Live At The Revolver Club by Fennesz - Touch [TOCDR3] FLAC download included with physical items

Live At The Revolver Club

A 1 track minimal/glitch single (16m 33s) — released October 9th 2000 on Touch

Recorded on the recent MEGO tour down under, this is Christian Fennesz's first live CD, his second for Touch. Although it carries a CDR catalogue number, this is not a CDR. The CD will be manufactured at Universal, like all the other Touch CDs. The packaging will be the same as the Philip Jeck and S.E.T.I. CDRs, however - ie in a white wallet with a black and white sticker. This edition is limited to 1000 copies'

This live recording from Christian Fennesz starts with a crackling layer. This has a vibrating feel as it loops, buzz and whirr being added slowly to provide a certain melodic suggestion. Mild tumbling sounds and strong string can be heard within the sighing flow. These elements go through moments of intensification - the background layer streaming in a tinny fashion, before stepping up a notch. The initial rumbles become more a ridge, a wave that rises and falls. Then everything falls down to a sigh of notes and barest crackle. From which we have a mild build, followed by a more pronounced level of detuned signal. The form of crackle and buzz becomes a translation of data, accelerating with each punch card processed. The buzz almost grinds as this builds into a bubbling whole - layers amassing with the momentum. Stripping down to a tight crackling oscillation, the frequency then falling and threatening to collapse. Though before it does a smooth tone comes up and we have a more melodic micro section - punctuated by high blips. Shifting again this takes on a more pulsing feel while retaining consistent elements. Then its over, being the third in Touch's series of live recordings, consisting of 1 track just over 16 minutes long. - Peter Morrison Remote Induction

Clocking in at a nadge over quarter of an hour long, Live At Revolver, Melbourne makes up for its shortness with some intensity instead. The whines and drones of clickety-snickety underpinnings meet tones at fifty paces then closing to quarters more uncomfortable. These things should sometimes be kept at arms length, but bringing the sound of what resembles a wardrobe being manhandled into a coal cellar this close to the ears can be enjoyable up to a point. That point is probably about right at the length presented here. Hypnosis is acheived, interventions made and proposed, the texture of hiss and decay propounded on the bones of rhythm and melody just about gets remembered like a distant cousin. There are guitars resident in the cloacum of rendered acoustic transformation, but they don't stand a chance against the forces of sputter and disc-error scrum which evolves into purgative electronic outburts; which is as it should be on such occasions. One of the key lessons of this unrestrained noise-chunder format is knowing when enough is enough for the audience or listener if not the performer; so easy to misjudge, to collapse into the delights of letting freeform spats of the kind of noise your grandmother wouldn't like unless she happened to be Alice Coltrane fly free. Even if it was time restraints which brought about the limit to this performance, such are the benefits of restriction. As the downward coast in territories of less opprobrious earache engenderment suggest closure, it is to Christian Fennesz' considerable credit that it's with a flitter of fond farewell rather than endurance that the CD concludes. - Antron S Meister Freq.org.uk

At a guess 'Live at Revolver' was recorded at this year's 'What is Music' festival and amounts to a snap-shot (at just over 16 minutes) of a single performance by Christian Fennesz, one of the laptop participants. Fennesz is known to source many of his sounds from guitar, recording straight to hard-disc, and although he often gives free rein to the the laptop's facility as a noise-generator he tempers his sound with ghostly melodies in which fragmentary guitar chords are often discernible just below the surface. By the time we join this performance the kindling sticks are crackling. Fennesz improvises a stunted melody for some minutes in which he stops and unstops organ-like notes in a somewhat random fashion, managing to make his presence without exactly blowing the barn doors away. At a point about half-way through this recording, however, after his earlier activities have fizzled out in a mild gust of radio interference, Fennesz chooses to drop a quite stunning slab of guitar-viscera into the left channel. One can imagine the bar sitters grabbing for their earplugs, hairs standing up on the backs of necks, as one onslaught follows another of quite delicious melodic noise. The storm subsides and Fennesz finally bears his listeners aloft on a turbulent carpet ride of uplifting chords and ionic interference. I wouldn't exactly describe this as an essential piece of Fennesz (for that look to his 3" CD on Tanz*Hotel 'Il Libro Mio' in particular, or his earlier full-length on Touch) but then, it doesn't exactly present itself as being that either: it comes in a plain white card sleeve bearing a CDR catalog number and monochrome artwork which shadows that of his earlier Touch CD. For such humility this CD rather recommends itself. - Array (Web)

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