John Wiese & C.Spencer Yeh — New York/ Atlanta
First up we have the untitled track recorded in the silent Barn in New York in October 2007. It starts off juddering and awkward with jagged cut-up's of scratched static tone, noise smarts, looped haunted melodic tones and Easter percussion. Before long C. Spencer Yeh grating violin tones circle on and through the jutting and jugged cut-up textures. As the piece progresses it alternates and breaks from new cut-up static, mike drag and muffled tones and Spencer's sawin/picking tones and possible some jagged and manic improvised guitar tone. It keeps fidgety, manic and hectic for most of its running only going towards the odd more noisy peaks towards the middle of the 21 minute track, where you also find Spencer angling out some quite harmonic violin saws as the track takes on quite a haunted side to its vibe.
Next up is the other untitled track this was recorded a few days after the first in trackAtlanta. It starts off with strange picking and kissing like electro tones which are then added to by strange growled, breathing and sucking voice tones as the sound picture gets denser. A smarting almost harmonic electro tone keeps feeding in and out of the bizarre sound tapestry, also a bizarre snoring nasally sleeping like tone enters purring over the top. As the track progresses things start to get more searing and painful as higher pitched sounds enter the mix along with crashing static tones, but it keeps thinning out again before filling it’s self in once more with more and more demented tones. About mid way in the 35 minute track more recognisable violin sawing and abuse becoming clear and again it returns to more harmonic airs here and there too, before in it’s finally moments going towards more haunted and a little creepy murky drone waters with a boiling noise feed surface.
I’ll have to admit I’ve found Spencer's work on it’s own a little hit and miss in the past, but it seems Wiese really seems to bring out his more creative and rewarding side. I really hope some more live sets are forthcoming on Wiese Helicopter label as both of these track are highly rewarding, creative pieces of noise and improvised matter.