A Handful of Dust - Jerusalem, Street of Graves [Corpus Hermiticum]

Released
1999

Label
Corpus Hermeticum

Reviewed by
gregg

Contact
Corpus Hermeticum
P.O. Box 124
Lyttelton
New Zealand

Last Edit/Update
12 July, 1999

A Handful of Dust

Jerusalem, Street of Graves CD

Track Listing

Unreal City I
Unreal City II
Unreal City III
Unreal City IV
The City of God/Negative Jerusalem
I Had Not Thought Death Had Undone So Many

         More free-noise scree from the Russell/Galbraith/Stapleton axis These three New Zealanders employ guitars, electronics, violin and percussion to whip up a storm of loosely improvised drone, rattle and hum quite unlike anything in the typical improv. camp or atypical rock camp (save a few allies like Sonic Youth).
        This recording is something like the 5th or 8th release by A Handful of Dust, depending on how you count them. They have assorted tapes and vinyl releases which have disappeared into the void of limited edition releases, only likely to see the light in painfully limited re-releases. Thankfully Bruce Russell's Corpus Hermeticum label has the sense to release CD's in editions that actually circulate outside the owners circle of friends, so this should be available for a while still.
        Jerusalem, Street of Graves is one of the more meditation HoD works I've heard in a while. All tracks are live recordings, although with this kind of music it is always single-take cuts. What I mean to say, is that these recordings were performed in front of an audience rather than a back-room of a community hall. These recordings are a document of a support gig for Mr Tony Conrad while on his New Zealand tour back in 1997. Indeed the Conrad aesthetic of sustained intonation seeps through into the work of A Handful of Dust. However where Conrad pursues a single-minded course of minimalism, AHoD revel in a sea of amplified chaos. Jerusalem is all instrumental, gone are Russells impenetrable recitations of philosophical texts and general weirdness. As usual these recordings are murky, as if heard while crossing a empty road outside the Cinema in which they were performed.
        Peter Stapleton's freeform percussion reaches its climax on the previously released "The City of God/Negative Jerusalem". Going into combat with Galbraith's violin scrapings under which Russell runs a steady hum, the three reach heights of communication in a dirty, screwed up musical conversation spread over some twenty minutes.