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| September 10th, 2006 by Paul Hayes (Permalink) Year: 2001 Add Comments |
Egyptian, Halim El-Dabh was brought to my attention by the latest in the Anthology of Noise compilations, a series that reveals and narrates the hidden tale of an ambiguous Noise genre. Volume 4 boasts a history of noise that can be traced back as far as 1937, a certain track by Olivier Messiaen, a haunting seven minute Oraison performed by the Ensemble d’Ondes Martenot de Montréal. This collection is significant for this track alone; to listen to the sounds of a magical long lost experiment is humbling; for it would be decades before Messiaen’s piece found itself a home alongside the Basinski-like electronic soundscape compositions of what is now the 21st century. The usual comment “ahead of its time” would not do it justice, this is motor cars in the time of chariots, this is the Wizard of Oz in full motion picture colour before the advent of film.
The ear-to-ear grin on the face of the architect now points to a second track, the all-important opener. On unravelling reel to reel tapes in an old forgotten storage room, much like in the discovery of the decaying Victorian-life films of Mitchell and Kenyon, came the unearthing of a series of experimental sounds by Halim El-Dabh recorded through 1944 to 1959. The particular electronic concoction responsible for the wide eyed grin is the “Wire Recorder Piece” (1944), a two minute paranormal head-fuck (to be frank) that predates the first known ‘techno’ track by two years. A surmise of the ghostly atmosphere seems futile; it is the soundtrack of an asylum; echoes of lost voices rebound from cold sterile surfaces as if evoked by the dead. Indiana Jones has unveiled the holy grail of noise; it is ghastly and awe-inspiring.
A collection of these old tapes were released under the misguiding upbeat moniker of “Crossing into the Magnetic Electronic”. The first nine tracks continue in the same vein as the recorder piece – an exploration of the institute if you will. “Michael and the dragon” passes an operating theatre testing a new electro-shock-therapy procedure – a deathly wail is detained by the reverberations of alternating current that charges and condemns; “Meditation in White Sound” sees a padded cell and straight jacket, a drugged out invalid reeling from whatever it is he is reeling from. “Pirouette” sees a rusted wheeled bed pass us complete with restraining cuffs and stained sheets. The tall murky windows, high ceilings and smell of disinfectant are all too apparent in “Element, Being and Primeval”. To say that I am painting a picture too bleak is to say that medical holes in the trenches of The Great War lacked hygiene. “Electronics and the word” is our final therapy session with the doctor before “Venice” sees our brief epiphany.
The second half of the album, albeit a second album altogether, is the 1961 electronic opera, Leiyla Visitations. Short anecdotes of love and fixation intertwine brief electronic compositions to form an unsettling account of obsession. Words are told and understood before their actions are carried out in dissonant junctures that reveal the inner psyche behind it all. The sounds and words weld an eerie enigma of at times riled intensity or booming reverb synonymous with beating life (see part 17). For all the dread induced by Sunn O))), the brew of scratched and distorted frequencies of Fennesz and the schizophrenic instrumental meanderings of the new weird folk movement, Halim El-Dabh amalgamates them all into a masterful tale of noise, predating it all by fifty years.
Take a trip to the tomb of an ancient pharaoh and sip from this cup, the wine is just about reaching its peak after all these years.
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