Jérôme Noetinger/Will Guthrie - Face Off (CD)

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Erstwhile 064

Jerome Noetinger plays tape machine Revox, and electronics; Will Guthrie plays drums, percussion, microphones, and electronics. Six-panel digipak packaging, artwork by Liz Rácz; design by Yuko Zama.

For lossless (16/44) files, go to this page.
TRACK LIST

1.   SNIDE (1:05)
2.  CREEP SHOW (2:45)
3.  SLO-NIFE (5:04)
4.  SWAMP (7:58)
5.  LE ANALISE (3:08)
6.  CYMSLAKE (1:01)
7.  SAW (3:18)
8.  CARPET BURN (2:24)
9.  ATELIER FORGE (2:59)
10.  CRACKNEY (3:39)
11.  SAIKOPASU-KOMENTO (0:56)
12.  SUNDAY MORNING ENGLISH WINE (3:10)

(released November 11, 2011)
CREDITS

Jérôme Noetinger: tape machine Revox, electronics
Will Guthrie: drums, percussion, microphones, electronics

recorded at Les Ateliers de Bitche, Nantes on 10/12 May 2010 and at The Planetarium, Poitiers on 15 May 2010
constructed in Nantes, Rives, and hotel rooms in Wels and Mulhouse in 2010/2011.

artwork by Liz Rácz
design by Yuko Zama
REVIEWS

MM, Paris Transatlantic Magazine
With a splutter, a multi-registral hum and a muffled bang, this wild ride of a disc begins. It peters out in a similar way, just sort of blinking out of existence. The title is apt: unlike the other offering in this newest pair of Ersts, Face Off is a breathtaking immersion in confrontational disunity and extremes of contrast. Noetinger and Guthrie pack more into 37 minutes than most musicians do in twice that length, and throughout, I keep hearing that Tom Waits line from "Step Right Up": "It's new, it's improved, it's old-fashioned." The duo has created an unmistakable homage to the glory days of musique concrète, with its whiplash juxtapositions and dizzying manipulations. Noetinger's tape tricks are blatantly of the 1960s, making for a bit of nostalgia along the way, as do the many instances of turntable acrobatics. However, there's also an obvious in-your-face pleasure in pushing the limits of volume, register and pain in a way that only more recent technology can manage. Check out the moment in "Snide" where an almost human roar suddenly disappears into digital silence. Similarly startling is the point in "Creep Show" where Guthrie's percussive electronics give way, without warning, to one of the most beautifully captured thunderstorms to grace my listening room – a demo-quality field recording, to be sure.
The music is at once delicate and savage. Top volume sounds are packed with extra punch, as if the pair took a page from Iancu Dumitrescu's book. Their compositions certainly don't mirror his brand of long-form development, but there's certainly a link to the way Dumitrescu treats sound on a piece like "Pierres Sacrées." Even small metallic taps are made larger through distortion while maintaining a sense of delicacy, and the same is true with the polyrhythmic taps on "Saw." Another fascinating dichotomy involves the soundstage, where wide stereo is contrasted with blaring mono; listen to how the left channel enters, rather surreptitiously, on the largely center-stage "Crackney."
As with several recent Erstwhile releases, there is a sense in which earlier material returns later in the disc, but here, no real sense of unity results. I can work out no underlying concept save the joy in sonic manipulation, reconstruction and destruction, and that's good enough for me.