Martin Rach

ghost, don’t scream

December 8th, 2020

Had it been released earlier at various times, Ghost, Don’t Scream would probably have appeared on Broadcasts from Elsewhere, certainly The Outcast on the Ivories, and possibly even Transmissions, three mixes I’ve posted here in the past; but then I suppose I wouldn’t be able to see its unique place at the exact center of whose collective cloud of thematic and atmospheric essence. For the virtuosic (Lithuanian?) artist Martin Rach pulls from all directions to produce the sparse soundscapes that comprise his newest release: various schools of classical piano or amorphous improvisation, the quiet violence within the “spluttering and bubbling, jerking and rasping, whistling and screaming”¹ howls of radio static, the jarring tonal agility and piercing textures of circuit bending, and various other little things that go bump in the night. On first listen, I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about the interplay between the grandness of the piano and the minuscule grasping claws of the electronics as “First Apparition” began, but I was immediately sold about six minutes of the way through when the desperate, sterile wail of a rewired audio wire half-harmonizes and descends with the keys—a truly spectacular and memorable moment. To be honest, I’m not sure I get a “ghost” vibe from this, at least not directly; to me it sounds more like the paranoid half-knowledge of something beyond our field of view and experience but not quite being able to grasp it, forever living in obsessive fear. Or maybe that’s just me, because there’s a lot of other narratives one could ascribe—a lone concert pianist playing a final concerto to nobody in a world ravaged by technological apocalypse, a forgotten service robot trying to make music by rearranging its hardware along to a dusty recording it found on the ground. What I really mean is that Ghost, Don’t Scream is lonely, but it isn’t scary, even if you’re scared of loneliness (I certainly am, to an extent), because the sadness with which this soundtrack to humbling isolation is saturated is nothing except beautiful.

¹ Eula Biss, “Time and Distance Overcome”

Review: Martin Rach – <em>Ghost, Don’t Scream</em> (attenuation circuit, Nov 15)

https://emerge.bandcamp.com/album/ghost-dont-scream

Migrant piece Nr.2

September 5th, 2020

As walking exceeds

the speed of speech

So the journey

untells the meanings you’ve built

Around vessels pre-emptied

Streets distant and void

Skeletons, bare concrete

Analogical tools

I am in the city

Name I don’t dare to

Pronouncing my steps

Wet dry naked outside sentence

Palace in ashes

Eyelids fatigued

Have looked at the fires

Was it a war, a riot, a feast?

Sense bellow knees disappears

Words can not but duck

Oh, i wish my wish was way more

transparent

Transporting logs of trees that were saved

Buckets of grass

Way outnumbered by cattle

This town more like

village

If villages hadn’t gone much sooner

Where do i go? as I go

On the sidewalk of a pool

Shooting someone something

Guess bullets were cheap

Locally sourced

Perhaps for the locals

to feed

King and queen but a memory

of a ghost of a shadow

Thick my fat smartly stored

for famine

Iris, rose, whatever the vase

Discoloured white black

White heat

Too white this shade

I dream, I assume, for no thing’s

like this

Quicker the syllables

Can’t outrun the spelling

Must wake up

To walk the way of

horrors

The richer they got

The poorer it felt

Power consumed

in expanding extensions

That were bound to contain

endless echoes

instead of a source

The root was dug out

Or were those branches?

Upside down

In contradictory bliss

How know when the known

and the knowing

are unknown?

