VipCranco

Whilst sat here getting ready to type this blog I thought I'd slip on the compilation CD "Throne" recently put together by Cold Spring Records. It starts with a track by Iron Fist Of The Sun which is so bloody awful I cannot believe that Cold Spring don't have some sort of quality control ... Unbelievable .. and anyway I am not here to to tell of my personal dislikes but to talk of VipCranco.
With VipCranco I know I am somewhat late to the party but it was only in June this year that Chris Groves of Cipher Productions introduced me to their sound. I have given my thoughts on their release via Cipher earlier this month .. Bowled over with their sound I have now bought two more albums .. courtesy of Cold Spring Records. (They have a summer sale on at the moment and there are bargains to be bagged).
"Xax" was released five years ago and is their first release on their own imprint Lisca Records. I know little of VipCranco and their output as there is very little written on the Internet, but I do know that they are an Italian quartet. "Xax" is a great album, very hard to categorise and quite unlike the ritual drone of the eponymous Cipher Productions cassette. The sound across the six tracks (three a side) is mainly ampnoise and frequencies. I can here radio dial doodling and the distant humming of bass guitar strings but the main construct is ampnoise and (controlled) feedback. It is not claustrophobic but it certainly has a boundary - I know that I am in a room with the sound. I (almost) get a sense that the pieces are scored. Classical Musique Concret. (CMC as we say in the trade). Think Alvin Lucier, Peter Appleton and Annie Gosfield. The "Noise In Your Eye" installations that were travelling the UK thirty or so years ago - that sound is all in "Xax".
The pieces have excellent titles too; "Blue Mastitis", "C5-C6", "The End Is Endless Strife" - which has such weird frequency shifts that it wouldn't sound out of place on the "Berbarian Sound Studio" soundtrack. "Xax" closes with the electronic sandstorm "Uncoloured Future".
It's a brilliant LP to play alongside "Afflicted Man Musica Box" and anything by Grey Park.
As mentioned, I managed to pick up a copy from Cold Spring Records (the "Throne" CD has picked up a little thanks to Boyd Rice covering David Bowie), or try Discogs. (There's no contact address on the LP).