SEC_

[...] Aspec(t), Napoli's duo of SEC_ (reel-to-reel tape recorder, no-input mixing boards and samples) and Mario Gabola (self-built photosensitive system, no-input mixing board) who in April 2013 teamed up with Andrzej Zalaski on drums and voice to record what became 'Droga'. It has three more pieces than Hurtado/Z'EV, but it lasts half the length. I am not sure if I heard Zalaski's work before, but I sure know Aspec(t) and their noisy approach to improvisation. With pieces ranging from mere 18 seconds to one that lasts seven (which is a rarity, one to two minutes is more likely on this album), they hold on to the punk aesthetics in the field of improvisation. Everything bursts here with noisy electrical currents, beeping and scratching, feedback explosions and all along Zalaski is banging the hell out of his drum kit. This is some very tiring music, and I mean this in a most respectful way. This is a 38 minute concentrated burst of energy, very vibrant, very punk. It seems that drum sounds produced by Zalaski are picked up by whatever means Aspec(t) have, adding to the real-time cut-up style they have. It’s all very made and breaks music. Like said: one remains behind very tired, but also utterly delighted. The best of noise, improvisation and punk, combined into one blast.

Le trio propose des pièces ultra violentes et déstructurées, d’autres plus calmes et linéaires, des pièces concrètes, d’autres totalement abstraites et bruitistes, mais avec toujours une grande attention au son et une inventivité sonore surprenantes. Car tous ces musiciens ont un langage qui leur est propres, un langage créatif, puissant, extrême, et ils vont tous très bien ensemble.

Julien Héraud - http://improv-sphere.blogspot.gr/2014/09/dave-phillips-sec.html

DAVE PHILLIPS & ASPEC(T) - MEDUSA (CD, Noise-Below 2014)

Medusa, the first collaboration between Dave Phillips (DP) and Aspec(t), (Mario Gabola and Mimmo Napolitano) is no doubt challenging music, but as the liner notes remind us, we live in challenging times. One aspect of global climate change that’s been all too often neglected is the impact human activities have had on our oceans. Medusa refers not just to the mythical Gorgon but is also Italian for jellyfish, giving the title an added weight with the evocation of the monstrous.

Monbiot believes that the jellyfish is a good symbol for the threat we are currently facing, representing the “the collapse of the ecosystem and the spinelessness of the people charged with protecting it.” These three musicians clearly feel the same, and have mobilized this symbol as an artistic response worthy of the cause. In the above referenced article, Monbiot poses the question, “Why is it still acceptable to eat the endangered large predators of the sea?” and explains the seriousness of the issue. Inspired by Monbiot’s work, Medusa is a powerful expression of this dire situation in the form of tightly structured musique concrète events and freewheeling, at times raucous, harsh-noise. Over the course of 23 tracks and 50 minutes, the listener is subjected to all manner of sounds but it is clear that the utmost intention lurks just below the surface of these churning waves of chaos. Most of these chapters are just a minute or two, some as short as five seconds, setting a quick pace for our journey. Rather than a constant drone or wall of sound, the trio incorporate passages of relative silence into their compositions, a masterful use of dynamics to maximize the impact.

The majority of the sounds employed are abstract and unrecognizable, the theme expressed through mood and track titles rather than representation. Don’t expect any cliched ‘submerged’ filters, dripping water or splashing waves. At times brutal, other passages feature enough repetition to suggest a groove before being interrupted by a sudden shift or a lingering drone. Much of the material feels unrestrained and improvisatory in its energies, but arranged and composed so as to impose an overarching order in the form of a dedicated narrative. Channeling the image of an ecosystem under threat, an ecosystem so vast that any threat to it is a threat to us all, much of Medusa is understandably as angry and terrifying as its mythic namesake.

Waves of feedback recede into mechanical noise, field-recordings come and go, shots are fired and screams roared, words cut up and reversed so as to be denied meaning. To me, the use of feedback is the dominant trope, and nowhere has feedback been so apt of an aesthetic symbol as on Medusa. As a result of over-fishing, the fish “have been replaced by jellyfish, which now outweigh them by three to one. The jellyfish eat the eggs and larvae of the fish, so the switch is probably irreversible.” That is, we have initiated a feedback loop in nature, so how better to represent this sonically than with a powerful wave of feedback?

