FAX Compilation 1

My introduction to the remarkable electronic sound world of Pete Namlook (real name Peter Kuhlmann—check the surname backwards) came through his many collaborations with one of my favorite musicians, Bill Laswell, in the multi-volume Psychonavigation and Outland series of recordings for Namlook's FAX label.  I have most of the entries in both series and have enjoyed them immensely.

It is always admirable when a musician working in a very uncommercial environment can create their own sustainable label and the FAX label is a good example of this.  Until his untimely death in 2012, just before his 52nd birthday, the prolific German artist released a major catalog of his own recordings and of many others through the label.

This compilation is one of several released by FAX over the years and appeared in 1994.  In addition to Namlook's work under the nom de plumes of The Putney, Air and 4Voice, there are collaborations with Richie Hawtin and Tetsu Inoue and contributions from Inoue, Atom Heart, longtime Laswell collaborator Robert Musso, and others.

This two-disc set is filled with excellent ambient pieces and works particularly well with headphones and concentrated attention.  This is also the easiest to find of the several FAX compilations, because it had outside distribution, so, for those who like ambient electronics (and this was the heyday of it), the album is well worth seeking out.

Bill Laswell: Means of Deliverance

For some people, it's problematic enough to have to listen to a bass solo, but to endure an entire album of solo bass playing?

Well, Bill Laswell has made an amazing album, Means of Deliverance (released in 2012 on his Innerhythmic label), that uses a Warwick fretless acoustic bass instrument called the Alien to create a series of textures and tones that are familiar, yet also (yes) alien, when one things of the traditional electric or acoustic bass.

He also finds interesting ways to make the Alien a melodic instrument as well as a rhythmic one and it is his ability to make the bass sing, as well as his exemplary technique and use of atmospheric textures that gives Means of Deliverance its special qualities.

As with other solo albums, most notably the excellent 1999 release Hear No Evil (Meta Records), Laswell draws deeply from the experiences of his upbringing in Kentucky and Illinois and was once quoted about the hard impression made on his musical development by hillbilly music.

Oz Fritz, who has worked frequently as a recording engineer with Laswell, points out on his blog, "The Oz Mix," that Laswell's global travels, physically and musically, are encoded in the title of this album and in its contents.  Fritz refers to Means of Deliverance as "spacecreating," which is an excellent way of putting it.  The songs have their melodies, rhythms and other elements of structure, but there is an expansive sense of space between the notes and around the sound the Alien guitar makes.

In another interesting piece on the Sonic Scoop site, Laswell is quoted as discussing how life experience and the effects this has on the musical vocabulary, languages and improvisation lead to interesting stories that can be told through the music.  This excellent post notes that Laswell and his engineers Robert Musso and James Dellatacoma, longtime collaborators, employed a three-level recording method.  First were the rhythmic elements, the leads built off those rhythms, and finally drones from an e-bow or slide.  Up to six tracks are used on the record, even with its rather spartan feel.

On one piece, Laswell's wife Gigi Shibabaw, an Ethiopian singer with great emotive abilities who also produced the record, provides a plaintive and keening vocal.  A buzzing drone accompanies the warm tones of the Alien to make "Bagana Sub Figura X" a highlight of the recording.

It should also be noted that special consideration was given to equipping Laswell's Orange Music studio with an environment, along with the excellent work done by Musso and Dellatacoma, a gorgeous, full and clear sound, enhancing the listening experience.  Moreover, the mastering by Michael Fossenkemper at TurtleTone expertly works with the low end of the bass that Laswell is so adept at expressing.  As Fritz observes, you can almost feel Laswell's fingers hitting the strings because of the clarity and cleanness of the sound.  For a solo recording like this, there's an immediacy that is really palpable.

Fritz has another valuable observation:  Means of Deliverance has a progressive presence and that is an apt way to describe one of the most interesting of the legions of albums that Bill Laswell has produced.  It is an object lesson in creating a unique personal statement on one's chosen instrument and Laswell is to be saluted for making it and taking us with him on his journey.

PainKiller: Execution Ground

John Zorn, Bill Laswell and Mick Harris have all been profiled on this blog before, but their project called PainKiller, which existed primarily from 1991 to 1998 and featured a brief reunion in Paris five years ago, featured a form of musical expression borne largely out of Zorn's late 1980s fascination with "grindcore." 

