This recording represents a long anticipated collaboration between two turntable manipulators, one from Québec, the other from Japan. It is a completely improvised work involving noise, needles, scratching and vinyl. Some of the tracks (Spoutnik) do show flashes of atmosphere and mood, yet many seem to be pointless, noisy messes (Debris and Friction).

This work is noise in the truest sense of the word. Convention has been completely disregarded for a totally experimental ethic that you will either enjoy or loathe. 21 situations is comprised of non-musical sonic deconstructions that embraces sound experimentation as the ‘be-all end-all’. Perhaps this album would be more engaging if it wasn’t so left-field and the sound pallette wasn’t so abrasive.

Tétreault and Yoshihide have indeed suceeded in achieving audio environments, yet the substance factor is almost non-existant. Ultimately this work is forgettable, pointless and not worthy of repeated listenings. Members of the artistic “elite” may refer to this as daring and innovative, but the rest of us will just be left scratching our heads, wondering why studio time was wasted on such an undecipherable mess.

These days it’s not so strange to think of the DJ as a musician, and between hip-hop-related artists DJ Shadow and DJ Spooky there’s been enough ink spilled on the subject to fill a few books. But it’s been a iong time coming: In the early 80s, long before the term turntablist came into being, a guy named Christian Marclay was conducting wild experiments with vinyl records that had nothing to do with breakbeats. Physically gluing pieces of different John Cage records together or layering sounds from unrelated records to form jarring collages, Marclay was as important as any hip-hopper in elevating the turntable from playback device to artistic tool. Montréal’s Martin Tétreault, once an experimental visual artist, began working in a similar vein in 1984, and in the last few years he’s released a flurry of fascinating recordings that go well beyond using the record player as a substitute for the sampler—a machine that, by the way, he dismisses because it lacks the serendipitous possibilities of a turntoble, whose output can be radically altered by something as random as a heavy footstep across the room. On Callas: la diva et le vinyle (like most of his work, on Ambiances MagnetiquesI, a duet with Robert Marcel Lepage, he actually plays some discernible passages from recordings by the eponymous opera great and engages in a genuine musical dialogue with the clarinetist, but most of his other recent stuHf is more abstract. He’s screwed with both records and record players, affixing objects to the vinyl or altering the design of the cartridge; he’s even made use of the sound of a turntable’s motor. And he’s a versatile performer: On Dur noyau dur, a duet with René Lussier, he meets the guitarist’s fractured, noisy Derek Bailey-like outbursts with equally disjointed and perpetually surprising eruptions; on 21 situations he answers the slippery electronic fuckery of Otomo Yoshihide with streams of unidentifiable gray sound. And on Île bizarre he counters the drum-machine improvisations of Ikue Mori and the broken-down samples of Diane Labrosse with lowkey noise bursts that eventually make it hard to tell who’s doing what. For his Chicago debut, he’ll improvise with local tabletop guitarist Kevin Drumm, whose recent Second (Perdition Plastics) further develops a unique musical language that no one’s likely to decode soon.

So, you think you’re a DJ? You think you can spin? You’re a vinyl superhero, spinning 19 discs at once, dropping needles like a clumsy junkie, matching beats like a… um, a really good beat matcher? Ha! Think again. It’s time for school…

On 21 situations, Québec’s Martin Tétreault and Japan’s Otomo Yoshihide lay down 21 tracks of beautiful improvised noise, all coaxed from an array of prepared records (broken, scratched, taped together, who knows what!), altered record players, screwy needles, samplers and CDs. With the exception of a few voice samples, there are almost no recoginizable sounds, and there are definitely no beats (there’s not a Funky Drummer in the house!)

Even without beats, each of the 21 situations has a terrific energy, a real momentum driving it along as Tétreault and Yoshihide spin and squirt all manner fuzz, bleeps and bloops, tinkles, rumbles, buzzes and pops out into the sonic landscape. If you’re a noise-improv connoisseur you’re probably already all over this one. And if you’re not a noise-improve connoisseur, well, what are you waiting for?

Three new releases from the never resting Ambiances magnétiques label (Québec, Canada). The first one is a meeting between two turntable wizzards. It’s the first meeting between Martin Tétreault and Otomo Yoshihide. On 3 days in december 1997 they recorded 21 situations in a studio in Montréal. Through scratching records, manupaliting turntables and associated techniques they work out their ideas in pieces that only in two cases takes more than 3 minutes. Well done.

Both Martin from Montréal & Otomo from Japan are turntable innovators whose unique sounds collide and connect in all sorts of weird but focused ways. Martin often plays & takes apart his turntables, hence the sounds of technology breaking down, often without the use of records. Otomo also plays sampler & cds in addition to turntables usually with records. Each of these 21 pieces are short and seem to deal with a few areas of sound at a time. Still, each piece is fascinating as it explores different terrains one at a time. Obviously both of these wizards have developed their own worlds of sound, sometimes twisted and chaotic, sometimes recognizable sound bytes emerge — is that Eye or David Moss I hear in there? One day when the evil music industry has finally gotten rid of records for good, we will be nostalgic for the sounds of scratchy records, skipping pops & repeats and the warmth that only a good virgin vinyl lp can provide. Those days are not so far off. My young niece of about seven years recently asked her father what a record is/was!?! How sad. An enchanting art form that is slowly disappearing. Available only on cd.

Controlled chaos, brilliant and illuminating from two of the world’s best at this iconoclastic collage of sounds and voices.