Death Over China reviews
Anemone Tube is a German project which started out in 1996, and is counting several releases and collaborations between 1997 and 2003. After that a 7-year break ensued, and the project appeared again in 2010 with “Dream Landscape”. “Death Over China”, co-released by Israeli label Topheth Prophet and Belgian label Silken Tofu, follows immediately after that, signifying a new era of productivity for Anemone Tube. It’s a limited edition of 731 hand numbered copies, and it comes in a 5 panel folder with a 19 x 14 cm metallic/black print, packaged in transparent bag. In the artwork is included the painting “Ulysses and the Sirens” by H.J. Draper, a photograph by Jan Ciecierski, poetry by the artist, various photographs taken in China in his 2007 trip, as well as historical photographs taken around 1905 in Beijing, which depict the last public execution employing the especially cruel method of Leng T’che (the slicing of parts of the body, with the purpose of torturing the person to the extreme, and delaying the penalty of death). Now these are extremely shocking photographs, certainly not for the fainthearted – you have been warned!
“Death Over China” is comprised entirely of field recordings made during the artist’s trip in China in the year 2007, more particularly in Nanjing and Shanghai. Additional synthesizer is used only in “I Shall Forever Invoke” and “Prayer Walk”. Despite the manipulation done on the field recordings, the original ambience of the places is retained, to a degree where a complete traveller’s impression can be conveyed through the album. A somewhat distorted impression for sure, and one that digs too deep under the surface for comfort, but an impression nonetheless. Its trademark is a combination of brutal, grim noise, recorded sounds, spoken word and machinery turned into heavy, slow rhythms. Other unidentified sources provide a multi-layered complexity. A distinctive trace of dark ambient melodies lurks ominously in the background, giving a cheerless, despondent tone to the whole. Anemone Tube uses field recordings masterfully, reaching down into their inner core, surgically removing and replacing the various elements to bring to the surface their true spirit.
“Black Death Rise” begins calmly with traffic sounds from a nearby street, and slowly introduces us to the rhythmic use of found noise sources. Harrowing screams can be discerned in the background, and a monotone male voice loops over the rhythms, resembling the hypnotic chants of an urban shaman. “I Shall Forever Invoke” begins with the utilisation of patterns very similar to the previous track, adding more layers and cautiously increasing its volume, while the sharp metallic sounds and its fiendish melody inhabit an imaginary scene. In “Prayer Walk” a female voice loop prevails, repeating a public announcement. A guide from beyond, it carves a path through an infernal, frightening landscape, while static noise moves frantically, imitating the howling of the wind. “Brooding Haze” is an entanglement of many different sounds engaging in a demonic dance, the back and forth of its tempo resembling the ebb and flow of the tide of souls, the internal heartbeat of the city. In “The Announcement” the dark ambient elements of Anemone Tube’s music are more easily perceptible, as the track contains the least amount of noise in comparison to the rest. Droning and voice samples create a varying, desolate landscape, a ghostly emptiness from where occasionally spring the remnants of hope. A hope soon to be irrevocably crushed in “The Desecration From Within”, a massive wall of rhythmic death industrial, the grandiose, military air and relentless repetition of which cry out “utter annihilation”. Undoubtedly the best track of the album, and one of the best I’ve ever listened to. In the unlikely occasion of the rest of the album failing to grab your attention, this one surely will.
The combination of Draper’s paintings with the title, the overall atmosphere and the disturbing pictures of public torture, facilitates the apprehension of the concept. Death hovers over China like the ancient, eternal creature that he is, and the impressions he receives surpass the boundaries of time, in an admixture of past, present and future. Locations are haunted by their historical significance, countless little incidents, and just as many big ones, all merge under the darkness of Death’s wings. His presence can be actual, metaphysical or symbolic, can be distinguished in an individual as well as a collective level. It is found in the demise of matter, the corruption and decay of human flesh. In pain, chaos, confusion, fear. In the crushing sounds of an insatiable industrialisation, replacing memories with structures, beauty and natural order with mechanical production, human nature with its hybrid counterpart, a creature half-engine, half-man, carried away by Death’s alluring song, merging with the functions of the machine. Because the demands of life are also the demands of death, what is born must necessarily expire. Death is the ultimate ruler of all. We must necessarily succumb to life’s charms, and the moment we do so the idea becomes reality, the image becomes matter. Each beginning is indeed, an end.
That is of course, an interpretation based on my own imagination – you may very well apply your own. The fact remains however, that “Death Over China” is painfully alive, bursting with the agonizing tension of such an understanding. It grips the listener with admirable force, never letting go until the 45 minutes of the recording are over. Its devastating voices, hopeless atmospheres and stifling, crushing noise are parts of the monstrous, roaring machine that destroys everything in its path, laying its wheels sluggishly on the dusty, blood-stained ground. The screams of the perished souls pierce the air in a hellish crescendo. Despite the fact that extinction is sure to follow, you cannot help but be enticed, and willingly, even excitedly, approach it.
Rating: 5/5
Connexion Bizarre
Behind Anemone Tube is Stefan Hanser, a gifted musician who might not release much, but always astonishes with the sounds that hit the street as well as his live-performances.
Being a co-production between the Belgian Silken Tofu and the Israeli Topheth Prophet, “Death Over China” is actually the first full-time album since 2001 by Stefan alone. In between he did release some collaborations – one of them with none other then Christian Renou of Brume fame – and only last year a mini CD with DVD were released by the before mentioned Silken Tofu.
So a full album, being as beautifully designed as this one, gives us high expectations. And all of them are without any doubt fulfilled to the maximum. 45 minutes are divided into 6 tracks and starting with the first tones in ‘Black Dead Rise’ we are guided by an obviously gifted musician through a part of the world where things aren’t as they seem.
