Ypsmael: electronics, field recordings, acoustic and amplified objects, mangled voice, baritone guitar, drums
Eloine: invented instruments, found objects, field recordings
Mixed and mastered by David Michalak
Special thanks to Dylan Nyoukis
Released on Chocolate Monk in May 2022
chocolatemonk.co.uk/available.html
[SOLD OUT]
Only few last copies are still available from Eloine directly, contact via Eh? / Public Eyesore, San Francisco.
www.publiceyesore.com/contact.php
Reviews:
Seymour Glass (Bananafish Magazine / Tedium House) for Chocolate Monk, 2022: ‘Here’s something that’ll keep your kitchen lit. (For you 20-year-olds, a “kitchen” is like the break room at work, but in your apartment.) From front to back, this disc hits like possessed plasmatic visitations happening in the middle of an otherwise silent instructional cooking program. You know that means metallic borborygmus and delicious lurching — the percussive collateral damage recognizable to anyone who has attended after-hours jousting with live but grievously unwell horses in a public library. Fear not, disdainers of randomized flail, Ypsmael + Eloine have done this before (because late fees). The duo maintains a delectable balance between electro fweep, tape fwip, and considered fwunk of the hit-it-or-quack ilk — without neglecting, as some of our peers are wont (let’s face it), sonic backdrops that enhance the ambient depth of field. The beautiful yet unprecious recording and the bounty of friction throughout Lost Teeth bring to mind a compact, super-portable Nuova Consonanza. Oh, yes they do. The homemade instrument, the field recording, the non-musical object, and the musical instrument manipulated outside the bounds of tradition propriety serve the needs of these two freedom-lickers, based respectively in Germany and San Francisco, a detail that should scream “secret tingle spoken here.’
Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly (#1342), 2022: ’[…] The music is finely executed, controlled chaos of sounds overlapping and bouncing. Of percussive attacks, non-rhythmical of metal threads strung across the floor; a thud and a thump here and there, and Ypsmael creating ever changing masses of sounds, bubbling and burping, like a pan on a hot stove. You couldn’t list this a drone music, or improvisation, or even electroacoustic music as it is a bit of all of that. What I particularly enjoyed about this release is the vibrant character of the music. It seems always moving and changing, which gives great speed to the music. Think all those people who crawled on stage with their contact microphones, carefully touching upon objects, but on 78 rpm. Moving and shaking, moving and shaking. Very direct, in your face music, but that’s something of a trademark for Day, I believe. Eight pieces of energy in forty-two minutes and all stones and tables turned, all amplified and all heard. Excellent.’
Rigo Dittmann, Bad Alchemy (#115), 2022: ’[…] So auch hier mit jenem Kollegen in Baden-Württemberg, den bei „Box of Black“ (BA 113) die Berührung mit dem schwarzen Monolithen in einen industrial lärmenden nackten Affen verwandelt hat. Dessen metallische Machenschaften interagieren nun [bei “Lost Teeth”] ein Anthropozän später mit dongenden Lauten und Atemzügen, elektrifiziert sirrendes Zwitschern, Knarzen und Pfeifen mischt sich auf dunkel dröhnendem Fond mit wie von knarrenden Stahltrossen geharkten, geklopften, gefederten Klängen. Als eine ‘primitive’ Art brut-rohe Bricolage, als wären da verschlissene Cyborgs am Werk, mehr Schrott als Mensch, die ihr bisschen Strom mit kultigen Reminiszensen an die Soundculture verschwenden und dabei längst ausgefallene Automatik händisch ersetzen müssen. Transhumane Kehlen fauchen Laute in den Wind, der übers dystopische Gelände fegt, ein kleines Intonarumori-Orchester überspielt eifrig knackend, tickend, mühsam Worte formend seine Dysfunktionalität. Als zahnlose ‘Künstler’ versuchen die ‘Borgs’ ihr Gnadenbrot zu verdienen und der Verschrottung zu entgehen. Dem heutigen Avanti, dem bei ‘Inductor’ großväterlich die Stunde schlägt, kommt da sein Futurum II entgegen, mit debilen Beats, eisernem Kirren, mbiraeskem Zupfen, rubbelig hoppelndem Metallstift, der zusammen mit loopendem Schwung Turntablistik und sogar eine gedehnte Gesangsspur simuliert. Das dystopische hat dabei etwas vorläufiges, spielerisches, ja sogar rührendes – weil es nicht so kommen muss!’
