Anne-F Jacques & Tim Olive
Tooth Car
Pyramid Atlantic, Washington DC, November 7, 2015 (12:30)
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, November 15, 2015 (18:14)
int020
CD, digisleeve, insert / edition of 200
15 July 2016
Заказать диск / Order CD
На двадцатом релизе Intonema выпускает дуэт канадских музыкантов Энн-Эф Жак и Тима Олива! Их первый альбом вышел в 2014-м году на лейбле 845 Audio перед японским туром. В ноябре 2015-го года они совершили северо-американские гастроли, записи с которых и представлены на новом диске под названием Tooth Car. Олив, проживающий в Кобе, работает с магнитным звукоснимателем для усиления резонансов и вибраций; Жак занимается собранными вручную вращающимися поверхностями, подзвученными и препарированными. Оба музыканта используют минимальное количество внешней обработки сигналов, а потому их саунд является естественным, что позволяет уловить сыгранное в первозданном виде. Иллюстрации для оформления нарисованы известной художницей Жюли Дюсе.
For our 20th release we are announcing the Canadian duo of Anne-F Jacques and Tim Olive! Their first album was released in 2014 on the 845 Audio label, prior to a Japan tour. In November 2015 they undertook a North American tour, recordings from which are presented on this new disс, Tooth Car. Kobe resident Olive uses magnetic pickups to amplify resonances and vibrations. Jacques employs intriguing self-made rotating surfaces, prepared and amplified. Both musicians use minimal external sound processing, mainly equalization, therefore their work is very direct, tactile and raw. The live recordings of Tooth Car highlight the duo's time-honed rapport and surprisingly natural and organic music. The illustrations used for the album are created by renowned artist Julie Doucet.
Anne-F Jacques: rotating surfaces, objects
Tim Olive: magnetic pickups
Рецензии / Reviews:
"The Anne-F Jacques/Tim Olive collaboration came courtesy of a kindly soul who realised I didn’t have enough Tim Olive collaborations in my life. Tooth Car arrives on a Russian label that's new to me and comes in a splendid fold out slip case designed by St Petersburgh noise maker Ilia Belorukov that's covered in the striking black and white lines of the notorious/infamous Canadian comic artist Julie Doucet. Anne-F Jacques is credited with ‘rotating surfaces, objects and mastering while Olive is of course on his ever present magnetic pickups. Its two tracks are taken from live performances as recorded in 2015 in Washington and Boston, its where magnetic pickups working with rotating surfaces and objects makes for an ever revealing listen, its like having an army of ants crawl all over you as slowly melting glaciers grind up giant granite boulders. Gentle loops of degradation weave in and out of the grime and there's tension and within that tension calm and if that sounds like a contradiction then so be it. The second outing is much more subdued with tiny scratching and scraping though this is no less gripping and there’s gaps, yes actual gaps, silence that slowly becomes filled with the looping sounds …. of what? Who knows? Thats a major part of the appeal.
Tooth Car was released a couple of years back but according to the Intomena website is still available. Please feel free."
(Idwal Fisher)
"Recordings culled from two stops on a 2015 tour by the pair, each wielding an assortment of electronics. Rotational devices are clearly in effect (more from Jacques, I think) and provide an effective throb 'n' pulse to undergird the excellent grimy, raw noise that makes up the core language. It's an area explored by many others, a generation of industrial-grade sounds that cycle in varying phases, creating an infernal-factory aura. But it's also one I'm quite partial to, easily imagining myself in such a climate, immersed in the massive sound slabs, aurally buffeted by the whir and clank of rusty gears, the groans of decaying turbines, etc. The first of the two tracks is more in this dense vein, the second imparting a feeling of an abandoned space, the machines still humming but less insistently, neglected, farther along the path to end of their functional life. Good stuff."
(Brian Olewnick, Just Outside)
"If Fuyu was all about friction, pitting its protagonists against each other to produce a rag-bag of combustibles, Tooth Car, a record of two meetings with Tim Olive during a US Tour in November 2015, puts integration to the fore.
Olive’s magnetic pickup explorations are a perfect match for Jacques’ rotating surfaces, and much sonic synergy ensues. The sounds are grainy and gorgeous, especially on the first cut, taken from a show in Washington, whose grit and rumble sounds like a blowtorch scrapping with an angle grinder in the dining car of a steam train.
