I have probably picked up the most interesting records in my collection on a whim. One of the greatest joys is to find an artist you know nothing about, buy one of their records, and discover something you can’t get anywhere else. This is part of the reason my tastes still run strongly towards experimental and underground music, because while there’s no guarantee you’ll get something good by breaking the rules, you are almost certainly guaranteed something different.
I found CM von Hausswolff’s single-sided LP Life and Death of PBOC back when I was first dating the woman I’d eventually marry—in fact, I think I bought the record the first time we went out together. Single-sided records always held a weird kind of fascination for me—on the one side, grooves, on the other, a totally blank, glossy, unplayable surface. I kept wondering when someone (as a joke) would release a disc that was blank on both sides like that—something like the ultimate possible version of John Cage’s 4’33”. The music in PBOC’s grooves, though, was about as close as you could get to something like 4’33” without actually pressing a blank CD. The entire 23-minute side was one long rumble, like a distant storm brewing, with the faintest sounds of what I suspected was an animal deep in the mix. The cover featured a photo of a beheaded chicken; that and the title clinched my suspicions about what might have been squawking away in there. I played it incessantly, making discoveries with it each time I did, although the rustling of the LP grooves got in the way a great deal.
Hausswolff surfaced again on the Dry Lungs Vol. III compilation (assembled by Paul Lemos of Controlled Bleeding), another source of music from interesting folks who have often not gotten the attention they deserved. I was beginning to see a pattern in the music—the sounds were either a great distance away or very close, creating an unusual sort of aural “depth of field.” The sort of music you held your breath to listen to, because you would wonder what else was in there.
Rays of Beauty is a repackaging of four Hausswolff tracks—the side-long PBOC andConductor, and two other short tracks that I had not heard before. PBOC is still my favorite here, reaching out ominously from all directions while at the same time still concealing things deep inside itself. Conductor is similar—a single phased low note with all sorts of subtle changes within. Most of my reason for buying the disc was to hear PBOC again, albeit without the noise of vinyl, and it was more than worth it: the digital remastering reveals a remarkable new level of detail in the music that wasn’t there before. The short tracks, The Will of Tupi-Tupi and Royal Music #1 are less interesting: the first is actually pretty good, reminding me of an extract from Nurse With Wound’s A Missing Sense (same low/high volume contrasts), while Royal Music #1 is little more than a three-minute drone.
Beauty is not as complete as I had hoped it would be—there are many other pieces of Hausswolff’s out there in limited release, excluding complete works already re-released, that deserve remastering on CD. I am, however, grateful that at least one of the most important and fascinating has found a home.
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