#Hanne Boenisch

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: Al Karpenter

Al Karpenter was originally Álvaro Matilla (from Barakaldo). In 2014, Mattin started to collaborate with him and in 2022, Marta Sainz and Enrique Zaccagnini from Santander joined. They’ve spent the years post-COVID in a fever pitch of noise collaboration, working with fellow experimenters Sunik Kim, Dominic Coles and Triple Negative on their album The Forthcoming and with CIA Debutante on another self-titled disc. Jennifer Kelly reviewed both in August, writing that, “Al Karpenter swamps threads of song in seething banks of noise and dissonance. You find yourself focusing on blaring surface noise, while sense and melody percolates somewhere underneath.” Here Mattin picks ten boundary-pushing favorites.

El Inquilino Comunista — “Cruel Off” (1992)

This track was actually in their first tape, which for me, was probably the best thing to come out of Getxo Sound, a small noise rock scene that happened in my hometown around the early 1990s. I remember getting this cassette and being blown away. I got inspired to see that there were bands doing things like this in my surroundings. Then I found out about other great bands like Cancer Moon, La Secta, Lord Sickness and Pop Crash Colapso. Now some of the members of El Inquilino Comunista play in other bands like Basurita and Trampas (where my very good friends Piji and Pablo play).

Hanne Boenisch — A Journey to the North Pole: A documentary about the Scratch Orchestra and Cornelius Cardew. (1971)

This documentary portrays the last tour of the Scratch Orchestra and the heated debates that they were going through, but also it documents the amazing experiments and street concerts that they were doing. After this tour, a split happened between the more Maoist-influenced section called the ideological group around Cardew, John Tilbury and Keith Rowe and the more anarchist and performative tendency that went into forming the Slippery Merchants. The tension between the artistic and ideological parts and their split reminds me of the division that occurred with Situationist International in 1961, in Gothenburg, where all the artists were expelled from the group.

Junko — Sleeping Beauty (2002)

I heard this record at Taku Unami’s house when I was on tour in Japan for the first time in 2004. I knew Junko from Hijokaidan, but this solo recording really cut through everything that I listened to before. It could be said to be concrete poetry or noise, but for me is something else that takes an existential level. What are we as humans when communication becomes only lubrication for commodification? This is not a form of primal scream but rather an expression of the impossibility of meaningful existence under capitalism.

Parmentier — Luxsound: 5 Untitled (1998)

Rosy Parlane and Dion Workman formed Parmentier when Thela — the New Zealand noise rock they both had with Dean Roberts — disbanded after a legendarily chaotic concert in New York in 1997. Parlane and Workman left their rock instruments and started an excellent electronic label called Sigma Editions and their band Parmentier. I saw them live in 1999 at the Sprawl in London, and I was so moved by this amazingly precise electronic music but made with a New Zealand noisy attitude which gave it a very warm character. I ended up becoming very good friends with Rosy, Dion and Dean and collaborating with all of them on different occasions.

Constant Pain — Demon Lover

Another band from New Zealand with Cameron Bain, Greg Cairns and Roddy Pain.

Cameron lived in London and used to play in the bands The Mean Streaks and Heliogabalus with Matthew Hyland (of Triple Negative). Roddy also had a short-lived band called Evil with Liz Matthews and David Mitchel, which was simply incredible. Both Cameron and Roddy took the rock spirit seriously, unfortunately to its ultimate consequences. Noise rock made with love and integrity.

Roberta Settels — “Landscape With 3 Tape-recorders And…” (1985)

I got this record, Isolation! Meinhof In Memoriam, when I was living in Stockholm, and I thought it was the coolest record ever. Settles self-published it on her label Music in Crisis after Caprice Records — an institutional label part of Musikverket (Swedish Performing Arts Agency) — refused at the last minute to publish it because they were scared of the political message of the record. Some of it reminds me of what the composer Bernhard Günter was doing in the 1990s but without any of the esoteric connotations. For me, this is a great example of how avant-garde music can meet radical politics.

Batile Alake — The Waka Queen

When Xabier Erkizia and I got to Lagos in 2014 to record Billy Bao’s Lagos Sessions, the first thing that we did was to go to Jazzhole record shop. The owner Kunle Tejuoso started to play us all these amazing records of Sakara, Apala and Waka Music at full volume, and Alake really struck a chord in us. For some reason, later on, Kunle would not tell the name of Alake as if she were some sort of sacred secret. Somehow, we managed to find out who she was, and since then, we have been in love with her.

Petrona Martinez — Le bullerengue (1998)

After that experience in Lagos, I have been searching for similar sounds that focus on percussion and voice in other places by tracing Afro-Caribbean music. The first thing that I got into it was Cuban rumba, especially Muñequitos de Matanzas. A couple of years ago, I was hearing a DJ session of Amuleto Manuela, an incredible Colombian DJ based in Berlin, and she played Petrona Martinez which is bullerengue from Colombia, and this got me into similar forms of music like Puerto Rican Bomba of el tambor from Venezuela.

Gérard Lockel — Gwo Ka Modènn (A.D.G.K.M - 1988)

Another interesting musical genre from the Caribbean is Gwo Ka from Guadalupe.

I discovered Gérard Lockel when I was researching Bèlènou, a fascinating group from Martinique mixing traditional Bèlè with avant-garde approaches. Bèlènou was founded by Edmond Mondésir and Léon Bertide, and I read that they were influenced by Gérard Lockel, so I went to the source, and it was life-altering. I quickly found out that I was not the only one deeply touched by his music, his records cost between 300 and 600 euros on Discogs.

Elvin Brandhi — Shelf Life (2019)

My friend Miguel Prado mentioned Elvin Brandhi, and she is doing some of the best stuff that I heard lately. She is collaborating with incredible artists and travelling all the time. A noise nomad and a fantastic improviser. The first time that I saw her was with Yeah You — the group that she has with her father — at an empty shopping mall in Glasgow as part of the extraordinary Counterflows festival, and it was magnificent. As far as I know, this is her only solo record.