VA AA LR
Newhaven
GREECE Organized
Music From Thessaloniki t27 3” CD-R
(2014)
Purchased from Electric Knife Records in Kentish Town just before xmas, here is a document of VA AA LR’s performance at last year’s Fort Process event at Newhaven Fort
presented by the consistently excellent Organised Music From Thessaloniki. Just under 15 minutes, this trio of Vasco
Alves, Adam Asnan and Louie Rice produce an abstract sound world unlike very
much else these ears have heard under the guise of “music”, if indeed the
production of “music” is actually VA AA LR’s intention, or something else
entirely. They appear to me to be sound
artists first and foremost, and refer to their own work variously as “often of volatile nature”, “the potential of…the instabilities of a
medium” and “disruptive audio
material”. Active only since 2013, other
works have appeared on Consumer Waste, Porta, Intonema and Mantile already.
Newhaven sounds
like controlled small explosions and things burning, the only clues are the
photographs on the fold-over sleeve which depict a lot of smoke coming from
somewhere. For the most part, the boys
are content to let whatever devices they use do their own thing in order to
produce a kind of process-based performance.
They could have simply been letting off some flares over the cliffs and
amplifying the results. At seven minutes
in, there are a couple of loud cracks – followed by the hissing and fizzing of
some kind of minor scale ordnance. As I
was regrettably unable to attend Fort
Process and witness VA AA LR’s performance and see what they were actually
up to, I feel there is little else I can add here except to recommend Newhaven despite its short-ness and urge
you to investigate their back catalogue; I heard their recent cassette on
Mantile, Ping Cones, recently and
that is utterly different but also utterly wonderful.
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