It’s aggressive all right, although the ever-present repetitions that churn unsteadily in the background add an appropriate note of sinister mesmerism. The second track, this time from Boston, is more subdued, with some great scraggy inhales reminiscent of an ancient sleeping housecat early on. A sleek motorik reduction, seasoned by irregular mewls and warbles, quickly transforms into a queasy, pulsing lurch that would be charming if it weren’t for the gloomy low-end cloud surrounding it. It’s as suffocating as the hour before a summer storm, but here the promised downpour never occurs and things tail off with a satisfyingly serpentine whimper." (Paul Margree, We Need No Swords)
"Tim Olive and Anne-F Jacques are grinding the meat once again on Tooth Car (INTONEMA int020), and a welcome return for this duo who we last heard rubbing their bits together on Dominion Mills in 2014, when they did it with rotating electric motors and magnetic pickups. That particular orgy of action seemed to strike me as a rich sun-drenched drone for some reason, an observation we can’t exactly apply to Tooth Car. The first cut, recorded in Washington DC on one November night in 2015, completely reflects the short nights and grim overcast days of that particular month, and listening to this airless, grey scrapey music is like living the shortest month of the year over again, with all the cold and depression it usually brings. What’s interesting is how to duo start off by making a recognisable pattern or rhythm with their abstract gronks, then stop doing that when they realise it’s got the potential for fun or amusement. The remainder of the cut is like being pulled on the world’s slowest sledge through the world’s coldest snow by the world’s sickest team of huskies. I wasn’t in a hurry, in any case.
Well, eight days later they were doing it again, this time in a venue in Boston. Evidently they must have agreed between themselves that the Washington gig was far too “interesting”, and decided to tone down the excitement levels by about 18 degrees. Accordingly, the rule of thumb for this slow performance must have been to switch to the “unplugged” mode; if Anne-F Jacques had wooden, hand-cranked rotaries at her disposal, this would have been the time to use them. And if Tim could figure out a way to play magnetic pickups in a manner that didn’t depend on electricity, he’d be filing a patent this instant. Nevertheless they did the best they could, and the minimal, uneventful results are all yours to savour for 18 minutes of ritualistic mystification. I think the title Tooth Car is highly suitable for this release, and conjures up visions of a particularly wayward approach to dentistry, unlikely to be approved by the American Dental Association any time soon. The very good drawings for this release’s cover are by Julie Doucet, a fine Canadian underground comic artist who used to produce a book called Dirty Plotte. If these hard-edge abstractions are anything to go by, she seems to have relinquished her earlier taboo-breaking predilections. From 15th August 2016." (Ed Pinsent, The Sound Projector)
"Creating music that’s like the soundtrack for a building-site documentary, sound artists Anne-F Jacques of Montreal and Kobe-based Canadian ex-pat Tim Olive use magnetic pickups and amplified rotating surfaces to generate industrial-style improvisations. It’s ironic that the work of players residing in two of the world’s most technologically sophisticated countries appears to symbolically reflect the grinding turbulence of an early Industrial Revolution factory, rather than twenty-first century high tech. Perhaps the intersecting crunches, crackles, and crumbles produced by the duo’s self-made and altered sound sources are an attempt to return to group-toil variants of the individual craftsmanship that characterized pre-Industrial Revolution manufacturing.
Another striking aspect of the program is how much acoustic sound occupies Jacques and Olive’s sound field. There may be vague suggestions of signal-processed rumbles on the first track and wave-form-like crackles and static on the second, lengthier one, but overall, as the equivalent textures of glass-breaking, jack-hammering and in-and-out-of-focus oscillations accelerate in volume, visions of a Thomas Edison-like back-shop work-bench crowd out thoughts of a sleek, sterile IBM-like research laboratory. Tooth Car’s first track ends with circular wheel-like rumbles, abruptly truncated. Is it quitting time or delivery time? The second track contains more mechanized allusions, ranging from soft-drink-bottle-like pops to assembly-line-like clatters and crunches. Eventually, the rumbles and buzzes become more distant and subtle as a final unvarying organ-like chord gives way to an allusion to more expansive space.
