K7M - Volunteers Collective #s I - VII - $6.00 - (90 minutes)

 

From: "Sonic Striations" #1 - Summer '93 - us@

Various Artists:Volunteer's Collective I-VII (Widemouth Tapes) Interpolations into "the figment of the collective imagination" by a rotating cast of thousands anchored by Widemouth label mates tENTATIVELY a cONVENIENCE and Neil Feather. Nine mostly short tracks on side one and a 47-minute stretch on side two. The staggering array of instrumentation includes abomination (?), motorcycle horn, cornet, turkey call and so much more. (c-90)

 

From: "Experimental Musical Instruments"

- Volume XI #3 - March '96 - us@

VOLUNTEER'S COLLECTIVE I-VII

[..]Volunteers Collective, the second cassette, also documents musical activities from this group, this time centered in Baltimore. Feather and tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE again lead the pack, with assistance from a number of other musicians/artists, such as John Berndt, Caroline Armstrong, Sarmad Brody, Chris Astier, Brian Wolle and others. Miekal And and Elizabeth Was also appear as guests on the first track. This tape shows two other sides of tENT: his work as a vibraphonist, which is quite impressive (for all his wackiness, don't be surprised when he plays with real sensitivity), and his work as a sound sculptor. The sculpture in question is Vermin Supreme, a politician-sculpture that has some kind of speech synthesizer built into it that maniacally and mindlessly keeps repeating slogans such as "Vote For Me," "Why Not the Worst?" "It's Later Than You Think," "Let Me Run Your Life," "I am a Politician. I Will Lie To You. I Have No Reason Not To," etc. The track featuring Vermin Supreme is one of the funniest, but alas, also one of the most chilling (because of its true-to-life nature) tracks of contemporary music I've heard in a long while.

I like the shorter improvisations and structured interactions on side 1 of this tape better than I do the 47-minute single performance of side 2, but this may be just a product of my hearing it after the other three sides of their 2 cassettes [see the review of Widémouth Tape #001 that constitutes the 1st half of this review]. In any case, these two tapes are a delight.

 

tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE responds

in: "Experimental Musical Instruments"

- Volume XII #1 - September '96 - us@

WARREN'S REVIEW is certainly encouraging, but I should note that "Vermin Supreme" isn't one of my "sound sculptures"! He's a friend of mine who travels around the U.S. pretending to run for mayor of various cities. He's sort of a political stand-up comedian but he's at his best when he "camPAINs" on the streets - he gets into hilarious interactions - in BalTimOre people even remember him from previous camPAINs, responding with great enthusiasm - and I'm not just talking about the "art" crowd. I'm talking about the wo/man on the street![..]

 

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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.