Shorty - Thumb Days (1993)

"Presto" by Shorty

The Miracle of Levitation brought together assorted noise outfits from both the Midwest and Tokyo. The next sequence of Tour stops will hit as many of the bands and artists (or related groups) featured on the compilation as possible. Starting stateside, track 3: U.S. Maple...but not actually. U.S. Maple was a convergence of two separate bands. The first, and the first we'll be covering, is Shorty—an early 90s, Chicago-area noise rock band. Shorty released their only LP Thumb Days in 1993 on the German label Gasoline Boost Records.

Al Johnson sings out of the side of his face. Not "sings" really, he screams. He contorts his mouth in a Two-Face fashioned and screams sidelong. He holds the microphone not up to his lip distortion but further askew pushed against his cheek and pushing harder when the notes shift slightly deeper. Johnson's screams come out of the greatest possible vocal restriction, full throated but strangled. This unique delivery mutes Johnson's lyrics and limits his range as he rends each song with snarls and indistinguishable provocations. He's Shorty's frontman and showman but also the final touch to a calibrated sound. At the foundation of this calibration are Luke Frantom on bass and Todd Lamparelli on drums. Frantom in particular plays a near-metronomic (and very baggy) bass that fastidiously loops his lines. He and Lamparelli deftly control the time-signature changes that adorn the compositions on Thumb Days. The two of them create a breakneck but calculated drive with a level of darkness that matches the metal roots of the nascent Alternative sound.

Mark Shippy, however, makes Shorty a noise rock band and a very good one. Shippy's style mixes traditional chord progressions with abrasive textures and a deft control of feedback. Within his style, he can line up both a song's central hook as well its frenetic solo. He can both groove with the drum and bass and also match Al Johnson rip for rip. On an album where each song outputs the same speed and energy, Mark Shippy separates each one with his guitar just as, with his guitar, he ties the band together.

Here is Shorty's discography:

We Bopped Your Mama (1990 demo tape)

Mungo (1990 single as Snailboy)

We Bopped Your Mama (1990 tape as Snailboy)

Spoo Heaven (1991 single as Snailboy)

Last One in My Mouth Is a Jerk (1992 single)

Dynamite Lover (1992 single)

Kaput! (1993 single)

Thumb Days

Fresh Breath (1994 EP)

1979 / Really Pointy? (1995 compilation song)

"Coopie and Me" by Shorty

Shorty Live at McGregor's, Elmhurst, IL

"Kept Turd" by Snailboy

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Gentle Giant Records - The Miracle of Levitation (1995)

With Brent Gutzeit and Michael Hartman's return form Japan, they worked with Thomas Deater to gather recordings from their friends in both the Midwest and Tokyo improvised noise scenes. The resulting compilation The Miracle of Levitation came out in 1995 on Gentle Giant Records.

The album features established titans of the genre like Otomo Yoshihide and Jim O'Rourke alongside newer acts inspired by them. For many of the Japanese acts on the track list, this would constitute their first "US release." Noise rock bands lead into ambient synths lead into textural guitar solos: no track sounds the same, and the album shows off the breadth of what improvised music can sound like.

Here is the discography around Gentle Giant Records's compilation album:

The Miracle of Levitation

The Miracle of Re-Creation (1997 VHS compilation)

The Miracle of Re-Creation

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Cult Junk Cafe - Cult Junk Cafe (1995)

After graduation, Michael Hartman found himself pulled to Tokyo in the wake of his friends, moving there and enjoying the tail end of Japan's nineties "bubble economy." The experimental noise scene in Tokyo was friendly and open and inviting to collaboration, and Michael and Brent Gutzeit soon ended up performing with some of the transcendent names of the Tokyo scene. Michael was also invited to join the improvised music group Cult Junk Cafe. The band released their debut tape Cult Junk Cafe in 1995 on Gentle Giant Records.

