Noiseblog

Margriet Kicks-Ass [website] has a new CDr out in her “Grafherrie“-series, the fifth so far [overview]. Margriet builds her own instruments, or uses industrial machines for her noise with which she creates what she calls “sound-sculptures” - The first time I saw her live, she was touring with an installation (called the pneuma-tix) build with pneumatic valves and cylinders steered from a laptop which she also used to process the amplified pneumatics with - The effect was loud ‘n shrieking, not without a certain old-school industrial feel, while a strobo and blacklights added some visual extra to the whole. Her latest installation is called noise-lab - I saw her at work with it at the start of this year at the Trash Fest in Rotterdam [review] where she did a feedback-set loud as hell.
On her site Grafherrie 5 is described as a “composition with the latest set-up of (her) resonance instrument; shaking iron, microphones and a laptop“, recorded in June 2007.
8 tracks on this one, total running time some 60 minutes. While listening to track 1 - “Intro” - I immediately had to think of Tetsuo (the movie, and more specific the sequel, Body Hammer [wikipedia]) - This track (and as far as I’m concerned most of the following tracks) would make an excellent substitute for the movies’ official soundtrack: it’s pounding, it’s industrial, it’s dark, it’s all resonating steel and metal scrapings - Track 1 would in fact also make a good score for a modern dance-opera. 54 seconds might a bit short for a fulld-fledge opera though. Noise-Opus-X (track 2) is 15 minutes of industrial ambient-noise: not too harsh, still pounding by times, lets call it a pleasant excursion through the harbour, somewhere on a weekday during working hours (apparently Margriet does live near the harbour in Amsterdam, that’s probably where she gets her inspiration from for her industrial soundscapes). “Prrrt” is a shorty, just a mere 42 seconds, with something like a fast clipping drone in the background (The “prrrt” the title is refering to?) - that same backgroundnoise can be heard on track 4 - “No Border Part I” - but is more pronounced on this one, overall feel of track 4 is a tad harsher than the previous 3 tracks, the next track “Pauze” is what it says it is: a pause or small break in which we hear Margriet unscrewing things, installing contactmikes and pulling switches, after which track 6 “No-borders-part II” breaks open (21 minutes in all). I must admit that I haven’t listened to the entire record à fond yet (that kind of listening sessions is reserved for long brain-dead rides in the car where I can focus on the music), so I’m not going too deep into the last 2 tracks (Dialoog and Faslch’rum) - for now that is - Grafherrie 5 is a release that will most probably appeal to the more industrial oriented listeners among us, I like it for its improvised, straight forward style: not too much effects, lots of contactmiked bangings, and a good balance of harsher stuff and calmer intermezzo’s. Released by a loud lady from Holland. Prosit!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 at 5:40 pm and is filed under releases. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.