weinberg’s cult hit lp ‘A Child’s Cry’ is detectable, and the tape is all the lovlier for it. In her more recent toddler years, Yvonne has occasionally incorporated theater with large cardboard props into her ongoing performances, in conjunction with a local elementary school. I believe she played a bunny looking for a carrot in one of them
- Angela Sawyer / Weirdo Records

Jaap Blonk – Voice Studies 07 Side B: Apostatic Aria

“Latest instalment in MDTS’ on-going series of solo vocal experiments on cassette comes from Dutch avant gardist and sound poet Jaap Blonk. Blonk has little to do with the whole Euro improv vocalising of Phil Minton et al and more to do with post-Dada continental art practice. Here he combines weird mournful/possessed vocal testifying with great serrated walls of howling body drone that has as much to do with Sudden Infant as it does Henri Chopin.” - David Keenan / Volcanic Tongue

“Get rid of notes and instruments! Who needs these tired tropes? Strip naked and express all that is life with only that of the sound which lives within. The crying of children and the preaching of the street corner evangelist exist as song as much as a commercial radio hit. All sound is music. All music needs to be recorded. The London based publishing house and tape label My Dance the Skull dives into difficult music with a series they call “Voice Studies.” Their seventh study is a 20 minute tape by noted vocal improvisor – composer – poet Jaap Blonk. Side A is titled “Approximate Air” and is the sound of multi-tracked vocal air. Whispering, sighing, and breathing collide and rumble with one another producing some wonderful polyrhythms. The piece builds with grumble growls and shouts and before you know it, its all over. Side B is titled “Apostatic Aria” and features shouting and aggressive human vocalizing. At times the multiple voices almost seem to be filling the space of classic “loud-soft” guitar riff dynamics. This piece of vocal improv is less exciting to me than the first, but that is a very small complaint. This is adventurous listening and certainly not for everyone, but for those who want a diversion from conventional, Jaap Blonk’s contribution to My Dance the Skull’s series of vocal studies is worth the time. Great tape! The “Voice Studies” all come in clean white j-cards with simple black font – very serious and no nonsense. I would like to hear them all!” - Jeff Daily / Cassette Gods

“Jaap Blonk is the well-known Dutch improviser who does it all with his voice, one of the few abstract vocal hollering types we have in Europe (Phil Minton and Vanessa Mackness are two greats from the UK wing that spring to mind). On the short Voice Studies (MY DANCE THE SKULL VS07) cassette, he whispers and sighs like a sibilant ghost on ‘Approximate Air’, an effect which may remind Irish listeners of the banshee, but in its ineffectual wispiness isn’t much more effective than a breezy night spent on the Norfolk broads. My money is on ‘Apostatic Aria’ on the flip, which is packed with more full-bodied roaring, insane vocalese, mad growling and cartoon-character honkings dribbling from an inflamed cakehole. The raspy and abrasive qualities of this “chin music” verge on the alarming, as the performer brings great emotional charge into his very physical work. Clearly this particular piece also uses some overdubs, unless Blonk has a second mouth concealed in his belly, much like the mythical men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. It feels to me like most of the work is done by the throat; he’s practically transformed his own larynx into a fleshy distorting amplifier. In which case Blonk must be the biggest consumer of Fishermans Friend lozenges in the low-lying countries. One of three cassette tapes received from this SE London-based label, all limited editions of 100 copies.” Ed Pinsent / The Sound Projector