Cult Junk Cafe is another improvisational band playing under the influence of John Zorn's Cobra, a musical composition that randomly prompts a band to follow musical instructions via cue cards. Like Michael and Brent's group Pencilneck, Cafe follows a simplified version of Cobra where any performer could cue a change in musical direction through just hand gestures. The tape is made up of live performances made throughout early 1995.

Like any band, Cult Junk Cafe is defined by its members and instruments: Michael Hartman on drums, Yoshigami Kyota and Otani Yasuhiro on guitars, Sakamoto Kazutaku on synthesizer and founder Tsunoda Tsuguto on turntables/sampler. Brent Gutzeit (bass) and Agata (guitar) guest on certain sessions. The earliest tracks, recorded with Agata and Brent on February 3, 1995, are pure chaos from start to finish. Every instrument plays at once, seemingly all on different pages of the same book, and actively disassembling any musical idea that might cohere. The only voice that really makes itself heard over the others in these tracks is Agata's unmistakable guitar (but that might just come from familiarity.)

After two months (recording on April 3,) the group favors more cinematic and less abrasive improvisations. The songs from this set also seem to follow one musical "director." Sakamoto's synthesizers are the foundation for "Open the Gates", a more environmental sonic piece that sounds apiece with the science fiction cityscapes of the 1980s. The excellent "Improvisation (4395)" follows Tsunoda's squirrelly turntables that establish an elastic sound that coils up and releases energy throughout. In both cases, the lead guitar matches the energy of the song's "leader" to create a more cohesive and pointed template for everyone to play off of.

After two more months on May 30, Cult Junk's tracks favor a slower start. Any music, sound, concept and comedy comes less from a clash of personalities (as they did when the band first started recording) than a synthesis of them. On the tape's sprawling tracks like "Improvisation (53095)" or "Theme from the Action Theme Song", the compositions are a journey of wandering musical paths. Any member could suddenly guide the band out of one sonic direction to follow and react to their own musical leads. These shifts can be smooth or jarring but keep the tracks moving and unpredictable. Occasionally, these shifts fall flat when the rest of the band doesn't quite know what to do sonically with an idea another member is introducing. It's an easy enough trap to get out of, though, given the conceit.

According to Hartman, the hand gestures used by the band to cue a shift in musical direction became less necessary over time as improvisation improved. And it's clear from listening to this tape, a compilation of three live sets across a couple of months, that improvement goes hand in hand with trying out different ways to improvise. Of course, there is no right or wrong way about it...just what works best for any given band on any given day.

Note: Special thanks to Brent Gutzeit and Michael Hartman for answering my questions about their music and their time in Japan.

Here is the discography surrounding Cult Junk Cafe's debut tape:

Cult Junk Cafe

The Jackson Stomp (1995 compilation song from The Miracle of Levitation)

"The Jackson Stomp" by Cult Junk Cafe

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TV Pow - TV Pow (1995)

"Big Fat Fuckin Zero" by TV Pow

On scholarship to study under sculptor Ryoji Koie, Brent Gutzeit moved to Japan and eventually landed in Tokyo where he fell in with the city's experimental music scene. While living there, he formed a band with fellow Kalamazoo expatriate Michael Hartman. TV Pow released its debut tape TV Pow in 1995 on Gentle Giant Records.

The tape starts with a field recording at a Japanese train station: an announcement jingle, a Japanese voice and the train approaching, braking and blowing out the recording equipment. The sheer volume of sound is more than the equipment can handle. This embrace of compression to create and manipulate noise is the through line of an otherwise unfocused tape. The tape is a collection of experiments, mundane sounds, live noise rock, and homage. All of it the lo-est of fi-s. Simply, it is a combination of "trying things out" and "fucking around," recording with whatever's handy.

"piano song" is the tape at its most cerebral: a two-player variation on John Cage's "Water Walk" where the ordinary objects are more percussive and rhythmic, and the prepared piano is afforded an extended solo. The other end of the musical spectrum is in "this close" where the listener gets an earful of foreplay from a microphone too close to hear anything. The flirtatious intention is clear if unintelligible and the subsequent play is simulated by instruments.

