TAPPER
Your track by track guide to this month's free double CD
4THEWIRE
CD1
01 LIARS GROWN MEN DON'T FALL IN THE RIVER JUST LIKE THAT Although hailed in some quarters as New York 's next big thing, none of the members of this Gang Of Fourj Pere Ubu loving group actua lly hail from there. Singer Angus Andrew is from Australia, guitarist Aaron Hemphill was an art student in LA, while Pat Noecker and Ron Albertson are cornhuskers from Nebraska . "Grown Men Don 't Fall In The River Just Like That" is from the Blast First release , Rns To Make Us More Fish-Like.
02 THEMSELVES HAT IN THE WIND After changing their name from Them in order to avoid a letter writing campaign from the Van Morrison fanclub, the duo of MC/ poet laureate of the Don Coscarelli set Dose One and producer; sampler svengali Je l retreated to their art brut rain forest to slay their personal demons and rescue damsels in distress . Th eir adventures are recounted on Anticon's latest post-modern roman picaresque, The No Music., a densely layered , richly detai led, utterly bonkers HipHop co ll age/ fingerpaintingjRorschach inkblot.
03 TARWATER 70 RUPIES TO PARADISE ROAD Th e duo of Ronald Lippok and Bernd Jestram has been one of the mainstays of the contemporary Krautrock scene since their 1996 debut, John Donne- Death's Duel. Over numerous releases on the Kitty-Yo , Soul Static Sound and Gusstaff labels , Tarwater have exp lored warm, e lectronic soundscapes interspersed with loping , looping structures and cut 'n ' paste dynamics. Th eir latest a lbum , Dwellers On The Threshold, features appearances from To Rococo Rot's Stefan Schneider and Ghanaian percussionist Nicholas Addo-Nettey, whi le on "70 Rupies To Paradise Road ", Norwegian performance artist Tone Avenstroup narrates.
04 MUM WE HAVE A MAP OF THE PIANO Formed in 1997 whi le the members were all working on a childrens' play, Mum (Gunnar 6rn Tynes , 6rvar F6reyjarson Smarason and twin sisters Gya and Kristln Anna Valtysd6ttir) are yet another group who were influenced by Aphex Twin to drop the guitars in favour of electronics . With the l i l ting melancholy, naive folk melodies and ch ildli ke voca ls of their Fat Cat album Finally We Are No One, they have come up with a fairytale electronica reminiscent of Boards Of Canada.
05 BADAWI EVOCATION Across a number of releases as Badawi , as one half of Sub Dub (with John Ward) , as part of Rotor (w ith DJ Olive and To sh io Kajiwara) and under his own name , Raz Mesinai has sought to integrate various Middle Eastern percussion traditions, dub princip les and e lectronics . Equally influenced by Sufi chanting and Jewish cantors, Jerusalem-born Mesinai brings a spi ritual and real-world grounding to the rootlessness usually impli ed by such Fourth World g lobetrotting.
06 SUICIDE SWEARIN' TO THE FLAG Su icide, of cou rse, are the origin al art-electro-punks. Much of the music we now take for granted would be unthinkable without their minimal, hot-wired psychobilly, and two generations of 'producers' , In dustrialists, e lectro-c lashers and noiseniks bow their laptop heads to them . A decade after their last album, Martin Rev and Alan Vega are back to their confrontational best on American Supreme, one of the few, if not on ly, albums to examine the American psyche post-9 / 11 and ask difficult questions .
07 SUPERSILENT C-4.1 Thi s Norwegian e lectric j azz quartet consists of producer Helge Sten (electronics) , Sta le Storl0kken (keyboards) , Arve Henriksen (trumpet, electronics, voice) and Jarle Vespestad (drums). Their nervous , j i t tery rhythm blowout is superimposed on Henriksen ' s windswept drone swashes in a post-Miles meltdown to make your trousers quiver. This exc lu sive live recording from the Moers Festival in 2001 is produced by Deathprod (Sten's other alias) .
OB POLWECHSEL/FENNESZ FRAMING X (RECONSTRUCTED BY PATRICK PULSING ER) The Vienna based microsound Polwechsel quartet, consisting of bassist Werner Dafeldecker, ce lli st Michael Moser, gu i tarist Burkhard Stangl and saxophonist John Butcher, has joined forces with melodic laptop explore r Christian Fennesz for this one-off Erstwhile collaboration. " Framing X" is an exc lu s ive reworking by fellow Viennese Patrick Pulsinger (aka Sluts 'N' Strings & 909) . Rather than remix one track , Pulsinger took the whole PolwechseljFennesz album, Wrapped Islands , and reconstructed it.