| Goh Lee Kwang
Good Vibrations
selected solo improvisations with stereo dj mixer |
| recorded by goh lee kwang at the STEIM, Amsterdam, May 2007. editing & mastering by goh lee kwang 2007. image by lau mun leng, design by herbal in house design team. no pre-programing, no on-going effect, no post-overdub. no turntable. Audio CD 70min++ price : 12 eur order Label Goh Lee Kwang also from goh lee kwang |
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| Review(s) on GOOD VIBRATIONS
TOUCHING EXTREMES May 2008 The subtitle of the album is "solo improvisations with stereo DJ mixer". That says it all, more or less. The 70-minute duration is not a joke, either, for this is not your typical Toshi Nakamura or Sachiko M. No, Kwang privileges micro-drills, crackles, purrs, hums, buzzes, quirks and bleeps, handfuls of them copiously reproduced for the total length of the CD. Which brings me to a cold-blooded conclusion: this music is neither beautiful, nor ear-pleasing. It is what it is - anarchic experimental noise that can or cannot be appreciated. And that's how it should be: aesthetic implications must be left out of the door, and the fame of the recording facility (STEIM) indicates that the work was conceived in a serious frame of mind. What I usually prefer in similar occasions is putting headphones on and leaving the mass of impulses do their job almost subliminally, at not excessive volume while I'm doing something else. The pairing of "Good vibrations" and my blank stare at the TV screen at about 10 PM produced some nice moment of unconscious stimulation (and a little bit of tinnitus at the end). Having been realized with measurable honesty, this is an interesting disc, in spurts. Maybe cutting the program at half the time would have increased the incisiveness of the whole. - Massimo Ricci The Wires Feb 2008 For Good Vibrations, Malaysian electronic musician Goh Lee Kwang restrcted himself to use of a single DJ mixer with no input (ah, Toshimaru Nakamura, so much to answer for). He selected recordings made over the period of two years on the basic of how close they were to the unadorned sound produced by the mixer, allowing no overdubbing or signal processing. But this search for minimal purity only makes sense when space and silence is used as a counterpoint. 70 minutes of low-key electronic popping and spitting in itself has no meaning; it just came across as a technical catalogue of what his equipment does. Kwang has a vacabulary, but there's no language here. - Keith Moline VITAL WEEKLY number 601 week 46 For a moment, in the early parts of the first piece I thought Goh Lee Kwang had extended beyond his usual turntable and mixer feedback by adding skipping CDs, but it turned out the copy I have is a bit scratched. Too bad as that could have been a nice addition. When I studied the cover more closely, it seems that there is no turntable either, and Goh Lee Kwang just uses a stereo DJ mixer. According to his website, the material was recorded at six studio sessions (in Stuttgart, Rotterdam, Krems, Kuala Lumpur, London, Amsterdam) plus two concerts (Paris, Stuttgart), but the cover just says 'all tracks recorded in Steim, studio 1, Amsterdam. So what is right? Does it matter? Not really. Goh Lee Kwang uses lots and lots static cracks, feedback like sounds, in a collage like manner. It sounds like a turntable, I thought, but then every time I had to think 'oh, it isn't a turntable'. It was pretty decent stuff, but way too long to hold my interest. The five pieces last for about seventy minutes, and it wouldn't be a problem, but the variation isn't that much, so one could all too easily think it's the same track. Only the fifth piece is considerable louder than the rest, but if that is the 'variation' than I pass. Half of this would have been equally fine, me think, and it would still be a pretty decent release. - Frans de Waard |
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