Soft Petrification by FâLX çèrêbRi / Greathumour

Reviewed by Frans de Waard in Vital Weekly, Issue 1220:

"Back in the '80s, there was [FâLX çèrêbRi's] 'Rite 64', a cassette on Graf Haufen Tapes and in 2014, Russia's Monochrome Vision released 'Trials Textures Errors', a compilation of odd bits ad bops. Graf Haufen, also known as Karsten Rodemann, went into video
business in the second half of the '80s and that ended his musical career. I wrote this before, but without him, you would not be reading Vital Weekly. A bold statement, but true fact. Go back to the review of that CD in Vital Weekly 944 and learn why. Since a few years, Rodemann has a Bandcamp page where he posts new music bits, but on this split cassette we find a longer recording of a concert from 1984; about half of that concert was found on the CDR re-issue of 'Rite
64' from the late '90s and which sold about 10 copies as no-one cared about old cassette releases in the late ’90s.

I know this because I released it. I was listening to this twenty-eight minute live recording and thinking about people who don't have a similar connection to this; what would they make of this? Hard to tell, of course, as it depends also on what one has already heard in the field of industrial music. That is certainly the label one could attach to this music and FâLX çèrêbRi uses feedback, very primitive forms of sampling, voice and somewhere the middle, slab bang a silly keyboard tune. No doubt there was a performance aspect that we miss out upon, but it still sounds great. The other track on this side is a short piece of manipulated percussion. It made me think that I would still love to hear a cassette that compiles all the compilation tracks from FâLX çèrêbRi from those days. That would be something for a label with such interests (I am thinking of Tribe Tapes or even the Regional Bears label here!)

On the other side, there is music by Greathumour, of whom I never heard. Tribe Tapes describe them as 'raw psychedelic noise', and that is something I would certainly agree with. This is not your typical harsh noise wall release, but something that is forcefully loud, using the rainbow colours of stompboxes to transform a whole load of organ/drone-based sounds from one or two synthesizers bubbling and oscillating away. Second to that are manipulations of sounds from cassettes or reels that are freely scattered around in some of these tracks. That may explain some of the more psychedelic qualities of the music. A great combination and I have no idea if this is a young meet old sort of thing, or otherwise. It surely fits together."

Independent cassette label specializing in limited runs of noise, experimental, and electronic music.

https://www.tribetapes.com/

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