Werkbund: Skagerrak (Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien)
Purchased at RRRecords in Lowell, MA
This record brings several things to mind, and I'm sure at least one or two I've written on here before.
I was once at the Electric Banana with Richard Schnap. The Banana was a legendary club, an early "punk" club, though I think that had as much to do with them not caring who played there. My first time there, it wasn't as scuzzy as I imagined it might be, but it wasn't exactly upscale.
Richard was a friend who I both cared for deeply, and also drove me crazy sometimes. He sadly died a few years ago, entirely too young. He was incredibly intelligent, possibly one of the smartest people I knew, but as a layman I'd guess he had some serious issues with depression. I'm sorry he's gone.
Anyway, we were having an enthusiastic conversation about that future; this would have been sometime in the early 80s. The gist of it was, didn't the 1970s suck? Isn't it better now, won't the 80s be so much better?
Let's call that both the hubris and naivety of youth.
In retrospect, the 1970s seems pretty interesting (though there are some severely dark things in that history) and the 1980s seemed shallow, dominated by the figure of Ronald Reagan. I wasn't part of a scene that generally dealt directly with HIV/AIDS, which would cast an even darker memory for those who did.
What I was enthusiastic about though, was the boom in artist-released music. Independent music was booming. There were big indies, small artist run labels, and even microlabels of low-run cassettes. If you wanted to read up on such things, there were only a few magazines you had to follow. Op was one, which later lead to Option (the more commercial magazine) and Sound Choice (the more determinately independent, and shorter-lived publication).
In that respect, it really was an interesting time. I was excited to buy severely low-run albums, take chances on artists I only knew by reputation.
As I've written before, what punk rock was to some, early industrial music was for me. And it couldn't have been more the opposite to what I was doing in my studies: first a saxophone performance major, later earning my degree in music education. Very studied and formal. Industrial music was primitive and requiring little to no musical ability at all.
I should probably broaden the term though, because I don't mean just the likes of Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, or Hunting Lodge. I mean independent "experimental" music artists, which would include Nurse With Wound, Organum, Asmus Tietchens, and even more abrasive power electronics noisemakers.
At its best, it was a music of ideas, and of sound that stretched beyond the standards of standard instrumental technique. The was an embracement of noise, or all sound really. Maybe that's part of the appeal to me.
I noticed this record on my shelf, when considering what to put on. I was a regular customer of RRRecords through mail order. I always sent cash, and he (Ron) always sent my package very quickly. Ron even included a track by Morphic Resonance, an improvisation group I was once in, on a tape compilation. I've visited RRRecords in person a single time, and it would have been 1987 (the cover confirms this). Ron liked this, suggested it, said that Asmus Tietchens was involved (something Asmus himself has denied). It's a numbered edition of 1000; my copy is 598. Ron's comment was, "Limited edition? I never press any more copies than that."
So part of what I'm thinking when I listen to this is, does it hold up? It's an overused word, but there's an abstractness to this that lends itself to sounding timeless. It's sounds and textures, sometimes sounding deep, sometimes thin, often echoic and distant. There's apparently some maritime inspiration for this music. It's a bit too active for me to describe it was ambient, it's not melodic, noisy without being abrasive.
The recording doesn't sound dated. For all its sometime noisiness, the production sounds clear or at least appropriate. I can't always tell what the sound sources are, and I like that mystery. Some of it evokes the rolling of waves, and there's some distant percussion, and the sound of what seems like a mechanical heartbeat.
At the end of the first side, a field recording of a military song is mixed in. Is it German? Possibly but it's difficult to be certain. What could be the reason? When I think of Germany and militarism, it's not a leap to think that this is possibly a comment on Nazism. But is it? If there are clues here, they elude me.
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