COPY FOR YOUR RECORDS

Richard Kamerman is owner of the Brooklyn label Copy For Your Records and last year produced another solo work None For The Money (CFYR013), published without any explanation…a fine assemblage of difficult computer noise, contextualised by its arrangement into three “suites”, each movement given elaborate and somewhat lyrical titles, occasionally with further subtitles inserted in the lower tier of the hierarchy…in the “Twenty-Four Sycamores” chapter, the sounds appear to be completely random until eventually (on the long track #4) we discover they start to resolve themselves into regular patterns, but you have to really use your imagination to discern them. Our listening task is made even tougher from the outset, given Kamerman’s penchant for rather harsh and rough surfaces – what I think of as digital yard-brushes applied to the most sensitive parts of the body – and his proclivity for strange electronic bleepage and bubblement, tones which appear almost absurd as they float past in this inscrutable melange. Yet it’s a highly compelling listen, introverted indoor music for apartment-dwellers who get a kick from watching the mould spreading slowly across their shower cubicle while the old TV set in the next room plays off-channel white noise.

Part two he dubs “Tau Pukka Patellae”, a 23-minute work that’s elaborate enough to warrant descriptive titles for each separate channel, suggesting that Kamerman has spliced two unrelated compositions together in the interests of economy. Compared to part one, this digital hymn to the kneecaps is a far livelier hoppermaroo, a true disco-feast for the cockroaches or other insects inhabiting the floorboards as they dance in triumph after midnight. Aye, the sizzle and dynamic of this piece results precisely from the collisions and spaces caused by rubbing the two stereo channels together until their respective warps and woofs begin to inter-weave and melt together. Insufferable abstract Hell to some, to others a testing experiment in advanced electronics, taken beyond normal endurance points. Kamerman will never be mistaken for a minimalist with solid textures like these which you could use to carpet a whole tenement block, yet it’s true there is also a bold simplicity to assemblages of this ilk.

If you’ve survived this stern barrage long enough to make it to part three, called “Again, Before The Sun Ryes”, you might be puzzled by the presence of an inexplicable torchy ballad at the start which may have drifted in from a lost 1940s radio broadcast…this pre-recorded song however is merely the prelude to his 14-minute live set excerpt, a snorting firestorm of seething emotion, and clearly the most aggressive portion of this trilogy. RK lays out a fierce fusillade of inhuman noises, a fine blend of loud radio static with feedback, mini-explosions, and assorted other unpleasantnesses that can be wrung from a computer or mixing desk (I assume). But this is not foolish table-noise that sets out to eliminate the enemy through continuous assault and high volumes; it’s highly controlled, drip-fed to the listener in bite-size chunks, like bolts of radium picked out carefully from the wreckage of a nuclear reactor. An index methinks of RK’s discipline. Album ends with a curiosity whose title indicates it might be an attempt to “play” a spreadsheet, applying a stream of non-audio data to an audio player just to find out what happens.

I’ve enjoyed all of Kamerman’s experiments on this label, but this is one of the most satisfying I heard. Compared to his shorter guerilla-assault bursts of digital hackery, None For The Money is more carefully composed and arranged to deliver maximal impact, in the deployment of dynamic sonic ranges and the framing devices of his titles, which at some level help the work tell a “story”, albeit a severely abstracted and disconnected tale.

- Ed Pinsent, The Sound Projector

Kamerman's an amusing fellow though (apart from the name of his label) I don't think that side of him has shown so overtly before in the musical arena. "None for the Money" is in three sections, the first a suite of six pieces titled, "Twenty-Four Sycamores". The sounds employed aren't so far from what we've heard from Kamerman before--crinkly electronics, exposed circuitry, what-have-you--but there's something warmly comical about the way they're arrayed here, in repeating patterns, cavorting around happily and lightly. "Tau Pukka Patellae" (which sounds like an unusually oriented fraternity to me) abstracts things a bit further, using two channel of somewhat differing electronics, not exactly repetitive but, with their flow of liquid, bleeping tones, feeling as though there's an orbiting aspect in effect. It goes on for quite some time, however (23 minutes +), and I can imagine some listeners losing patience with the sameness, others losing themselves in the flux; me? I went back and forth on it.

