Posts Tagged voice

As far as I know Daniel Menche started out in the Noise scene of the 90s as one of those guys that would be on a comp with Merzbow and I’m not saying they were all doing the same thing but it was hard to tell any of it apart the first few hundred listens. He eventually evolved into a more unique manipulator of sound, working with layers of field recordings and different types of sounds, not just shrieking feedback of overdriven amps. (Altho I believe he still does something like that live, because, why not, it’s fun. Haven’t got the chance yet myself to see it but he used to blog a lot which is how I got back into him.)

Here he applies his layering edit technique to a choir of school children instructed to sing nonsense syllables at various pitches. The two tracks are the actual piece, which sounds like a something between chanting and a vast swarm of insects, and the raw recording of the kids. After an initial listen where it acts almost as a punchline or just a behind the scenes bonus track, I recommend listening to the second track first. Then it’s like a setup of this thing that seems very simple and a little silly into an insane trance-inducing fever dream of ego-ingulfing chaos. You’re going to want to try this on some good speakers you can crank up; I haven’t really messed with it too much, but I tried just having this on the ipod for walking around music and that is not such a good idea. I mean it’s a cool effect on headphones, maybe if you’ve got a beanbag chair or something try that out. But it’s a little disorienting is what I’m saying. Unlike some Noise records, it’s not going to blow up your stereo or melt your eardrums, but still, use with caution.

This is a download only release. I think his only one. You can get all his stuff on his personal bandcamp now but every other record has been put on vinyl or CD on various labels. I used to think of Noise records as conceptual art objects, like if you only downloaded them you weren’t even really “getting” it. I think it’s more true of some than others now. Like it was a statement, man. I only got $10 in my pocket, I can buy the new Pavement (used, of course) or some random Metal band no one cares about because it’s the mid 90s or I can buy this…thing that doesn’t even have anything like a song on it. I don’t think it’s really the same feeling you get from torrenting the Merzbox, making that choice. But maybe that’s just me. Certainly the Menche records you can get into the sound alone. This is probably a good one to start with.

I got it on Boomkat.

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