"kitchen scene" highlights the clinks and clunks of bottles and pans moving about a kitchen. Following these cues on the rest of the record (outside of the few live recordings,) the percussion arrives by any means but drums. Thunder sheets, breaking glass, or any household object that could be thumped does the trick. The guitar, meanwhile, meanders its way into rhythms and songs or breaks out into the limits of its own abrasiveness. Finally, "i have a special camera" is one of many field recordings as skits strewn about the tape. It captures the youthful energy, freedom and drunken transgression of Americans walking the streets of Tokyo at night: yelling out an inside joke that is politely dismissed.

The tape is nothing serious and not to be taken seriously. Its modus is the youthful dawning of the ever-expanding scope of whatever music can be, and its result is inevitably sophomoric. Also inevitably from people who can see so far so young, TV Pow will only come to know itself better and grow from here.

Note: Special thanks to Brent Gutzeit for answering my questions about his time in Japan and providing a digital copy of the TV Pow tape.

Here is the discography surrounding TV Pow's debut tape:

TV Pow

Big Fat Fuckin Zero (1995 track from The Miracle of Levitation compilation album)

"Tokyo 01.95" by TV Pow

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Wheaton Research Labs - Sean Wood Is a Genius (1995)

"Floppy Fan" by Wheaton Research

While Brent Gutzeit was an active member of multiple bands (including Pencilneck and Liminal,) he also recorded and released music under the moniker Wheaton Research Labs—shortened soon after to just Wheaton Research. The solo project, which started in 1992, released its debut tape Sean Wood Is a Genius in 1995 on Gentle Giant Records.

According to Brent, Wheaton Research was based on experimentation with "recycled cassettes." To paraphrase his process, he would play tapes through his stereo and record them on his boombox then repeat the relay x number of times. The result would take the sounds from the original tapes, compress them and thus warp and distort them—all while accumulating layers of ambient noise.

Sean Wood is not currently available to break down, but the contemporaneous Davison 1995 gives an idea of the kind of experiments Wheaton Research was concocting. The pre-processed tapes could hold any type of sonic material including field recordings, room tone, live performances, or singular sounds such as a motor, a fan or a bass drone. And there doesn't seem to be an arbitrary number of times each tape might be re-recorded. This results in a variety of levels of distortion that can range from simple crackle that fills in the hum of a room to speed changes that can warp a drone into something more melodic. Every track is at the same time familiar yet off-putting; taking recognizable sonic imagery and warping the image into having an unfamiliar character. What new character that might be is entirely on the listener.

Also, I recommend checking out the video below from Brent Gutzeit's documentary/live footage/musical compilation project The Miracle of Re-Creation released circa 1997.

Here is the discography surrounding Wheaton Research Labs's debut tape:

Sean Wood Is a Genius

"73" (1995 track from split cassingle)

1992-1995 (2014 compilation album)

Davison 1995 (2023 release of 1995 recordings)

"Tokyo 01.95" by Wheaton Research

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Pencilneck - Ohranger (1994)

"Pillow Talk" by Pencilneck

The band names might change but the lineups become familiar across the early releases by Gentle Giant. From Liminal, the adjacent rock band Pencilneck held over members Thomas Deater, Brent Gutzeit and Todd Carter while adding Rob Stimpson from the Kalamazoo hard rock band Fatsack and local studio engineer Mike Schuur. Pencilneck released their tape Ohranger in 1994 on Gentle Giant Records.

Despite the familiar lineup, Pencilneck conceives an entirely different mode of noise than Liminal's. Brent Gutzeit's "sound environments" make way for an only slightly more traditional handmade 18-string bass. Becky Cooper and her flute make only a single track's guest appearance. Those two elements are the foundation of Temple Music's meditative ambience, so a new band name reflects the sonic change. Without the tumbling cacophonies from Gutzeit's creations and Cooper's ethereal flute, gone also is the improvisational structure that held Liminal's compositions together. Now with Pencilneck, the noise seems less arbitrary and the fellow players feel less like adornment. Pencilneck, instead, explores their collaborative potential via a sort of free jazz fusion.