"Again, Before the Sun Ryes" is the kicker. We hear a woman (I've no idea who) singing, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find", accompanied by strummed guitar and accordion, the ditty gradually encroached upon by hissing electronics soon followed by a full-on squall, quite invigorating. The disc closes with a brief, darkly woolly piece, like a close-up recording of crumpled fabric.

A fun recording, relatively accessible as these things go, well worth hearing.

- Brian Olewnick, Just Outside

There’s something contradicting about Richard’s music. It’s aggressive, wild, and frequently revels in what are pretty plainly unpleasant sound sources, but there’s a physicality to it that grounds it all and saves it from simple harshness. I want to use the word sensual, but that’s not quite right. I will say that even if the sound sources in other hands might sound cold (which isn’t a bad thing, to be honest, I think of something like Keroaan as the epitome of cold, but there is vitality there, even if no sensuousness) there is a warmth, a sense of play at work. I think that gets at it. Playful and aggressive, music made with the smile of an imp. It is challenging, but it wants you to enjoy the challenge. And that gets even closer, I’ve always gotten the sense that even when Richard makes things that seem daunting, or aggressive, there is an invitation hidden somewhere in there. An invitation to join in the play.

So None for the Money, a record in three parts.

Part 1 in six sections, Sycamore Trees, each full of swoops and piercing beeps, these unstable rhythms form and fall away. Everything panned absolutely, each channel its own world. And while this works on headphones, the whole thing came alive on speakers. It’s awkward music, the interplay never quite what you expect. There aren’t the clear head-rattling moments you can find in other musicians that use hard-panning. It’s less stable than that. In fact, it feels constantly unstable. But there is a beauty in that awkwardness. And more than anything else, it feels so confident, so sure of itself. Uncompromising is a pretty annoying word to use, but it feels kind of right here.

And then Part 2, Tau Pukka Patellae which consists of two separate pieces, one for Anne Guthrie and one for Aaron Zarzutski. It’s the logical end to Part 1 in some ways. What you get now are two entirely separate pieces. It’s chaos, almost literally, at least to my ears, but a beautiful chaos. Each speaker pulses, mid-range from one, treble from the other, both scribbling sound all over, and scribbling feels right. Even though it’s chaos, at some point you start to settle in and it feels like a steady-state. To be clear though, it’s never steady, but that chaos becomes the norm for the 20+ minutes. And somehow, after 23 minutes of sounds constantly pinging around the room, the last ten seconds of pure, steady tone feel like an assault. It’s a reversal that I find shocking each and every time.

Oh, did I say shock? Yeah, Part 3. Two sections this time, one a live show, the other an Excel document. We’ve left the land of hard panning, and entered something familiar and different all at once. This to me is what I think of when I think of Richard’s music. I hesitate to say ‘at his best’, but it’s really good. The live set starts off unexpectedly, and soon enough launches an all out attack. Feedback dominates, shifting wildly from static to piercing tones. Volume level flies from high to low. It’s an aggressive, wild ride. And after so much panning, somehow that feedback is relieving. No longer do you feel like your brain is having a trick played on it. There’s something very simple and satisfying here. The epitome of that confounding, welcoming, aggressive quality Richard’s music can have. And then the denoument. The final piece a murky, soft landing. A short, rumbling mess; a beautiful end.

And so what of it all as a whole. While he’s released a lot of music under his own name, this feels like a real flag-planting sort of thing. It’s a suite of pieces, filled with references to lots of different parts of what he does as a musician, but having it all collected in one place, and all of them so carefully placed makes it feel like a step forward. A confident one at that. I feel like the last few years the number of exciting US musicians in this nebulous world of music has exploded, and we’re now pretty over-run (a wonderful thing to be sure). With None for the Money, Richard’s just made it clear we should all be paying attention. That is, if you weren’t already.

- BW Diederich, Sometimes He Writes