Label: NEXT Festival Records

真骨頂ソロ!!電子音楽や即興演奏、サウンドアート、オーディオビジュアルまで、様々な音実験の探求が披露されるスロバキアの祭典NEXT Festival。この団体が20周年を機に始動した、フェスティバルのライブ録音音盤化シリーズ!!本作は、2021年2月に惜しくも他界したフランスアヴァン界孤高の奇才ゲダリア・タザルテスのグループReines D'Angleterreの一員としても活動したEl-Gの2018年パフォーマンス音源。音の扱いやセンスなど、まさにタザルテスのスタイルを受け継いだ奇怪な音楽性を持つ人物で、グズグズなドラムマシン・ループに合わせ意味不明な歌唱やら音響をドカドカと投下。美しいデザインのパッケージ。





The Quietus:
Recorded in 2018 at NEXT festival in Bratislava, Zwarte Vijvers is two side long pieces by Belgian singer-mangler Èlg, a consistently underrated musician who made my favourite release on Hundebiss records about ten years ago, and who collaborated with the late Ghédalia Tazartès and Jo Tanz as Reines d'Angleterre for a Bo'Weavil LP which also comes highly recommended. Sonically, Èlg and Tazartes are a good match – they operate in similar spheres of not-songs, with different geographical and generational touchpoints. Here, there's singing once removed, as if performing to an unknown audience neither in this world nor the next (despite it being a live recording to an audience in meatspace). There are murky (but not doomy) drum machines defiantly un-synced and off-beat, exploited for their percussive function but not their rhythm keeping capacity. There's a distinctive weft to his recordings, something dry and claggy and tangled, and a sense in which a performance of songs looms in a blind spot I cannot quite focus on. I love it.