Right after having reviewed The Mighty Vitamins, here's another boundless freak commando dealing with free-form improvised music. It looks like Public Eyesore is firmly headed in this musical direction or at least that's the impression after a couple of releases I’ve heard recently, but never take anything for granted with them. Like Mighty Vitamins Mike Pride and his band have this old fashioned sound and like the afore mentioned band the live recording helps a lot to make it all vintage but the final result is considerably diverse. "The Ensemble Is An Electric Device" is much more focussed on electro-acoustic music but not "neat" like Civil War, AMM or Gruppo Di Nuova Consonanza: it's much more jazzy and certainly more intentionally chaotic. Mike Pride is a percussionist and like many other percussionists leading a band (think to Gino Robair for example) he gives a strong "percussive" and "noisy" intonation to the CD. It's weird how the Viola of Jessica Pavone and somewhere else the lap-steel guitar of Gerald Menke in by some means keep the whole structure together while saxophones conspire to make it sink in dissonance. Contrary to what you may think, while Mike pride free-percussionism/drumming here and there speaks loud, in other portions of this work he’s playing is nearly "silent". Even if what I'm gonna write may appear a nonsense I’ve the idea Pride's ensemble improvise with a well-built american "inflection" that is somehow different from the sometimes "cold" hyper intellectual improvisational attitude of european musicians (and even if somebody thinks that's an heresy I think it has to do with the afro-american root of U.S. modern music). Last and most important: the whole work is packed in in a single track lasting for more than 34 minutes, the idea of the song never loses its integrity but at the same time you have ups and downs like in the ninety per cent of impros. This listening could be "unorganised/free-form" (which is far from meaning chaotic) an physical if compared to those recordings on Creative Sources but that if you’re into free-form music and into impro you should give them a try .

It's ten years that Autopsia weren't releasing an album with new tracks. In 2002 and 2005 they released "Colonia" for Staalplaat and "Le Chant De La Nuit" for their own Illuminating Technologies (see the review I did back then) but they were both compilations. THE BERLIN REQUIEM, instead, contains six new tracks composed by Autopsia and Dammerung Orchestra (we already see them on the "Kristallmacht" album, released by Hypnobeat on 1993) which ideally blend the style of the band of those days with their characteristic classical recordings of the beginnings. In this way we have long dissonant piano orchestral suites and piano orchestral suites with electronic arrangements (like on "Funeral music III"). The only exception is the sixth and final track "Sounds for remembering death" which is a ten minutes track made of hissing sounds, distant choirs and a final part with organ and piano. The effect created by the whole CD is of despair and we could call it classical isolationism. THE BERLIN REQUIEM is taking inspiration from Bertold Brecht poem of the same name. Here it is:

Give praise to the night and darkness that close in around you.
Crowd together and look up at the sky,
and see that the days has already slipped away from you.

Give praise from the bottom of your heart that heaven has a bad memory
and no longer knows either your names or your faces,
and that nobody knows that you are still around

Praise the grass and the beasts that live and die beside you.
See how they, too live and, like you, must also die.

Give praise for the cold, the darkness and corruption.
Look up: you do not matter and you can die without worrying about a thing.

Sophomore full-length for the Italian quartet formed by Luca Mauri (guitar), Paolo Romano (double bass), Paolo Benzoni (drums) and Andrea Reali (voice and electronics), recorded in December 2005 and mastered by renowned soundmaker Giuseppe Ielasi. As expected, I/O have maintained their minimalistic formula, both in the layout (this time it's mostly white) and in their sound, self-defined "minimalistic rhythmic improvisation". However, my impression is that this work is slightly more focused, "rockish" and "regular" than their debut, but I admit I haven't gone back to their self-titled cd lately. The semi-structured, controlled improvisation of the quartet still mashes shards of funk, jazz, art rock and vocal experimentation (Reali's voice must be counted as an instrument per se), sometimes sounding like a curious bridge between '70's and today's avant music. The lesson of Starfuckers ("Infinitive Session"-era)/Sinistri is still the best possible comparison, if coupled with more retro-sounding jazz rock (Universal Congress Of?). Tracks that have made yours truly shiver: n. 6, with funky lines and a double bass line running in circles; and n. 8, with its desertic guitar lines and tribal drumming. Still, I don't think that this work can come close to the pleasure of seeing them live, where their creative energy is truly released, but that's the deal with improvisation-based material. Should they manage to really let loose the beast, they would become a HUGE band.

A new released from Berlin-based improviser Michael Renkel, this time a region-free pal DVD (recorded live in 2006) where he plays guitar and electronics, while Sonja Bender is in charge of video sampling. The DVD wisely focuses on the end result rather than showing how it was created in the live set, so I have no clue of how this was made, but let's say it's a great release: Bender's frantic, Schwitters-like cut-up of images, colours and shapes perfectly merges with Renkel's abrasive set of sounds, including some invigorating fragments of extreme electronics. The interaction between the two is remarkable, so the unpleasant "artsy videoclip with boring music [or the other way around]"-feel is luckily avoided. Though I have only seen a promo version, the packaging should be stylish as well, in the Absinth tradition. In its field, this is a keeper.

Trio Vopá is Axel Haller (electric bass, paper, walkman), Roland Spieth (trumpet) and Cornelius Veit (electric guitar and effects), not necessarily playing always as a trio (i.e. there are duos and solos as well). The line-up description and the label should help you imagine what this sounds like: improvised free music of the electroacoustic kind, with barely recognizable instruments, curious noises flying around and intersecting in mid-air, etc. Instead of playing air guitar or air drums, you can picture the players on their knees, fumbling around with some bizarre objects. Right? While being on the extreme side of improvisation, the niche has become quite overcrowded lately; what makes "Fauxpas" better than most records of the same area is its overall energy and a taste for long, suspended movements that let your hearing breathe. Not exactly a memorable record, or one that I will probably listen to again in the next few months (the problem with 99% improv documents), but a nice one while it was on.