On the tape's opener "Suberbole," Pencilneck sets up a traditional structure where the guitars and bass and saxophone (Mike Shuur) explore the textural walls of sound their instruments can create. That is then all held together rhythmically by the funk-style drumming. The song plays like a playful riff on the alternative rock sounds of the era, and if the rest of the album stayed the same, would've made for a clever contemporary music commentary. But 23 other songs on Ohranger, go in 23 other directions. Punk, sludge, metal, grunge and even anti-folk all become occasional ingredients and thus fodder for Pencilneck, but it's all byproduct to what the band is actually doing: playing a game.

According to Brent Gutzeit, Pencilneck "was a rock band...that played game structured improvised pieces, similar to John Zorn's Cobra game. We would use hand gestures to signal changes in the song as we played." Besides the musicians, nothing stays the same from song to song. Each composition is effectively a randomized creation through a recombination of players, time signatures, or any other musical element. The results are myriad: "wannabe" has the closest structure to an avant-garde jazz number; "clothed city" traffics multiple time signatures and rhythms for some sonic congestion; "sock" is a devolving rock song that miraculous reforms through the stabilizing force of the drums and bass; and "pillow talk" hews closest, with its metronomic melody, to a piece Liminal might produce.

The album as a whole is a trove of musical potential: what music traditionally doesn't play but could and does here. It challenges traditional musical aesthetics and expectations and keeps the mind reeling trying to keep up with all you've never heard before...even if at an hour and twenty minutes, it becomes exhausting.

Special thanks again to Brent Gutzeit for sharing a copy of Ohranger and for answering my questions about Pencilneck.

Here is the discography surrounding Pencilneck's tape:

Ohranger

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Liminal - No. 1 (Construction) (1993)

Temple Music by Liminal

The trio of Thomas Deater, Brent Gutzeit and Blaine Townsend that played together on the Linkage track "Ugly Bell Suite" performed under the moniker Muzak for Llamas while at Western Michigan University. The band, formed to highlight the sculptural instruments made by Gutzeit, would expand, shift lineups and become Liminal. Liminal released a cassette No. 1 (Construction) in 1993 on Deater's Gentle Giant Records.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a copy of this cassette nor any of the music thereon. But in 1999, Gutzeit's own label BOXmedia did release Temple Music, a 1993 Liminal live performance held in WMU's Rotunda Gallery. It helps fill in what the cassette might have sounded like keeping in mind the band's fluid lineups. On Temple Music, the nucleus is, of course, Gutzeit's instruments. They are uniquely percussive—in ways only handmade instruments can be—outside of any classical and familiar resonances. His instruments are also sculpted with the live space in mind and can sound cavernous as the tones emitted tumble and layer, reverberating in the room and against themselves. The result is an entropic ambience whose amplitudes level anywhere between balm and bombast.

Becky Cooper's flute, playing Eastern-influenced tonalities, is the other omnipresent sound and only melodic ingredient on the recording. She adds a meditative layer that elevates the music to something more mystical. Thomas Deater (guitar,) Michael Hartman (percussion,) Josh Remy (synthesizer) and Todd Carter (sampler) further accent the soundscape and bring structure to the, only somewhat, controllable chaos at the music's center. Together, the improvisations build a space greater and more strange than a gallery; akin to a temple, yes, but also revealing of the fantastic therein: the liminal, you might say.

Temple Music is available for purchase here. Special thanks to Brent Gutzeit for his generosity in sharing these albums and answering my questions.

Here is the approximate discography surrounding Liminal's cassette:

No. 1 (Construction)

Temple Music (1999 release of a 1993 live performance)

04.16.94.21.24.20 (1995 track from The Miracle of Levitation compilation)

Kalamazoo 04.16.94 (1997 track from The Miracle of Re-Creation compilation)

Brent Gutzeit BFA Exhibition 1994

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