Matt Margo

                Matt Margo ought to drive you wild. With his finger in so many pies, it is pretty difficult to avoid bumping into him. I’ve seen him (virtually) in countless ustream chats. In his own words, he’s still exploring himself as a person, as a writer. Though he is exploring, he’s doing a great job. Since I see him everywhere I notice how much of other people’s work he readily consumes.

                “Cormac McCarthy’s Dead Typewriter” combines a few of his interests. Besides the joy of being named after a still living author’s supposedly deceased typewriter, he has multiple categories one can submit under. It is a literary blog but Matt appears to be a bit more open regarding what counts as poetry, what is art, sound, and photography. Sometimes the lines blur between each form. Matt realizes this and offers what are extremely welcoming terms. 

                A lot of the submissions celebrate the beauty of randomness. There are an unusually large amount of ‘algorithmic wordchains’ and ‘asemic writing’. For Algorithmic wordchains you can technically read them though they prefer to be near-nonsensical. Whoever can read asemic writing probably has some serious issues or is incurably insane. 

                Other submissions are a bit more graspable and slightly less experimental. Flarf, that delightful poetic form, is given a home, as are fiction dribbles and cut-ups. Really, I don’t see enough people doing cut-ups so it is good to see someone wants to give them a home. See Logan K. Young’s piece for an example of the form’s madness. Even though he didn’t state it, normal poetry of the make it yourself kind, occasionally appears on its hallowed pages. The fiction dribbles keep up the slightly cryptic tone Matt has set for the site. Keeping a piece only 50 words long reminds me of the ‘micro-story’ genre, a one I used to dabble in a long time ago. 

                Harsh noise gets some attention. As a big fan of noise, I’m glad to see I’m not the only one. Though seeing the harsh noise releases on his blog further convinces me that noise fans exist on the internet. Noise fans otherwise can never admit to it in person or even meet each other in person. Sometimes I think geography exists for the sole reason of keeping weird music fans apart. My personal experience hasn’t shown me any other alternative reason. Matt knows the genre well as he puts a ten minute limit on the noise pieces. Without any kind of structure, noise often outstays its welcome even with its few fans. 

                The site is full of love. Under the contributors section, he allows any contributor to write as much or as little about their work, lives and interests. I’m glad to see Matt taking a more personal approach to literature and music than “Here is a link to their blog. Have fun.” Reading about each one of the contributors makes me happy. Whatever the contributor did is suddenly humanized. Now I think of the contributors as people rather than faceless people on the internet. Having spoken with people about their perception of bloggers, Matt’s approach is something more people ought to be doing. Most people I speak with barely think of the individual behind the actual pieces of writing. Seeing how some of his contributors do multiple art forms (Matt and a Finn named Jukka-Pekka Kervinen) cheers up me enormously.

                Despite the dead typewriter, the future looks bright for Matt Margo.  To celebrate the blog’s three month anniversary (in blog years, three months equals a year) he’ll be doing a live reading of some of the material this evening at 7:30PM on ustream. I’m excited by this prospect. Harsh noise walls may or may not be played as he’s particularly fond of them even creating his own noise project accessible here. I’d suggest he look into a favorite genre of mine, yet to be created, called “Polka-Noise”. By this evening I hope he gets some pictures of butterflies or carrots (those remain the only submissions he has not received). I’m dreaming of a noise dance party.

Girlhood – Epilepsy Overview 7.7

               Edouard Urcadez’s solo project focuses on some heavier, noisy sounds. The second release in the cryptic weirdness of the ongoing experiment called “HolyPageRecords” it is surprisingly moving. I found it moving for the huge amount of patience Edouard employs in the pacing and sounds he uses. Usually noise artists are keener to explore pointless aggression, but his ability to infuse a kind of longing, a certain tragedy, is a nice flair. 

                “1995” introduces things with a rather calm approach. As an introduction, it works well, but by being the calmest track of the bunch, it doesn’t really prepare you for what’s going to come. For whatever reason, the sounds of “No Ammo” remind me of a lo-fi Salem. Maybe it’s the blurred lyrics, or the most straightforward beats you find on the album. It might also be the menacing feel of the bass as it hits, distorting things virtually beyond recognition.

                Sometimes though there’s a song in an album which kind of serves as a “thesis statement” or “artist’s intent” and explains everything. For me, that song was “Body Heat”. On here, Girlhood gets into a good mixture of longing and tenderness. The song begins off quiet and slowly builds. Rather than just have it blast off into noise, he keeps its barely restrained, allowing the slight changes in rhythmic impulses do more speaking than any increase in volume could hope to achieve. 

                After that song, everything else on the album starts to make sense. Even the closer “Victimize” presents more tragedy than outright violence. It’s a good, noisy, but oddly endearing end to this rather bizarre EP. Get it free here.

Akita/Azuma/Haswell/Sakaibara – Ich Schnitt Mich In Den Finger 5.6

Considering the amount of talent in these proceedings it is a surprisingly boring affair. Russell Haswell is a pretty intense, detail-oriented character and the rest worked with Merzbow during his live performances. Yet, for whatever reason, a lot of this dwells in the quieter spectrum of things, and the sounds are annoying cheesy.

                The opener “Ich” does increase the volume and intensity. Here is probably the only place where the Theremin works to benefit rather than to the detriment of the piece. If you had to encounter any part of this piece, here would be the best place to choose.

                Other than the opening which has some interesting moments, the rest of it is relatively bland. Merzbow runs into the same problem they usually have: by focusing on output more than quality, they end up with a few dazzling moments and the rest as an extreme form of sonic wallpaper. This is a pity too, because Mego tends to have better pretty high standards for noise releases. Even for die-hard Russell Haswell or Merzbow fans, this is rather empty.

PXP - while(p){print"."," "x$p++} 7.4

Oswald Berthold’s work in Farmers Manual just couldn’t satisfy his itch of the deeply weird. Here you’re given stuff so absolutely bizarre that the album is copy and pasted spam nonsense and the music doesn’t help you understand anything. Indeed, it is as if his computer was trying to say something before it died.

This is pure digital manufactures. At no point are you reminded of anything approximately a beat or melody. Rather the music floats freely around your ears, referencing nothing but the broken math equations that made it possible.

Rhythms form occasionally, in an attempt to make sense of the chaos. In the third track a beat and rhythm begins to form out of random noise. Slowly but surely, structure reasserts itself. Even the structure is attacked by all sides. 

What’s interesting is the gradual decrease of loud (like the opening track which is nothing but barely treated static noise) into almost hypnotic and near silent “meta” suites which close out the disc. It sounds like the computer freaked out in the beginning only to be talked down from that level of insanity. 

Clearly there is something larger going on in here. Prix Ars Electronica stated: "Here was a jutting mass of digitized disturbance that fueled our direct reckoning with destabilized mathematics. (...) Spam data malformations. Direct waveform bitstream. Seizure. Disengage. Smitten." I couldn’t have said it better myself. They gave it an honorable mention.

Really, this isn’t something you’d want to delve into every day. But with the right mood and proper digital fetish, this hits the spot. There’s something oddly engaging in such random sequences that makes me happy whenever I listen to it. 

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