K7H+ - Official Tweedle Dum-Dee-Dee-Dum - $6.00 - (90 minutes)
From: "Dead Eyes Magazine" #7 - January '94? - us@
K7H - Official TWEEDLE DUM-DEE-DEE-DUM
20 people perform crazy improv on this highly technical experimental tape. I can't go into all of it here, but check it out. Variations on a theme of variations. recommended.
From: "You Could Do Worse" #5 - fall '95 - us@
THE Official TWEEDLE-DUM-DEE-DEE-DUM
The "Official" group (an ever-changing collection of musicians who use a different name for each recording/performance) have documented the first phase of their development on this release. I've already had long debates with them about their work, and I'm sure this review will lead to another round of misgivings from them. That said, this group combines a lot of different ideologies and instruments (many of them self-designed) with a strange sense of humor. Their music often sounds loosely structured (or completely unstructured), but they actually use a series of signals and parameters to coordinate their interactions. They disagree with me when I say their work is self-indulgent, but considering the fact that this tape has 12 intros before the music even starts, I stand by my original opinion. Besides the pieces often wander around for long periods of time without ever finding a lucid focal point. This group is original and interesting, sometimes annoying, usually funny, sometimes stupid, and definitely self-indulgent. Let the letter writing begin...-Mike Hovancsek
tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE responds (unpublished)
[on May 7, 1996, I wrote to "You Could Do Worse" & suggested that a pet giraffe that could write intelligently in English would be a preferable substitute to Mike as the reviewer of the tapes that I was sending them. I never heard from them again & I don't know if the tapes were reviewed or if the magazine even continued to exist]
[the same day I wrote a similar letter to Mike. I never heard from him again either]
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The reviews are not necessarily copied verbatim from the original. Usually, small apparent typos are corrected & obsolete addresses are removed. In some cases, I may choose to leave misspellings, misinformation, etc intact to demonstrate how sloppy the reviewer is. Of course, there may be times when the original packaging was confusing (deliberately or otherwise) which may effect the reviewer's comprehension. The more recent the tapes are, the less likely this is to be the case. Most of the recent tapes provide fairly extensive liner notes. In some cases, reviewers whose native language isn't English may be writing in English anyway for the sake of 'internationalizing' their reviews. Obviously, this may lead to what strikes native English speakers as 'bad' English. Hopefully, equally obviously, this should not be interpreted as a lack of intelligence in the writing. Editorial notes may be inserted into the reviews in [brackets]. In many instances, I (tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE) replied to reviews that I disagreed with strongly. These replies are included here. In some cases, I may add additional retrospective comments.