Ha! to that

which hijacked

the revolution of dreams

Speeches by Selma

My laughter is a

lethal weapon

Or so I hope

In vain

Can’t walk

Won’t wake

And so I decide

To lie down

In sleep

Can’t hurt

Heart closer to earth

Black after sunset

on sunless planet

No laws of physics

can explain this charade

though real, so real

Fuck it

I lay down and let

the mayhem pass

In digital circles

Feedback back on feedback

Hypnotizing this mess

Like mass or the masses

Opus and opium

Get stronger by day

when there is one

to come by

Stop thinking, I’m texting

Birds tweeting

Delusions

Illusions

Lesions

I’m less

of a prophet

Unless time runs backwards

Weird words

Wired lords

to fences

Sheep fucking smiling

So big the mouth

So ready the teeth

Sweet sweat first supper

Last god

No more sons

Come daughters

Dart them

Bull’s eye, circumference

Thing is so bloated

Can’t miss it

And I do miss

nights that

calm and gentle

in vortex

of fury

My furry

My ferry

My sea

Weeds and seeds

My body I had

Transformed past your skin

Different of kin

Same of a kind

Kindly destroying

leftovers

Grinding the rust off of chains

Imprisoned in our ankles

Invisible, almost accepted

An enhancement of a desire

to dance

I’m still asleep

Not ready to stand

As wretched and the wretchers

Wither with minimum wind

Wind it up

Alas, too hot to augment

the breeze

Chords and cords

Cards and cardiac arrest

Guards do their duty

Cordially errupting in chorus

To protect and serve

Botswanian free range oxen

to western and eastern

upper class

While importing salted

fish bones and heads

for the classless

Masters of unfinished records

Played in virtual imaginary

Listen up

Down with the masters

Lay down your tired bodies

Cool are the weapons

when viewed sideways

Through blades of summer grass

Sun is shining uneasy

Brightly colouring all

the burnt out pigments

Pigs smelling like mint

Menthol in my ale

All is in one

And one is in all

When you sleep in your dream

of sedated dreams

Dogs barking at the pigeons

that drink river waters

A child, a mother, a dad

Sometimes double of each

Ah, how beautiful life is

when death not in here

Wake up!

Dirty rags clinging to body through blood

Wake up!

More sweat lost than water intake

Wake up!

Bones shattered look like hard candy

Wake up!

I’m not a man

I’m a brick

Wake up!

