The Rubber Room column is a weekly look at recent and notable releases that don’t fall into the rubric of traditional reviewed material—namely 7”’s, 12”’s, 3” CDs, EPs, cassette-only and MP3-only releases.

Carlos Giffoni/ Lee Ranaldo/Jim O’Rourke
North Six 3” CD
[Antiopic Live Series, 2004]

North Six is a mind-bogglingly great trio recording from two adepts and an up-and-coming interventionist. Definitively old-school noise in inclination, the performers repeatedly set bombs and deviant devices of their own making against each other, stoking a great astral spat. A wild plume of electric-fire smoke invades the performance space as Ranaldo’s guitar is repeatedly speared by silver darts of electronics. This tactic only serves to illuminate those moments where the six-string suddenly soars out of the thick air and propels the improvisation far into the stratosphere, Giffoni and O’Rourke’s duelling synths sparking like stars communing in abstract constellations.
[Jon Dale]

Warmdesk
Pistachio
[a Touch of Class, 2003]

That Pistachio appears on a Touch of Class, Andy Vaz’s Background Records’ sub-label, offers an immediate promise of quality and the EP’s three minimal techno tracks don’t disappoint. There’s some suggestion that Chicago-based William Selman (Warmdesk) applied his interest in musique-concrete to the pieces, as the echoing pings and clangs in the buoyantly skipping title track hint that a pistachio bowl might have been struck for a sound source. Perhaps shoe sounds were sampled for “Bad Sneakers” but you’d never know it from its funky low-end and snippy hi-hats alone. The spectral chords and deep, undulating bass lines in “Abstract Factory” offer even more evidence of Pistachio’s smooth, lush taste.
[Ron Schepper]

Sakada
Never Give Up on the Margins of Logic 3” CD
[Antiopic Live Series, 2004]

Expanded to a five-piece for this recording (introducing the band: Eddie Prévost, Rhodri Davies, Mark Wastell, Margarida Garcia, and Mattin), Sakada exchange density of sound for an abstract navigation of space. If it sometimes seems as though the quintet are carefully plotting sound events on graphic paper, measuring and charting their interactions with abstrusely schematic intrigue, suddenly a great blast of sound—probably sourced from Mattin’s deconstructed laptop—tears through the heavens, jolting the players out of their reverie. It’s an uncommonly beautiful set, all ears directed inward, listening for the next breath just drawn from the air.
[Jon Dale]

Warmdesk
Guero Variations Variations
[A Posteriori, 2003]

This four-song 12” extends Warmdesk’s Guero Variations concept beyond the existing full-length’s nine. As before, Chicagoan William Selman entirely constructed his two compositions from ‘non-played’ piano samples. The incredibly detailed “Guero (Band)” opens with creaking, strums, and cranking noises that cohere into a stunningly layered array that’s propelled by thumping tribal patterns. More minimal yet equally effective is “Guero (Preformatted),” dubby click-house with criss-crossing clacks and rattles. As one might expect, Stephan Mathieu’s “Guero (Cheap Imitation)” trades propulsion for meditation, transforming Selman’s material into mutating pulsation. Invoking Selman’s penchant for musique-concrete, Ulrich Troyer adds kitchen noises to his “Romantic Dinner (Inspired by Guero)” and gives Warmdesk’s dub-techno a slightly more conventional, downtempo slant. Definitely a worthy complement to Guero Variations.
[Ron Schepper]

Beckett & Taylor/Spandex
Lies 12”
[Hand on the Plow, 2004]

Beckett and Taylor’s second release for Hand on the Plow almost shames their debut single. On “Lies”, the duo hook into a slippery, stutter-funk backbone, making woozy with the edits, crooning ‘all of us lie’ over accumulating detritus, as if they were born politicians. “More Lies” reduces the stew of language to pure phonemes, suggesting ‘the truth’ may lie in the steady pulse of the body. Spandex’s two cuts alternate between sex music for languorous lover-men, faintly slurring their lines over bass that squirms like an octopus on heat, and the hiccuping micro-edits of “Abusing the Body”, a child compulsively cracking its joints in time to some subterranean rhythmic knowledge. Spandex is drunk on plastic.
[Jon Dale]