Damion Romero - Missing Link [hanson]

Yesterday I pulled the Music from the Once Festival box-set off the shelf intending to attempt to submerge myself in all five discs in one day, as it happened that project failed when I got stuck playing a Donald Scavarda track from the 1962 festival over and over (fans of Axel Dorner’s trumpetings should check out Matrix for Clarinet, prescient stuff). But the point of bringing that up is that it made me notice that the festival venue was in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where now resides Hanson Records. I haven’t got a clue just how ‘backwater’ a place Ann Arbor is but it strikes me as an unlikely locale to be weighing into the history of experimental noise music twice in under half a century. Apologies for the pointless digression.

Having written up Romero’s I Know! I Know! a few days ago, I thought I should try to tackle something a bit more typical of his output. I have now listened to Missing Link in several different scenarios and have been pretty alarmed by how different it sounds in each. Romero has rightly gained a solid reputation for his ability to sculpt bass and this tape is all about the low end, so although one of my listens – on a portable boombox – left it feeling rather rather empty, it did reveal the grating metal scrapes that pepper one side and are all but concealed on a decent pair of monitors by the lurching swoops of bass. Romero’s music sets the crockery on my draining board rattling and even vibrates the lampshades, leaving me to wonder what his studio must look like with every object ratchet strapped to the desktop. Even his coffee mug must be metallic so he can sit it on a magnet while he lets rip.

That wasn’t really a review was it? Um.. Two tsunamis of bass collecting all the debris in their path and never losing momentum, but probably not his best.

Hanson

Damion Romero - I Know! I Know! [banned production]

Does knowledge obstruct enjoyment? Does knowing, and more importantly understanding, how something was made ruin the pleasure that is found in its consumption. I tend to think not, neither in the case of fine cuisine, nor music. I bring this up as I would likely have passed on this particular release had I not read about it’s contents and how exactly they came into being.

In essence what we have here is a field recording made with two geophones attached to separate branches of an avocado tree. The original night-long (6 hour 45 minute) recording has then been “compacted” into 90 minutes (and split across the two sides of the tape) and further compacted into 45 minutes (and split across the two business card cds). Further post-production work has ensured these drastic reductions of duration have not altered the pitch. Packing all of the branch clattering and passing traffic of nearly seven, apparently windy, hours down to one and a half, makes for pretty action-packed bit of field recording, which I guess you expect from someone whose aesthetic is more maximal than reductionist. Nevertheless the piece retains a sense of reality and credibility as a field recording. For the most part sounds are recognisable, though the Aeolian branches could easily at times be a cauldron of boiling oil or the shifting of subterranean lava, at times it seems like we can even hear the tree drinking, water being drawn through its capiliaries.

Working only within the timecode, Romero turns a gentle breeze into a howling gail, recalling the more buffeted moments of Francisco Lopez’s Wind (Patagonia), without impinging on the musicality of his source material: the wind hits occasional howling notes amid the bass rumble and percussive taps and rattles still stand out amid the predominant clattering. This tape is a prime example of why the ghettoisation of music into increasingly small boxes is completely absurd. The contents of this tape would doubtless appeal to fans of Toshiya Tsunoda or Seth Nehil and the like but as Damion Romero’s name only holds sway among noise-fans many of them will probably never hear it.

You can never really fault banned production for the effort that goes into their releases. Annoyingly though I can’t listen to the two business card cds yet, as they contain AAC files and are only playable on computers, and mine is a slot-loader. This comes packaged in a neat sliding-box assembled from tasty thick green paper, the tape itself is translucent green to boot and the only ‘artwork’ consists of ring-shaped green stickers on all the media parts.

banned production