THING
by Substak I Der Domestizierte Mensch I Thomas Bey William Bailey I Jo Bled
With this ninth edition, attenuation circuit continues its series of four-way split albums called THING. The aim is to provide a medium for exchange and presentation of a great variety of artists. As each artist spreads the copies to their network, listeners also get to know the other artists featured on the same disc. The title references the fact that the CDs are physical objects – things! – but also refers to the 'thing' or 'ding' in old Norse and other Germanic languages, which designates the place of a popular assembly or the assembly itself and thus alludes to the 'meeting-place' character of the albums on (or around) which the four artists and their audiences meet, if only virtually.
This THING brings together artists from Greece (Substak), Germany (Der Domestizierte Mensch), and the U.S. (Thomas Bey William Bailey and Jo Bled). Dominated by electronically generated sounds, the tracks on this album also occasionally feature acoustic percussion sounds. And indeed the exploration of rhythms, be they electronic or acoustic, is the thread that binds the four pieces on this album together. Not rhythm in the sense of straight beats that make for danceable ‚tracks‘, but slanted, edgy rhythms which constantly change their pace and direction. Rhythms that do not follow a musical map and do not even draw one, but rather rhythms that create new musical landscapes as they go along, leaving it to the listeners to cartograph this newly emerging topography with their ears.
File under: experimental, electronic
ACUF 1009
factory-produced CDr in cardboard sleeve
Released in 2025
limited to 100 copies
price: 7.00 EUR (excl. postage)
photos by Dan Penschuck (feindesign.de)
design by EMERGE
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jobled.bandcamp.com
marvinsaudioprodukte.bandcamp.com
substak.bandcamp.com
tbwb.bandcamp.com
Also available here: http://www.discogs.com/seller/dependenz?sort=price&sort_order=asc&q=attenuation+circuit&st
NIEUWE NOTEN
Substak, het alias van Kostas Staiko opent met ‘Extraterrestrial’ het negende ‘THING’ album. Een album met vier stukken die als experimentele elektronica te labelen zijn en dan van het vrij ondefinieerbare soort. Het stuk opent uiterst ingetogen en kent ook verderop opvallend weinig volume. Een duistere, vibrerende klankwolk, wordt soms doorbroken door rustiek geknisper. Wie er Achter Der Domestizierte Mensch zit is eveneens niet duidelijk, wel werkt hij ook onder het alias Problem Anderer Leute, zie hiervoor ‘THING 10’. Vergelijk beide stukken en je bemerkt dat ook deze musicus, iets wat we eveneens vaker tegenkomen binnen de elektronische muziek, voor ieder type muziek een ander alias heeft. Draait het hier om de meer experimentele muziek met een veelvoud aan invloeden – het is net alsof deze heer in dit stuk een complete Cd collectie door de blender haalt – bij Problem Anderer Leute draait het om noise. Ik waarschuw u dan ook al vast met het opzetten van ‘THING 10’! Van schrijver en musicus Thomas Bey William Bailey horen we ‘Vapnatak’, een stuk dat eveneens bestaat uit een bonte mengeling van klanken, alleen is hier bovendien nog sprake van vrij heftige wisselingen in tempo en dynamiek, iets wat het geheel nog spannender en onvoorspelbaarder maakt. ‘Such Obstacles’ van Jo Bled, het alias van Jabe Ledoux, is een geheel ander stuk. Wat we hier horen is volgens mij een snaredrum die hij op allerlei wijzen met zijn handen bespeeld, meer slagwerk dus dan elektronica.
www.nieuwenoten.nl/thing-8-10-cd-recensie/
VITAL WEEKLY
What? Another Thing? Yes, another one! Deja vu!
Substak has not been featured in Vital Weekly before; let’s take a look at who this is. Behind the name is Kostas Staikos from Athens (Europe, not Georgia), and I had seen his name previously on releases from Adventurous Music, Inner Demons and Attenuation Circuit, yet never wrote about his works before. Weird … Some of those must have slipped through, and yes: weird, because his minimalism on this track should have caught my ear—ultra-minimal, drone-like experiments, featuring microscopic movements and simply beautiful sounds.
Behind Der Domestizierte Mensch with their “Dingsbums” is a project I’ve written about already on another Thing. It’s a variation on Problem Anderer Leute, and there I wrote ‘Freehand improv on what sounds like an organ on a feedback / no input mixer with layers of noise. Have I said it is chaotic as hell already?’ On this track, there is the same chaos, only without the organ/feedback sounds. More digital, mangled voices and rhythms, kinda things. Label under experimental weirdness.
The longest track on this Thing is by South Carolina-based Thomas Bey William Bailey. “Vapnatak” is almost 14 minutes and consists of chaos on another level. Whereas the previous track on this Thing is rhythmically chaotic, here it’s the sounds and overall composition that leave you puzzled. A mixture of synthesised and organic sounds in something that holds the mid of noise, ambient, cutup, fluxus and … I had to listen to it several times, and I still don’t understand. Intriguing.
Jo Bled, also known as Jabe Ledoux, made me smile. His Discogs page features a quote from our friends at The Wire, stating, ‘Equally resembles a garbage truck compacting metal trash in a pre-dawn alley, and a gamelan orchestra heard through a malfunctioning walkie-talkie.’ This eloquence says it all. This is not my kind of music at all, but I suppose you should just listen to it and form your own opinion. Experiments in minimalism with an acoustic, organic, and percussive character.
https://www.vitalweekly.net/number-1496/
BAD ALCHEMY
Das neunte 4/4-„THING“ (ACUF 1009) hebt an mit 'Extraterrestrial' von Substak. Der aus Athen stammende Kostas Staikos gab mit „Beyond the Terrestrial Sphere“ und „Above the Stars“ schon die Richtung an, in die seine Imagination zielt – die dunkle, von Sternen und kleinen Detonationen punktierte Kosmosphäre. So auch hier. Der Domestizierte Mensch alias Problem Anderer Leute alias Foltergeist ist einer, der mit Schlagwörtern wie „Lagerkoller“, „Konsumzwang“, „Hausmusik“, „Leerzeichen“, „Einzelhaft“, „Schwarzlicht“, „Schweigeminute“, „Kreuzfahrt“, „Drecksbude“ und – neben „Bad is beautiful“ – Floskeln wie „Grüner wirds nicht“ oder „Jetzt sei doch endlich mal zufrieden“ an seinem deutschen Wortschatz keinen Zweifel. 'Dingsbums' kurbelt der multiple Macher von MAP (Marvins Audio Produkte) als überdrehtes, Gewisper mitfetzendes Dingsbums aus Beatz über Beatz. Thomas Bey William Bailey in New Jersey, der mir mit Fifteen Minutes Of Anonymity und auf „Acousmatomisation“ (ACU 1071) vor die Ohren gekommen ist, häuft auf 'vapnatak' ebenfalls Sounds, Stimme, Breaks. Surrend und sprudelnd, ohne Scheu vor Chaos und Entropie. Jabe Ledoux aka Jo Bled in Vergennes, Vermont, hat auf „Three Way Dance“ mit Pszren & Wilfried Hanrath getanzt. 'Such obstacles' tanzt er allein auf Trommel- und Paukenfell, als Tamtam in klopfender, reibender Handarbeit.
www.badalchemy.de
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