Koufar — The Death Of Myself

This tape, delivered to you by New Forces in an edition of fifty, is a fantastic slice of Maronite Power Electronics. (It’s not often you get an opportunity to make statements like that, so you have to grab them when you can..!) It’s packaged simply, in black and white, with the somewhat austere exterior complimenting the sounds within.

There’s three separate tracks; though the second of these, “Daily Life”, is very short - and is indeed recordings of voices, street noises and gunshots. The two longer tracks more-or-less take up a side of tape each. Both are founded on choral recordings: the first, “Dies Irae Pt.II”, starts with distorted male choral voices; the second, “The Death Of Bachir (The Death Of Myself)”, is based on a recording of a mixed choir with orchestra. These recordings are distorted, abused and manipulated; though they never stray far from intelligibility. Screaming vocals are projected over this, punctuated by squalling feedback. In many respects, that’s that. To be honest, I was very excited about this tape before I played it; but, after my first listen, I did think, “OK, its a guy screaming over some choral records..?”. Which is a fair reaction, because that’s precisely what it is. But, after my ears had delved a little more, I really did start to appreciate the sheer force of the tracks.

I think part of my problem was Koufar’s use of choral music… I like choral music, and go through phases of listening to it - so my ears picked up on it straight away and gravitated towards these elements of “The Death Of Myself”. But I think these same elements were also encouraging me to play it quieter than it needs to be; and indeed encouraging me to think of the tracks in quieter terms than they should be. When I finally conceived of them blasting at my body at a deafening volume, through a gigantic P.A., it all made sense to me. In this light, the latter stages of “The Death Of Bachir...” are quite hellish: a wall of delay pedal fucked maelstrom and squall. (The short burst of feedback that ends the tape is beautifully stinging.)

Its tempting to draw a parallel here between Koufar’s use of an existing record or track as a foundation, and Ghostface Killah’s use of the same (“Holla”, or “Big Girl”): both lay vocals over a track without changing or adapting it to any great degree. With both, the record is very much the material: it’s not a sample or just a signifying colouring, it constitutes the entire track. Koufar has taken the nuts and bolts of Power Electronics and replaced them with a choral record. But where the Ghostface tracks retain their identities as songs, the choral tracks lose many of their usual connotations, and become something closer to pure sound. At the same time, where the Delfonics or the Stylistics essentially provide Ghostface Killah with a rhythmic and melodic framework, the choral pieces are there, to me at least, to stimulate and magnify an emotional resonance and response within Koufar. This makes for a very powerful, and brave, cassette