Released
1997
Label
Drone Records
Reviewed by
Michael C. Lund
Contact
Stefan Knappe
Drone Records
Gneisenaustrasse 56
28201 Bremen
Germany
Last Edit/Update
22 august, 1998
Noise-Maker's Fifes
INTERVISAGE (7"EP)
(first edition: 250 copies)
Track Listing
Side A
Intervisage part one
Side B
Intervisage part two
Belgian Noise-Maker's Fifes have been creating extremely evocative
experimental soundtracks since the mid-80s. Except for a few of their more recent
releases, all of their music has been self-released on cassette in very limited editions.
The 7"EP at hand -- Noise-Maker's Fifes' first -- came out in the
summer of 1997 on Drone Records, and is, in this first edition of 250
copies, pressed on transparent orange vinyl, and presented in a cover that is an entire
chapter all to itself: placed inside an extra burlap sleeve with a flap over the front,
the standard inner sleeve carries a photograph of some kind of corrugated iron pipe glued
to its front; when the flap of the outer burlap cover is lifted, this photo is visible
through a square "window" cut in the fabric immediately beneath the flap. The
organic texture of the burlap, and the image of the stark metallic object that it
conceals, nicely illustrate the tensions in Noise-Maker's Fifes' music on
this single.
Each side of Intervisage
features an extended composition subtitled "part one" and "part two"
respectively. Both pieces open with very subdued, barely audible, ringing and buzzing
sounds that ever so slowly build, not only in volume, but also in richness and complexity,
until a level is reached, where the sound picture is saturated with aural minutiae
spinning off in all directions at once. The pieces are perpetually in motion, charged with
an almost random kinesis; building and building, then without warning falling off to the
subtlest of whispers. Many of the sounds employed are of an electric and crystalline
quality, carried upon the denser and darker soundwaves of the background. The tinier
details often seem brought in motion by the movements of the grander sonic elements, like
gusts of wind blowing through fields of frozen straw.
Intervisage is, like so many
of the releases on Drone Records, an example of the vast capacities of
sound and music to evoke image, thought and emotion in the listener. The two compositions
created by Noise-Maker's Fifes for this single hold within their abstract
structures a world of experience, accessible through active participation by the listener.
No two people will ever come away with the same impression of this music, but the
adjectives dreamy, hypnotic, meditative, visual, surreal,
trancy, and euphoric will most likely be on the tongues of most -- music
to lose and rediscover oneself in.
