Giant Claw – Deep Thoughts 11.5.15 by Scott Scholz
Orange Milk’s Keith Rankin has dropped a serious grip of tapes as Giant Claw in the last half-decade. From the poly-prog of “Midnight Murder” to last year’s heavy foray into sample-based music with “DARK WEB”, Rankin is always up for new adventures. And with the new Giant Claw tape, we get a chance to peer directly between his ears and pluck out a fine set of “Deep Thoughts“.
“Deep Thoughts” is a significant departure sonically from “DARK WEB”, whose dominant R&B samples made the album a very percussion-driven affair. It’s quite different from earlier Giant Claw jams, too, which featured all kinds of funky synth tones and a fairly pianistic approach. The timbral palette of “Deep Thoughts” draws from mostly vanilla general MIDI tones, and there is little in the way of percussion. Instead, the focus is on the detailed compositions themselves, created by painstakingly entering notes directly into ye olde piano roll screen, and like you might expect of a digital corollary to Conlon Nancarrow’s player piano studies, the clean and simple sounds help you to focus directly on the wild arrangements themselves.
Conceptually, though, there is a fascinating relationship to sample-based music going on here: when Giant Claw was on tour with Darren Keen a few months ago, Rankin was talking about a concept of “soundfonts” that makes a lot of sense while jamming out to this tape. His “soundfont” concept is different than the old Creative Labs file format from the 90s. In this case, a “soundfont” is like the set of musical information that underlies the basics of a particular style or specific composer: the harmonic and melodic tendencies, the go-to rhythms, that sort of thing. You might have a piece that uses a Glass soundfont for the main section with a Gershwin soundfont in the outro, a Mozart soundfont, an Art of Noise soundfont. You can write through-composed music, using blocks of distinctive kinds of harmony, and the “soundfonts” behave much the same way that samples are used.
In “Deep Thoughts”, you’ll find that Giant Claw can acrobatically deploy almost as many soundfonts as there are general MIDI sounds to play them back with. These pieces plunder familiar flavors of harmony from throughout the 20th century and a few even earlier, deftly pulling them all into a unique, unified whole. And they’re not all “art music” (de)composers brought back to life in MIDI – many pieces, like my favorite, #09, nest their compositional complexity between opening/closing themes that sound like 80’s cop shows or game show themes. Commentary on the utility of “art music?” Aural critiques of appropriation in Western music history? Blurring the lines between sample-based and through-composed music? Deep Thoughts, indeed.
You can snag “Deep Thoughts” on cassette from the Giant Claw Bandcamp page right here, or if you’re into the compact discs, head to Virgin Babylon in Japan.
Boy, oh boy, was I late to the Vitrine party. The label, run by Allen Mozek (who also records as No Intention and is a member of both Good Area and Twin Stumps), has been around since 2013, slowly picking up speed and issuing only a handful of releases for its first two years. But while its output was meager, compared to other like-minded esoterica cassette imprints, the sounds and modest but striking packaging were – and are – downright necessary at this point, which choice highlights that include Safe House’s “Region VI“, Three Legged Race’s “Rope Commercial Vol. 2“, and Good Area’s “Dilettante” Cassette.
But Copley Medal’s mesmerizing and low-key hysteria on “Marble Cage” (VT08, Feb. 2015) was what finally got my attention, and I’m happy to report I’ve been hooked ever since. Each small batch, generally including two or three new tapes at a time, includes a range of sounds and contexts, ensuring some enjoyable level of discovery and intrigue.
This latest round of cassettes highlights both the label and Mozek’s uncanny ear for gloriously tattered sonics that nod to a number of ghastly sounds and ideas. VT15 brings the latest set of bizarrely mutated musique concrète by Tom Darksmith, the beloved tinkerer with past releases on Hanson, Kye, Chondritic Sound, and his own Mom Costume imprint. “Everyone is Welcome In My Room” plays true to Darksmith’s penchant for listlessly foreboding collages, constructing massive but desolate scenes of vague despair and almost guaranteed doom. Found sounds seamlessly intermix with Darksmith’s anonymous trove of instruments (?) and noisemakers, creating an immersive, 30-minute slab of disorienting bliss broken out into two equally engrossing parts.
Next up, 010001111000 (whether it’s pronounced “oh one oh oh oh one one one one oh oh oh” or “zero one zero zero zero one one one one zero zero zero” is yet to be confirmed) brings “lmof”, a slightly more optimistic survey of tape machine fuckery and distant, weary-eyed beauty. For tape’s opening section, dimply pastoral chords waft from some malfunctioning reel, intermittently interrupted by pure electronic signals and mis-firing wire connections. It’s a pleasantly jarring experience that leads perfectly into the tape’s wallowing meander through quietly hellish vignettes. Estranged guitar ditties and apparition-like vocals saunter into frame while other characters and distant textures take form and dissolve from moment to moment. Segues begin to fold into one another, rendering things both grotesque and beautiful obsolete.
Vitrine closes out this particular trio with a captivating tape by Mel Bentley, Philadelphia-based poet, writer, and designer. “Red Green Blue” appears to be Bentley’s debut audio recording, capturing a number of live readings, plus one piece featuring Jim Strong. Bentley’s work here revels in a visceral spew of urbanism, commercialism, identity, social media, and false sense of accomplishment. At times recorded in pure, live readings while elsewhere haphazardly lifted from a MacBook broadcasting from the other side of the room, Red Green Blue might be the perfect middle ground between the avant-poetry and experimental cassette worlds.
Make sure you follow Vitrine’s YouTube channel, perhaps the most reliable way to grab their tapes before they each disappear.