The music is a combination of well chosen, found and recorded sounds, beautiful pads and sounds in well arranged compositions, topped with aggressive and intriguing noises of unknown origin. The constant shifting of layers makes each track a little party in your brain, because at the moment you think you’re “in”, you notice there as been changes in other perspectives or layers of that track you’re listening to.
“The Desecration From Within” is the final track of the album and from a combination of drones, ambient and noisy soundscapes which made this album a beauty to begin with, suddenly the music turns almost into power electronics! With this last track Anemone Tube shows us that he is capable of way more then what we could expect to begin with.
The field recordings were recorded in China on a trip Stefan made in 2007. That same trip was the time when he made the pictures which form the base for the artwork, which shows his professional background / daytime job as a graphic designer as well.
To say it in one word: “buy!”
[9/10]
– Bauke van der Wal
Anemone Tube “Death Over China” CD
I’m glad to see AT is getting more attention that it used to. To me, this album is one of the proof how modern technology can work well for experimental music when used well. Anemone Tube has nearly completely abandoned synthesizers and focuses on treatment of field recordings. Clarity and texture of various sounds recorded in his trips in China perhaps could not have happened in times when portable high quality gear was expensive and perhaps too big to carry in your pocket. Possibilities to edit and layer sound on software allows many possibilities to fail, yet also many possibilities to adjust and take care of every detail.
Despite sources being a collection of every day life, we aren’t talking of academic sound art. Death Over China is most of all post-industrial release… whatever that means anymore? It’s structure has more common with genres of dark ambient, death industrial and such, but simply textures of material is much more interesting than the traditional keyboards and rhythmboxes. Extensive usage of loops and effect heavy processing still allows the natural sounds come through, and this is absolutely the strength of this album.
It may carry the cinematic feel, occasionally nearly soundtrack type atmosphere, but isn’t cheesy. Cover is like previous album. Multi-panel DVD size cardboard sleeve, with golden printed poetry, photos related to the music. I played this album 5 times without removing it from CD player. And it still makes me want to listen it again. I’m sucker for loops and physical sounds. If one has to go and find negative sides, perhaps next time Anemone Tube will be able to create pieces with more drastic shifts or modulation within the track itself. This is often faulty of digital layering, where density of loops may appear to be enough, but after repeated listens, you feel the hand crafted unpredictable movement to unknown ending of track would be nice. Instead of elements just being there until song ends. Almost like it started.
(Special Interests #6, MA, July 2011)
MAEROR 3
http://maeror3.livejournal.com/tag/anemone%20tube
Anemone Tube “Death Over China” CD
*** Google translator ***
From his travels in China, Stefan Hanser brought not only a set of recordings made by them on busy streets or in the quiet temples, but also a sense that this country like no other, a country of contrasts. In the design of the booklet «Death Over China» this is expressed by an impressive array of images – prayer plaques, cheerful advertising and sketches from living side by side with the average citizen photos of public executions and other fanaticism, until recently included in the compulsory program of life in Chinese society.
Hanser is using only field recordings (plus ambient synthesizer sketches add to the mood of a couple of things), collecting from them is not “travel photos on memory,” a very extreme music, exciting styles are related, as the power electronic, noise and dark ambient with the monotonous roar metal objects and static pressure of flow noise, which is rushed from one stereo channel to another. Turned apocalyptic sketches, a collection of familiar urban and rural sounds, mixed together, forming long loops of moving voices and din of different mechanisms, frightening and mesmerizing at the same time. Mind you realize that this is – only speaker in the square, shouting torgovok street, rattling the old bikes, which lead to the spokes of an iron rod, the signals of automobiles and other everyday sounds, but when it’s all condensed into such hatred and malice charged segments, «Prayer Walk »with its rough, electronics or« The Desecration From Within »(real noise martial with pretentious declamations, echoing the rhythm of marching and fine dispersion noise, the cutting of the brain), you begin to feel at least uncomfortable. The balanced chaos «Anemone Tube» listen to in one breath, making follow all the mutations and unexpected sound alliances. Industrial from field recordings, musique concrete, pulled out of the history of the whole country, most unsightly (or, conversely, evoking pride of its inhabitants) moments – in any case, it’s definitely worth a listen. Shake.
(Sergey Oreshkin, Russia, July 2011)
Vital Weekly 787
ANEMONE TUBE – DEATH OVER CHINA (CD by Topheth Prophet)
Anomene Tube is a noise-project formed in the Southern part of Germany in 1996. Strong influences to the compositional approach of the project is the nihilistic rhetoric works of Michael Haneke, Hayoao Miayazaki and H.P. Lovecraft combined with buddhist psychology and concrete sounds from the real world. All tracks of this album titled “Death over China”, are exclusively developed from the use of field recordings. The piece “I shall forever invoke” is the only piece where there are integrations of synthesizer. For this particular piece the synthesizers adds a nice atmospheric soundscape on the background of field recordings. The piece “Prayer walk” is an abrasive beast where the noise drones makes a pure impact on the listener. Screeching noise drills into the ears with additions of distant voices adding a great apocalyptic atmosphere to the piece. Also the piece titled “Brooding haze” drills a deep impression into the listener thanks to the monotonous high frequency noise-sounds operating on top of crushing power electronics and concrete metal sounds. “Death over China” is a part of the so-called “Suicide Series” – a series that aims to express the self-destructive tendency by the modern population due to the social and highly industrialized global development. The album comes in a beautiful art-work in dvd-sized format with early photographs and paintings from early 20th century. Excellent work of noise art. (NM)