Active for over 25 years, the Zurich-based Phillips has been a member of Fear Of God, Ohne and Dead Peni, and in various guises employs a variety of tools utilizing voice, performance, multimedia, loops, and drum machines. His most profound engagement has been with field-recordings, in particular of the sounds of insects, frog and other animals, which make appearances in some passages here. The practice of field-recording pertains to his sonic activism and the idea of the ‘era of the ‘humanimal,’ a take on the relationship between human activities and other species (and the broader ecosystem in general) that problematizes conceptions that keep these categories overly separate. In his global travels over the last two decades he’s worked to produce an archive of field-recordings of animals and their environments. Although the hypnogogic effects of the sounds can speak for themselves, his work as an activist leads him to accompany his performances with this pamphlet expounding on the the importance of the insect world for human existence.

A collaboration with Naples’ Aspec(t) seems perfectly natural, and the resulting album quite cohesively blends Phillips aesthetic into the singular soundworld of the duo. Comprised of Mario Gabola (also of A spirale), who contributes sax, feedback and electronics, and Mimmo Napolitano (aka SEC_), who manipulates a reel-to-reel tape player and feedback from a no-input mixer, Aspec(t) represents a highpoint in the convergence of electroacoustics, noise and free improv. Both members of the duo have created mixes for the LCNL series, granting a window into their inspirations, aesthetic, and processes. Past albums, such as Abbatoir released on the French Nunn Records, showcase this style well.

A joint release by Noise-Below.org and Excrete Music #3, I shouldn’t neglect to say a word about the truly exceptional packaging. Any who picked up SEC_’s masterpiece Outflow won’t be surprised by the attention to detail given to the packaging, but images, design, and paper choices really do come together beautifully, serving as a fitting house for an album as showing as much dedication asMedusa.

(Joseph Sannicandro)

http://acloserlisten.com/2014/11/07/dave-phillips-aspect-medusa/

DAVE PHILLIPS & ASPEC(T) - Medusa (CD by Noise-Below, 2014)

Esordisco con le parole sciaguratamente profetiche (mi piacerebbe pensarla in altre maniere) dell’ambientalista britannico Monbiot, perché il suo articolo “Feeding Frenzy” ha liberamente ispirato questo disco e perché riassumono – vale sia per lo scritto sia per l’album – il valore simbolico di questa strana, quasi aliena, creatura.
È comunque necessario qualche piccolo preambolo su questo lavoro a sei mani. Sappiamo delle implicazioni che lo svizzero Phillips ama dare ai suoi lavori, quei suoi tentativi, quasi, di riempire col rumore il vuoto o la spaccatura lasciati tra natura e “civiltà” dall’ignavia degli uomini. Proprio nel periodo in cui Medusa iniziava a prendere vita per mano dei due Aspec(t) Mario Gabola (A Spirale) e Mimmo Sec_ Napolitano (2011, quindi), Phillips concludeva la gestazione di gran parte dei brani che sarebbero andati a comporre Homo Animalis. Con Insect (2003) già alle spalle e sempre con uno svizzero (Norbert Möslang, però) a raccoglierne successivamente una sorta d’eredità spirituale con la soundtrack del film “The Sound Of Insects”, possiamo parlare di Medusa come il prosieguo ideale più limpido (a dispetto degli oceani oscuri che dovremmo attraversare) della discografia dell’uomo-Schimpfluch.
Sentendo Medusa, capiterà spesso – a intervalli – d’imbattersi in emersioni sonore sparute (come di bolle d’aria) o in vibrazioni a scandaglio che raschiano il fondale marino, quasi a focalizzare l’attenzione su un aspetto chiaro e preciso sin da “Non Central Nervous System Non Cephalized Body”: facilitare, in un certo senso, l’ascolto, confondendo però allo stesso tempo la comprensione. Echi pacificatori (“If The World Weren’t Such A Beautiful Place”, “Hammerhead”) strozzati – o forse asfissiati – da un’urticaria viscida (“Ripped To Shreds”) e appiccicosa (“Trash Vortex”), tra detriti elettroacustici (“Wobbling On The Edge”) mescolati da reti a strascico in masse di liquami e lische (“But It Tastes Good”), senza dimenticare tutta la sana dose di feedback, come se ci fosse una certa nostalgia per un periodo nel quale la no-input faceva scuola in lungo e in largo e di quando un mixer – cavi in abbondanza e gain al massimo – era tutto ciò di cui si aveva bisogno.
È da precisare che tutta quest’area di musicisti partenopei da anni instaura collaborazioni del genere in questi ambiti (Andy Guhl su tutti), ma è significativo avere, finalmente, un lascito tangibile ad attestare ciò, anche per merito della greca Noise-Below, che nel frattempo manda fuori pure la nuova cassetta di Sec_ e Olivier Di Placido.
Tommaso Gorelli - http://www.thenewnoise.it/aspect-dave-phillips-medusa

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