Since first launching in 2013, Vitrine has gradually but steadily released a confounding series of cassettes that speak to label founder Allen Mozek’s varied and obsessive taste in esoteric sound. Ranging from squalored noise, Spartanic musique concrete, spoken word, and just about everything in-between, the label’s catalog boasts highlights from established experimental acts (Gene Pick, Adam Bohman, Three Legged Race, Darksmith, et al.), to relative newcomers and/or new projects (Copley Medal, 010001111000, Mel Bentley, et al.), and Mozek’s own projects (No Intention, Good Area). We caught up with Mozek to track the label’s history and explore the impetus behind its recent trio of tapes.
How did the label first come together? And can you speak to why the label seems to have been picking up speed in production this year?
The first batch of Vitrine cassettes were not released with the intent of starting a label (a comically lofty term for the endeavor to this day), instead, it was simply a method by which Gabi & I could better create a context for what we were doing, outside of affiliate associations. It was also meant to harken back to the small-run cassettes and home imprint which I cherish and collect obsessively to this day, despite ever dwindling funds. I don’t quite remember what the idea was behind the second batch of VT cassettes, Gene Pick & Safe House. If I remember correctly, the goal was to move beyond the nuclear core of a domestic couple to acts who I was personally acquainted with, as was the case with Chris / Gene Pick, or through the collector’s grapevine, as was the case with Shane English of Safe House. VT04 & VT05 were initiated while Good Area was still active and as such were begun more as jokes / elaborate conceits rather than the perpetuation of a label or aesthetic. Good Area dissolved while both cassettes were in development and as such became a greater personal focus for me. Vitrine evolved into my main focus following the dissolution of Good Area. I only like to release my own creative material sparingly, so the label became an outlet for me. These early VT releases still came out to the public irregularly, as I was paying for them out of pocket while attempting to subsist on a low income wage job. But despite the span of time between, say, the A.Bolus / Copley Medal batch & the Adam Bohman / No Intention batch, I was well underway planning releases for the next year plus. In fact, the reason for the increased activity can partially be attributed to a current slackening of financial responsibilities (as much of Vitrine comes out of pocket… I don’t make any money on the tapes) and a further increase in my free time.
That is to say, my life at 31 basically consists of waking up every morning, going to work, coming home, taking a nap, and then attending to this & that for the label until I pass out and start the process all over again. An additional reason for the increased activity is the fact that many projects which were initiated, say, a year plus ago, are now seeing fruition. My favorite releases are those which enjoy long gestation periods – the Stewart Skinner cassette was set in motion before I contacted either Chris or Shane for the second VT batch. In fact, the Stewart Skinner was originally meant to be a 70+ minute CD. That was Stew’s idea and it remains a damn good one. I think someone should take him up on that offer…
Sure, I love the times when I contact an artist and they give me audio & artwork within a month & both parties are good to go. But my favorite way of working remains the long incubation – the upcoming Byron Recital Hall was initiated around the same time I contacted Robert Beatty / Three Legged Race and there are a number of other artists who I contacted around the time of the comp whose cassettes I don’t foresee coming to light until April onward 2016. I have releases up until around VT36 mapped out. These will come out at a fairly quick clip, heaven allowing. If I suddenly stop moving units, well, then that will lead to a reorientation of goals. Currently the plan is to make it to VT50 & then disappear, though I also hope to release a handful of vinyl records – Good Area’s “Macbeth”, No Intention’s “Rabelais”, a handful of items from neglected contemporaries & an archival offering or two from buried artists who I find to be of some worth / import. Short answer – I currently have a lot of time on my hands, thus the increase in production. Natch.
The latest batch is relatively varied, in terms of your previous releases. How did this batch come together?
This current batch is one of my favorite VT collections yet. That is to say, I find it one of the most left-field assemblages yet. Darksmith has been a favorite artist for a long time. Once Vitrine solidified as an extroverted label, Tom was put on the short list of dream projects I wanted to work with. Vitrine, to risk hyperbole, was started because of the efforts of projects such as Darksmith. Tom was incredibly easy to deal with and was incredibly accommodating every step of the way. He asked me if there was any figure I wanted depicted on the cover of the cassette and I asked him to draw Anna Kavan – author of the unsung SF classic Ice. 010001111000 has been, to this day, the only unsolicited submission which has manifest into an actual Vitrine release. It’s not on account of a lack of inspired material directed my way, rather, I’m a cranky curmudgeon, and I have a specific, jaundiced vision for the label. 010001111000 just so happened to dovetail into many of my obsessions and further illuminated aesthetic nooks and crannies heretofore untraveled by the label. Contact with artists past and present in Japan remains of singular concern for me, and despite the sometimes frustrating language barrier, I am striving to foster a better intravenous of exchange. Mel Bentley is a writer and poet who I met through a gallery event in Philadelphia which I helped curate called Poems in a Room. She was recommended to me as an inspired writer, I booked her and was subsequently blown away. Amelia is a fantastic poet and also someone I greatly admire personally. Like her, I also came out of the creative writing workshop program, but whereas I drifted off following undergrad into a miasma of tape music and alcohol abuse, Mel has since fostered strong contacts with amazing poets and garnered worthwhile archival jobs with Ubuweb & Penn. I personally feel that her and I occasionally intersect in terms of method, but she is much more sophisticated and developed in her approach, while I remain wild in method, due to a self-imposed explosion from academia and attendant alcohol abuse. Her cassette is one of my favorites which I have heretofore released. I am confident Amelia will accrue an impressive array of publishing credits in the near future. It’s an honor for me to work with her at this juncture. Her & I have discussed a collaborative effort, but that has been perpetually forestalled by my trenchant lassitude.
