Review of Tape Crash #12 in Vital Weekly 1008
STEFAN CHRISTOFF/POST MORTEM - TAPE CRASH #12 (cassette by Old Bicycle Records) This is already the twelfth split cassette Old Bicycle Records releases and here we find Stefan Christoff, of whom I recently reviewed an excellent work of electronics and piano which he recorded with Nick Schofield (see Vital Weekly 999) and Post Mortem, which is the musical project of Jan Kees Helms, who sometimes works as StringStrang, which I thought was his main musical enterprise these days, and that Post Mortem was no more, after twenty-five years of activities.
Christoff has two pieces in which the organ plays an important role. I am not sure what kind of organ that would be: a farfisa, bon-tempi or small church organ? It might very well that this is a software thing, which is plays over a small speaker and is picked up with a microphone. Two other pieces deal with the guitar, played in an even bigger space, with quite some reverb, but it didn't do much. His final piece is a gorgeous piano piece: intimate and small.
Post Mortem fills his side with one piece of music, entirely created with the use of field recordings and piano. The first seems to be more upfront than the latter, but then the 88 strings might appear also very heavily processed. I am not sure. It sometimes sounds in the distance, as a piano. The field recordings however form the main portion of the music, and they appear to be mildly processed and layered together to create a flowing collage of sounds. Not in a very ambient sense of the word, but rather bumpy and crashing together, with occasional leaps into mild distortion, which is quite nice. Not an easy going ride this one, but it works very well. It seems quite apart from his old days of noise treatments, which I guess is great thing. Good to see this is something else; may he be exploring this route further. (FdW)