This genre of metal consisting of extremely fast, intense, short bursts of buzz-saw guitars, guttural grunted and/or high pitched screamed vocalizing, rapid and intense "breakbeat" drumming, and imagery and lyrical content (should one find printed versions, because deciphering the vocals was all but impossible) largely pioneered by Napalm Death, for which Harris was drummer until he left in 1990.  Zorn's grindcore obsession first manifested itself in his Naked City project, launched in 1988, but which included a typical Zornian smorgasbord of sounds from country to cartoon music to lounge jazz to surf music, as well as those blasts of grindcore played by such luminaries as guitarist Bill Frisell, drummer Joey Baron and the mighty Fred Frith on bass (rather than his usual guitar pyrotechnics.)

While Harris spent most of his career forsaking the drum set for projects like the so-called "darkwave" electronic music of Scorn, the glacial and involving ambient sounds of Lull, and a host of other projects including the mind-blowing collaboration of Eyeless in Gaza's Martyn Bates in the phenomenal trilogy of Murder Ballads recordings, he did resume his work with the kit in PainKiller for the golden opportunity of playing with two musical masters in Laswell's stellar bass work and the idiosyncratic alto sax playing of Zorn.

The first two records, Guts of a Virgin and Buried Secrets, both recorded in 1991 and released on the Earache label (Napalm Death's label), were short albums of roughly 25 minutes each featuring generally brief pieces of grindcore-influenced music, albeit with superior musicianship from Laswell and Zorn.  The latter recording actually did feature longer pieces, two of which topped the six-minute mark (which in the early Napalm Death days could  include a half-dozen or more pieces,) but there was only a slight derivation in overall sound.

After a hiatus, however, PainKiller reunited in June 1994 for the third album, the fascinating Execution Ground, which was released initially on the Subharmonic label which released Laswell's frenetic output at the time.  Reflecting Laswell's growing interests in dub, ambient, and world music, this album featured some of the pounding grindcore sound, but more often morphed into strange and compelling excursions into wide-open sonic spaces largely influenced by dub and ambient textures, while the titles reflected the fascination Laswell had with India.  There was an entire disc devoted to ambient reworkings of two of the three tracks on the first CD and reveal a side to the PainKiller project in which ample space proved to be no problem for the trio to revise their sound into something different but highly compelling.

Later in 1994, the trio embarked on a tour of Japan, a place that proved highly receptive to PainKiller's music.  In fact, there were eventually three live recordings generated from Japanese performances over the band's lifespan. 

When, however, Zorn sought to reunite the group for his amazing 50th birthday series of live performances and recordings in 2003, Harris declined to take part, his insecurity in his drumming having grown more prominent over the years.  Hamid Drake, an excellent percussionist, filled in and a great performance was had, though purists might balk at not having Harris present. 

As noted above, a one-time reunion show was played in Paris in 2008 and Harris reluctantly took his place behind the kit.  He seemed, from the videos available on YouTube, to have played well enough, but no recordings have been issued and it appears likely that PainKiller has ceased to exist.

This is certainly difficult music and its intensity, power, disturbing cover art, and more is probably forbidding to most.  But, for those who like adventurous music and can leaven their grindcore with dub and ambient (how many of you are actually out there?), Execution Ground is up your alley and then some.  It is truly a unique and memorable musical excursion, even if it might leave you with disturbed dreams afterward!

The album, with excellent engineering from Oz Fritz on the first disc and Robert Musso, assisted by Layng Martine on the ambient disc, was packaged in 1997 with the first two albums and a live recording in Osaka as the four-disc box set Collected Works and kudos have to be given to Tomoyo T.L. for some of the most evocative and hauntingly beautiful cover art likely to be found anywhere--a trait found with many projects released on Zorn's Tzadik label.

PainKiller:  Execution Ground (Subharmonic, 1994; Tzadik, 1997)

Disc One
1.  Parish of Tama (Ossuary Dub)  16:05
2.  Morning of Balachatudasi  14:45
3.  Pashupatinath  13:47

Disc Two
1.  Pashupatinath (Ambient)  20:00
2.  Parish of Tama (Ambient)  19:19