Phil Minton & Dieb13 - With, without [KlangGalerie - 2020]With, without is a decidedly crazed, at point’s manic & deranged journey into odd vocalizing/weird mouth sounds, and scuttling/churning turn-tabling/ dada noise making. The CD release appears on Austrian experimental music/ sound label KlangGalerie. The players here are Phil Minton- a jazz/free-improvising vocalist and trumpeter. He has in the past lent his dramatic baritone voice to reading of literary texts, as well as other literary-inspired collaborations. But he is most known for his completely free-form vocal work, which involves "extended techniques" that can be as unsettling as they can be mesmerising- which is what he does here. Dieb13 aka Austrian improvisational musician Dieter Kovaèiè - works mostly with turntables- since the late 1980s he has experimenting with cassette players, vinyl records, CDs and hard discs.
The one hour & four-minute track featured here is seemingly a mixed & merged selection of six or so live recordings the pair have made between 2009 & 2017. And boy it’s a wacky & brain-twisting trip, and depending on your temperament/enjoyment of manic/ crazed sound-scaping- it will either be a heady & unsettling trip, or a decidedly annoying & grating chore.
The track is built around a constantly shifting sonic map of Minton’s vocal tics, weird alien rantings, gurgles, hisses, growls, warblings, slurps & twitters. These are lightly added to by Dieb13 equally wonky sound world- that moves from light grating & uneasy drones, improv like honks & scuttles, muzak snippets, vinyl grain etc. For an hour plus track the pair certainly keep the whole thing both eventful & daring, and really your not sure quite what you’ll come across next. On the whole, I enjoyed the ride, though I felt it might have worked better if there had been maybe a few index points/ breaks- as taking the whole thing as an hour shot can at times be a little too much, and it would be neat to home in on favourite points too.
With, Without is certainly sonic sound-scaping at it’s most unpredictable & jarring- with both Minton & Dieb13 working well together to create ultimate derangement- certainly not a release for everyone, but if you dig this type of thing you’ll find this a hell of a sonic rollercoaster ride. Roger Batty
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