Mark Pino, Disaster Amnesiac, 2022: ’[…] Lost Teeth features eight tracks of electroacoustic invesigations, all of which strike this listener as some kind of through-composed vision, very visually stimulating in its movements. Disaster Amnesiac has seen it more than once as a city, one that is virtually constructed within the perceptions, one that exists within some other mental sphere or dimension. This on account of the spaciousness of the instrumental interactions knitted together by Ypsmael and Eloine, especially. Across its roughly forty minutes duration, these two sound artists coax strange, cool tones from instruments, voices processed and/or not processed, field recordings, and found objects. It all hangs together less as a maelstrom and more as a meditation. Picture it if you will as a walk through those virtual streets painted by the tones that emanate from the creativity of these two practitioners. Disaster Amnesiac has especially enjoyed trying to identify Eloine/Day’s inventions, as time was I was familiar with them as objects seen on the 3D plane. These days, I have to see them within different dimensions, but that’s fine, as they sound as cool to me therein, popping and scraping like some junkyard gamelan.Ypsmael brings a bit of darkness to the proceedings, throwing disembodied voices out at random intervals, which make Disaster Amnesiac feel like I’m walking along fogged-in, cobbled streets way after sundown, slight tremors of fear tingling down my central nervous system. His drums processing is nervy, too, as he makes their sounds smear and wobble along with his baritone guitar tones and other objects. Lost Teeth sees the sounds from Ypsmael and Eloine mixed into a clearly heard field of intrigue and sonic adventure for those who desire a bit more than verse/chorus/verse etc. from their listening time. If one finds oneself in that camp, Disaster Amnesiac advises to steer on over to Chocolate Monk’s web page, because this record is limited to sixty copies, and I’m aware that Seymour Glass has one along with me. Surely, there must be fifty-eight adventurous weirdos still out there among the living.’
Dereck Higgins, 2022: ‘…[Bryan Day aka Eloine, and his invented instruments] has a sound that I recognize right away. What’s cool about this is the way it mixes with what Ypsmael does. It’s almost like a perfect marriage where the sounds are put into a blender and they come out inside-out. […]’
Ken Lower, Lost In A Sea Of Sound, 2022: ‘The room waits. Furniture covered in plastic, vinyl carpet runners contoured in every walkable route. There is a silence, a deep unused hush passing through years then decades. A clock chimes with a repeated sequence and each sonic vibration causing the room to shudder with sprawling arrays of ragged fissures. There is more. A prolonged quietness interrupted to reveal the sonic disturbance it’s nestled over. Plastic and vinyl exhaling previous years of life, coffee stains, pet hair, dirty feet, physical properties boiling beneath the smooth exterior. There was life, motion and commotion, built over years of use. Covered now to create a facade of pristine sonic restfulness. This energy is restless. External vibrations slowly decaying the protective shell. A vase falls and breaks, stale water spilling out across the slick surface, the room gently roars with a complex menagerie of aural wonder. The door opens and a gentle older man enters, drying up the water and removing the glass. All quiets again and the room waits. A low rumble, shuffling metal upon metal, a paralyzing clang catching conscious off balance. The juxtaposition of serenity and early tremors of chaos. Lost Teeth nibbles at thoughts. Like a dragonfly unfortunately caught in a screen room, almost bouncing against the ceiling and it’s lone bulb of light. A beautiful insect held within an unnatural environment. Capture and release is quickly facilitated. Lost Teeth seems like this, an aural energy of gorgeous complexity caught in a recording. We listen and hear these passages pressurize the containing boundaries. Thoughts dart with ideas of how much creativity is really lying beneath. Like ice cracking as an unfortunate soul steps forth. Will the sonic constraints of recording parameters hold, or will speakers shatter with the patient mite Ypsmael + Eloine perfectly lay down?’