Recorded in two different locations, this CD’s sounds may be as harsh and relentless as any industrial process. But, intentionally or not, Jacques and Olive have coordinated their altered but up-to-date equipment to create a fundamental sound program, while simultaneously commenting on its excesses."
(Ken Waxman, Musicworks / Jazz Word)
"Il duo elettroacustico canadese, ripreso dal vivo nel 2015 a Washington e Boston.
Materia cruda, manipolata zero o niente nello spazio azione/elaborazione/diffusione.
Pick-ups magnetici a trafficar fra vibrazioni e risonanze (Tim Olive), oggetti e superfici in movimento amplificate (Anne-F Jacques).
Il trionfo del prossimo a rompersi, preparato e amplificato, del generatore di suono autoprodotto inceppato sul principio, di tensioni e intromissioni di concreto su concreto.
Primitivo e gracidante, pervaso da sibilar d'inneschi dispersi in ambienti parassiti, di stiracchiamenti meccanici, di riti d'ammasso stordenti.
Di contrazioni e bisbiglio ambientale, di un passo in una stanza, metalli e sfregamenti.
Ragguardevole emissione."
(Marco Carcasi, Kathodik)
"Tooth Car features Canadians Anne-F Jacques and Tim Olive playing live in the US: two fairly short extracts, which may be all that is needed for audio only. The limitations here are mechanical. Jacques constructs rotating surfaces that are played and amplified, while Olive amplifies other objects with magnetic pickups. The rotating devices provide regular ostinati throughout each piece and the various colours of metallic scraping suggest something close to sound sculpture."
(Ben Harper, Boring Like A Drill)
"Людям нравятся дома, хорошо построенные - в них приятно жить. Вся музыка в каком-то смысле является таким домом. Но дом невозможно построить без плотника - кто займется рамами? Без водопроводчика - кто проложит трубы? Без электрика - откуда возьмется свет? Экспериментальная музыка - нойз и импров - это работа с основами музыкального строения, - на чем будет замешен бетон для фундамента нового дома через пару десятков лет? Да, все это как бы в тени происходит, больших аплодисментов не срывает, скорее - нудная научная, исследовательская работа.
Новый альбом Intonema - не потрясает, не поражает, но - интересен. Что можно сделать из уже привычных уху звуков магнитного и пьезодатчиков, практически не обработанных? Крайне аскетичная тембральная основа, известные "деконструированные" сэмплы - получающиеся благодаря вращению датчиков по поверхности - оснастка старая. Стуки, хрипы, хрюки и писки - вроде давно знакомые и где-то слышанные, а вот развитие материала заставляет прислушаться. То есть состояние - уже совсем иное. Мне не хочется задаваться вопросом, электроакустическая это импровизация, или сделанный материал или что-то еще, в данном случае имеешь дело с хорошей музыкой."
(Андрей Поповский, Facebook)
"Many of the works by Tim Olive are released on his own 845 Audio label, but this new duet with Anne-F Jacques comes through the Intonema label in St. Petersburg. Usually releases on that label are recorded at the Experimental Sound Gallery in the same city, but in this case it's two live recordings from Washington DC and Boston, in November 2015. Earlier this year I saw a concert by Olive and his current set up, which is basically a bunch of magnetic pickups, and a bunch of objects that he uses to amplify them. Anne-F Jacques, who is from Canada, plays rotating surfaces and objects. She has worked with Olive before (see Vital Weekly 942), as well as others from the world of improvisation. Like that previous release this is not a very long release, spanning this time only thirty-ones minutes, but what is pressed inside these minutes is some great intense improvised music. The rotating surfaces of Jacques provide an odd element in that world; slow loops of highly amplified sounds, almost like a concrete surface with smaller stones bumping regularly along that. On top of that there is the sounds played by Olive, which is from the department of 'smaller sounds', which provide a fine anti-thesis to the heavy concrete sound of Jacques; it doesn't seem to be as wild as their previous release, and this time around they touch upon a more delicate and yet heavy ground. No bouts of noise, or slipping into feedback, but two pieces of careful playing with an excellent sense of interacting between these two players. This one I enjoyed even more than their previous collaboration."
(Frans De Waard, Vital Weekly)