Art-Errorist and Zsolt Sörés – The Wasp Boutique

Peripheral Conserve

Absolutely loving this musique concrète mixer: its powertooled psych-o-delia of mis-shapes pleases me no end, quivers a satisfying kraut dot’n’dashes too. The overall sprawl is akin to a modern rework of The Faust Tapes, and well, I wouldn’t expect anything less, as The Wasp Boutique is one part Jean-Hervé Péron after all. This is rousing fare for sure, thrown into the light by Peter Strickland of Berberian Sound Studio fame and housed in a Babs Santini collage that’s definitely designed to keep you awake at night.

Aptly-monkiered The Art-Errorist, he’s coupling the sonic limelight with the multi-talented Zsolt Sőrés. Now, I’m unfamiliar with this chap’s work, but going by the sounds on this handsome slab of double vinyl he certainly shares more than a few Venn intersections with Mr Péron’s erroneous spirit and plenty of his DIY enthusiasm too, looking at Zsolt’s equipment list of homemade sonorousness and circuit-bent gadgets. A match made then; and struck as you taste the sulphurous conductivity behind it all in the unforced, un-contrived happenings. Yeah, that’s ‘happenings’ not as in ‘hip,’ but energy: the fact that this feels like a live recording unfolding before you, a bloody good live recording at that, niftily conspiring by accident, design, a bit of both? to deliver… Man, some of the noisier parts actually sound like Einstürzende Neubauten from their autobahn wrecking years; how good’s that? Anyway, lets ditch the synopsis and get into the sprawling guts of the beast.

“Was Ist Los Da Oben?” grabs the attention in a mighty 13min opener which embarks apprehensively at first on a soft abrasion to a synthy twilight, until the bass guitar and circuitry find a wavering equilibrium and repeat togetherings, further bolstered by a firm plough of bassline and begrudged metal. The torque full of vocal apparitions and tactile questions thrown into lovely melodic shivers, spurs caught on momentum chasing Français. Surging away all anarchically on a fanfare of elephantine trumpet raising from a grave of petrol vapours. Smokin’ like a Thatcher anniversary party effectively sawn off and shotgunned into the mellow throb of distant piano. The fidelity soon tunnelling down some barrel’s bowls in muffled mystery, the lo-hertz values ignited in the Germanics of the song title.

The over-amped guitar slabs on “100gr De Protéine” are brilliant, leaving your speakers like a delinquent jihad full of discordant Arabic hex(es), not to mention the graceful swan slides of psalterion and viola that precede it, all scooped necks and lacy fingers interwoven with poetic fragments. “Saute” is more a celebration of Chinese burns and whelping percussiveness. A four minute sonic dance, romanced in interesting vigours, ruins and verbby sphericals… I swear Blixa B. is in there somewhere icing the black forest gateau with his larynx. The jacked bat in a box  start of “Sorry, it’s Illegal” makes way for a surprise baritone, an operatic lullaby reminiscent of Scott Walker spinning in a squeaky river of reverb and sustained conicals. Plucked and bowed viola following, tilting hinges scraping away, then frequency combed…  split… into bendy processed edges, transpositions, rhetorical dramas jigsawing the betweens, all ending in a meditation on (well, I didn’t see this coming)… Scheiße.. yep that’s shit … luxuriating in the shh sounds… the arupt ‘it’-ness.. .the purring syllables of ex-crrrreeee-ment… oozing through a scraped/rubbed backdrop that sounds like a robot undergoing colonic irrigation.

The second record begins with “20th September” – a classical guitar piece that’s all sparky chords, shining in repeating tides, overwrought with marauding harmonics. Sub-currents plying motives, throbbing to a globetrotter beat. Shimmer gild-caught lines curling on a motorik vibe as tins are thrown out of a cupboard and ping-pong the floor, vaccuumed into a paper diagram before roaming off elsewhere(s). This is something which this album excels at, as dictaphone wordy chuffs are put paid to by a machine-tooled bleeping, the clinical severity of which is softened in echo/delay, simply sequenced , a soriée of brief tape betweens dropping over a brothy burble of lo-fi backward slur and gluttonous murk.

“Sans Parole” is more caterlike. A droning gudgeon struggling to find a heartbeat. Flounders a little before it rhythmical finds itself in a chemically reactive didgeridoo of heavy meat suitably splattered in hot oil. “Luvoco” is journeys end – a gorgeous 15 minute flange-callipered “Castles of Spain” trumpet duelling with electronic blancmange. Phantom rasps of voyeur vox slipping on a nagging tangle of industry drifting away on a requiem of lumpy clay limbs.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-