Review: Two from ArteTetra - Kink Gong - Erhai Floating Sound / Futeisha - Alegrias y duelos de mi alm

ArteTetra are a small label in Italy, featured before on these blog pages, who specialise in tape runs of "exotic, psychedelic and ethnic sounds". They have released, or about to release, a couple of corkers. They veer more to the experimental side of music and, I'm fully aware, will not be to everybody's taste, but if you are willing to open your mind and your ears, these albums are truly psychedelic....they will transport you to far away, exotic places.

The first of these releases comes from Kink Gong, aka electroacoustic composer and ethnomusicologist Laurent Jeanneau. Over the years he has released some 150 CDs of ethnic music, but this is not WOMAD material, this is deconstructed tracts of music utilising indigenous instruments such as gongs, mouthorgans and strings to produce abstract but engaging pieces of musique concrete that are both challenging and deeply beautiful. 'Erhai Floating Sound' is a 'spatialized live sound performance' that took place on Lake Erhai in Dali, Yunnan, China in May 2010. The electronic sounds were produced on a small fishing boat on the lake connected by underwater cables to four other boats, each of them carrying a speaker. The Artetetra tape is a stereo version of the quadraphonic performance. It is simply stunning; Jeanneau uses the instruments and the music structures of the area and mixes them with electroacoustic techniques to produce a collage of inspirational and spiritual sounds and voices. Over the course of the performance, about an hour, we are treated to a whole gallimaufry of effects and styles that, in return, induce a range of emotions in the listener. The voices of local women are melded with electronica, physical instruments are put together with drones, some ear-piercing, some bass-rumbling deep. It veers between blissfully ambient to artfully abstract via musique concrete on a par with Pierre Schaeffer et al. It is not music to put on at dinner parties or to throw in the car's cassette deck - it is music that cries out to be Listened to. Challenging...yes, but brilliantly realised and constructed. It is a truly beautiful piece of music. 'Erhai Floating Sound' will be released on ArteTetra as a limited tape (only 100) and can be bought via the label's Bandcamp page on release.



Futeisha is the moniker of Juan Scassa, guitarist of La Piramide di Sangue, bastions of the Italian Occult Psychedelic scene. On 'Alegrias y duelos de mi alma' Scassa forgoes the ethnically tinged, electric based psychedelia of La Piramide di Sangue for an ethnically tinged, acoustic journey around the Mediterranean. His acoustic, flamenco based guitar immediately gives the album a folklore feel, charging it with a bucolic and yet otherwordly atmosphere. But this is not a folk album, there are drones, deep and resonant, and flashes of abstract electronica that give it a more experimental feel. Scassa's use of indigenous chants and eerie whisperings imbue the album with an authenticity that gives it a voice of its own. Over the course of eleven tracks the moods and emotions he conveys veer between the tranquility of the countryside to the solemnity of the graveside and, in the case of last track, 'Una Fin' outright dread....the drone on this is straight out of the Lustmord book of bowel-loosening drones. It is a wonderful album, full of personality and charisma; it takes the listener to the sunny countryside of the Mediterranean, albeit a countryside haunted by the ghosts of years gone by. 'Alegrias y duelos de mi alma' is released by ArteTetra and blog favourites Old Bicycle Records and will be available from their respective Bandcamp pages here and here. Below is a track from Futeisha's first album 'Dannato' also out on Old Bicycle Records.