Michael Gendreau 55 pas de la ligne au no 3 23five Incorporated CD Available through the Helen Scarsdale Agency: $12.00 "For this release, Californian sound artist Gendreau has modified old record-players and souped them up like custom cars - what we're hearing is a slowly rotating vinyl disk with a heavy old tonearm, to produce a monstrous grind. He has no interest whatsoever in the content of the records. All he wants is the 'dead' part of the pressing, resulting in a kind of pure inertness. The equipment sometimes howls in protest at this maltreatment, but what can be done about it? Nothing! It's a simple process art that totally transcends its methods of production, and offers a glimpse of something beyond, something bizarrely affecting. It may not be an entirely heart-warming vision. When I first saw the cover photo of this 'blackly' packaged release, I assumed immediately that it depicted an awful abyss of doom.. and endless culvert running underneath the very bowels of Hades. I couldn't wait to hear the abysmal sonic message that might accompany this despatch from such a darkened, Saturnine realm. Of course, the cover photo is nothing of the sort - merely a close-up of the micro-grooves of distressed old 78 RPM records, one of the artefacts abused by Gendreau in pursuit of his diabolical aims. But nothing dispels the oppressive feeling generated by this relentless sound-art... of the two long tracks, "Two Worlds For Now" is certainly aligned with the school of thought that desires to bury the listener alive in smothering layers of oppressive, heavy sound. A claustrophobia-inducing sensation begins in the ears and quickly spreads to the entire body. Don't play this on a winter's night when you're snowed in at home, or cabin fever will set in immediately. The title work, which combines a sense of ruthless mathematical precision and somehow suggests an ultra-efficient railroad engineer measuring damage to his tracks, comprises at least two or more of these turntable experiments running simultaneously, or overdubbed in the studio, and thus produces a slightly more sonically varied effect. Powerful stuff - the single idea is squeezed for everything it's got. Gendreau would probably appreciate my mistaken apprehension of the cover photo, as "repression of the recognizability of any particular tool, medium, or instrument" is what he's all about. Apparantly, he's produced entire operas and miniature symphonies with Suzanne Dycus in Crawling With Tarts, using only sets of old 78 records and 9-volt motors. But never has the source been cunningly disguised in an attempt to 'fool' the listener - it's just rendered into something totally unfamiliar. Besides exploring unused 'dead spaces' on his records, he also amplifies the motors, gears, and belts, and gears of his old turntables using devices called accelerometers. These are far more sensitive than boring old contact mics, so the slightest bump or mistake in the process causes sonic havoc - "when Gendreau inevitably drops the needle on the record, the whole cavity of the turntable resonates with those vibrations inscribed in the vinyl," says the press release, audibly slavering with delight. For real fetishists, close-up full-colour photographs of the modified turntables are included in the CD booklet, presented with a near-pornographic attention to detail... cor, check out the tone-arm on that! As the press release points out, this work has nothing whatever to do with DJ turntabling, nor does it align itself with the avant-turntabling artists such as Jesse Paul Miller, Philip Jeck, or Christian Marclay, all of whom have some interest (no matter how remote) in the content of the original records they use. Nor does Gendreau share the passion that Climax Golden Twins have for old, scratchy 78 records and the ghostly voices from the past that float off them - this record is all about machinery, rotation, and industrial grind; and it ploughs its narrow furrow with single-minded purpose." - Ed Pinsent / The Sound Projector