Georg is joined by members of the ambient/noise extremists Oswald III who Georg has been in close contact with over the past 3 years. Michael Fisher, currently playing with Anuebis, provided percussion which Zedui Sule, the producer famed for his work with Ree Piztonna and Kuhl Goyim Chien, has manipulated. The music is topped off with poetry written by Serge Outre, the ex-member of Ree Piztonna's band who has retained the silence pact made back in the 1970's and is currently living as a hermit in Italy. Unusually for Georg the project is not a direct ?gesamtkunstwerk' like previous projects but it is much more focused on the music and surrounding images. Georg has built on John Cage's music philosophy which suggested that ?everything is music' and has instead tried to create idea that everything is art (in it's purest form). The idea when listening to the music is not only that outside sounds are part of the music but that what one can see when listening is the dance and video and the total artwork accompanying the music which has been laid down. I have found that the best way to listen is while falling asleep so the music alternates between reality to subconscious to dreams and is an indefinable being behind one's mind and dreams. Other people have disagreed and it has been suggested that the music is best listened to under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs (like the 1989 ?Zderzenia-Scontri' album Icon I love with my crucified father). Whatever the choice the music is incredible.
The sound is quite different to anything Georg has attempted before. The ambience affluent throughout his career is still apparent but only as a backing to other elements. All the tracks have been recorded in one take without being planned previously, at some places the music sounds distinctly like John Zorn but without a conductor. The most effective sound is Georg's experiments with records and samples. The loops are akin to Philip Jeck and have been manufactured by the same acoustic methods also used by Jon Stephens in the 1970's. The samples have been delicately prepared but are still quite obvious, fragments from Meredith Monk's evening, excerpts from Paul Lansky's Night Traffic and an electronic loop from Johnny Weiz's Random Music for Percussion are immediately apparent. The album features the ambient and virtuosic work ?Reecho' which ends in a plethora of samples and natural sounds collected by Georg, such as birds, wind and trains. The effect is quite beautiful and it is difficult to tell when the track ends as the natural sounds propel the listener to a state where the recorded music acts as an introduction to the natural sounds going on around them and it can be difficult to distinguish between what is recorded and what is current once the guitars stop. The diversity of this project is shown with the next track, a true leap into the unknown for Georg. ?Disquisition' features Outre's poetry read by a doctored voice with ?drums and bass' style percussion with electronically manipulated electric oscillators in the background with a constant and rhythmic guitar keeping the piece together. The effect is quite strange but not at all unpleasant. Another track Bantu X is an amalgamation of the two techniques displayed. An ambient introduction soon gives way to fast percussion manipulated by Sule and epic guitars build over a distorted background. Georg's work with record loops is particularly exceptional during this piece with an almost constant loop of the words ?getting lonely', a beautiful image dedicated to Outre. Outre's poetry is once again used, and sung, to great effect. The poem ?Ludos' is a journey of the mutations in vocal sounds and the brains perception of these sounds. Effectively all that is sung are the repeated words ?I have just been playing' but these mutate over the course in much the same way as Steve Reich's phase music mutates to new textures and sounds. Glenn Branca also comes to mind as he commented on ?sounds being in a piece when they haven't been performed or written'. This is true of the poetry sung, the sounds come from nowhere and the effect is startling.
The two other tracks feature more in the way of Avant-noise. Gerasene features a long speech by an anonymous black man and delves deep into noise before finishing on the experimental sounds we know Georg is capable of producing,
Suttee is quite a similar track but it has larger ambient sections and features synths and electronic drums and finishes on a beat-infested swamp of sound.
This is a triumphant return for the Lo-Fi genius although it is unknown how regularly this project will perform and write or if anything will ever be done again. For the sake of 21st Century music I hope it is.