I’m not a man

I’m thousand petals growing out

into rocks and lowroads concrete

I’m not a man

I’m acid

I’m countless snowflakes landing

on the summer beaches and into your saunas

I’m not a man

I walk

My desire is that we

come round

and as you speak

I autotune the vowels

Promting us to sing

I’m not a man

I run

My desire is that we share

the soil that’s not ashes

And when you grow peppers

I add salt to it

So our bloodpressure rises

To that of the angels

that escaped godly fires

I’m not a man

I have dreams

But my nightmares

are faster

Irrespective of my desire

The carnage continues

As I’m no longer able to fall

Asleep in my sleep

Standing someplace in

the city

I feel my legs disappear

to the tune of clapping hands

Properly handled by security

men

I’m not a man

We know

That’s why we are packing you

I’m not a man

I am poet

My desire is for somebody

To wake instead of me

And do it like it should be

Migrant piece 1

July 14th, 2020

Revolution starts in the moss where the

smell of the spirit is accurate

Rolling on the mountain with your

ass feet back and knees

The sky is open over the rocks

used by sheep to hide from the sun

Even the most gentle of beasts need

some darkness for a change

Fucking laughable the eye is to the horizon

but cares not to emit a sound

just let the wind pass

You look for a ditch to have a smoke

not necessarily a cigar

but something to remind you of a victory

After countless losses

you deserve one quiet

One time of minimal movement

while sheep bell the intervals

between one root or another

Berries in red on the floor made of void

or something approaching the night

with its star crossings

There a dwarf, a giant

and a colossus of sorts

In distance that your feet dare not measure

stone falls making a thud

You listen as if to hear the enciphered message

but the folly of it catches up before

any sense comes to mean

Contracted back into the tiny space

you occupy

Invisible to the far aboves

you make a gesture

Guest neither invited nor off the list

you inhale the scent of blueberry leaves

Which is not much but so is

the volume of your heart

Though fast, thus potentially

ripe for openings

Scattered in grass moss and waters

I am so that my enemies can

never recognize me

My skin on the stones, bark

and juniper needles

So I can ever feel and be felt

by the loved ones

I think of rolling off the mountain

while becoming a rock

Under which in a year or two

there’d start growing all the red caps

In the dark of the night

befriended by moths, slugs and ants

I dream of a god so chaotic that

it makes my innards sing

Having never known its name I wash

my feet in morning dew

Prepared for movement one way or another

I inhale the odors sun offers

My eyes infected by bright blue

come to rest on a lichenous stub

The silence in my head weighs like stones

washed on the river bank

I inspect my skin for no other reason

but its existence

Bits of breeze lost in the

hairy parts

The smile extends further than the jokes

collecting the warmth

left in abundance

By the goddesses that superseded

the gods

Who fell stupid on the guillotine

Centuries of wails echoing among the leaves

that refuse to rot

Panic of those who lost their riches

Courage of those tough in their faith

Paths walked till the heels feel as bone

Tears wiped finger tips softer than rain

Wither the state of trampled convictions

There’s no prisons among animals

no matter the blood

Typing machine resting on the bottom

of dried up lake

Fish that swim back to the ocean

Waves of resistance gather into a tsunami

rolling slow giving birth

To places and time uncounted and

encountered in adventures

Of which I am a witch and I burn

my sins in a fire at noon

Smoke rises over the mountain

and I signal the clouds

‘Bout the tasks close ahead, of the ways,

far away

I hear a sound of approaching quiets

that may hide undiscovered desires

I store few samples of it into a jar

may be opened when back in the works

The job of the jobless is to trail

the truths of declassified vissions

Moving on the sand

as the mountains decay

Half an inch in millenium

so when they reach the cities and towns

It won’t become their demise

but the futures

I dream of which a lot and know very little

but so does every spring

before it autumns

And starts falling on the lakes,

tracks and barren fields

Infesting the village, the town and metropolis

The breath of the blood of the mountains

Cuts deep into the lungs of

workers, the servants and their masters

Dogs howl and cats hunt for the zebras

Dome of the heaven descends so low

That it makes it stupid to wish on the stars

In this jolly chaos you can hear

the revolutionary songs spreading

from the wilderness

You can’t make out the instrumentation,

the lyrics or the scope of its scale

So you sing along hoping for

it to last enough that it can

aqcuire a name

In the meantime you’re happy

you’re not alone

Walking the freedom to the distance

of a mad one

One heart one soul one spirit

One gut and many treats to feel it with

Piercing

July 1st, 2020

Nature deceives a concept by changing its spring.
A thread is for the needle as the wire for the need.

Nartine breaks into a laboratory, carrying her sewing machine in a brown backpack. He unloads pieces of fabric, threads, needles and thimbles by an operating table. She disassembles its legs so as to get it on ground. Works the wires so that some of them are prepared to let the earth loop in.
She undresses and sticks a cable into his belly button. Slowly threads a yarn through the plastic protecting copper filaments. The needle goes into her guts and starts sewing. Marten’s bloodstream gives a pulse of a steady excitation. This is recorded onto an obscure fiber that she made on her night offs. Machines can’t decipher it and can’t store it. There’ll be no trace to rewind and review.
Narten plugs another jack into her calf muscles. Another thread finds a way to connect her twitches to his fallopian tubes.There is soothing buzz in a room. According to reads of a scanner she is dreaming. A part of Martine’s belly skin starts transforming into a textile tissue. It vibrates and interrupts the buzz so as to create a silent beat.
He whistles in her dream.
The needle now works the fabric formed out of her belly. Signs, letters, stitches, scars that she reads with his fingers.
Her whistling changes.
The moon is high listening to the black earth purl. For a moment Martene forgets her name. It disrupts the song as his heart not only beats, but echoes itself in her chest. Electric currents propelled forward by uterine joy make his stomach into 29 butterflies. She is now of the earth and the moon.
In rising waters lilies, drunk with linalool, dance to drumming of celestial spheres.
Needles and wires, plugs and threads stem and spring, branching into a labyrinth of whispers. The ascendant voice gets quickly and gently wrapped into a rag, whose time is of tomorrow.

Marten runs out of premises.
Her work will learn to walk as his hole will howl.

Moonchild.

Live Odd Things in words

May 13th, 2020

“I have already hinted, time and again, at a reviewer’s delight when material from perfect strangers is received which turns out to sound fresh, unpretentious and ultimately more intelligent than the average output of celebrated “names”. This happened with Live Odd Things by Martin Rach, a Lithuanian experimenter with several outings to his credit under various alter egos, usually phonetic variations on the same canon like the “Morten Rasz” used for this release. I will necessarily have to further deepen the issue (the albums, not the monikers).

Meanwhile, we have five tracks of apparent computer music that doesn’t stand still for a millisecond. The vibe is abstractly electronic, with outlandish analog connotations (there also seems to be a dyslexic old drum machine fluttering around). In fact I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the sources are NOT computerized, and remain waiting for enlightenment by the instigator of this sweet mess. In any case, there’s a constant logic in the apparent disorganization; a sort of self-regulating anarchy providing the necessary aesthetic consistency for the survival of the sonic organism within our auditory meanders.

For a (pathetic) synthesis, I would rely on the expression “galactically turbulent”. Awkward bleeps, invasive nano-fuzz, relatively assuaging hums alternate with the aforementioned rhythmic aleatoricism. The whole is spiced with gentler emissions, and leaves total freedom for the receivers to enter this strange world wherever they wish. Although the components of the timbral compound do not really change, a dose of (involuntary?) irony makes the act of listening a smooth enough experience. Bizarre celestial geometries amidst the utter disappearance of “styles”. Fine with me.”

https://touchingextremes.wordpress.com/2020/04/07/morten-rasz-live-odd-things/

https://martinrach.bandcamp.com/album/live-odd-things

Live Odd Things

April 3rd, 2020

The sound of the paper you write on is like the ears of a dreaming dragon.

live odd things by Morten Rasz

i was young and i needed money

March 26th, 2020

As i look at the star,
smoking,
Arvo Part‘s „Spiegel im Spiegel“ on,
i know that there‘s nothing in me
or in a star, or in a music that
can be said properly –
and, as a music waves into night,
i know that i am to myself the way the starlight is –
a flash of already nonexistant thing,
a record, untraceable,
and nothing could happen to me
or the star, or the
music

because we are all here
– the star, the music, myself –
in a way of being mistaken