Hoor-Paar- Kraat - Tzool-Mah [Goat Eater Arts - 2008]Tzool-Mah sees Antony Mangicapra and his Hoor-Paar- Kraat collective presenting another highly rewarding and strange slice of surreal and strange soundsaping that hovers between ambience, field recording, strange percussive elements, noise and general unsettling and bizarre audio dwell. As usually with anything put out by Mangicapra’s own label; the wonderfully entitled Goat Eater Arts, the cd comes in his distinctive & arty hand made folder; this time it’s a nice piece of orange art paper with a strip of embossed white paper and wax seal around the folder- with the cd been signed and fingerprinted by Mangicapra, which all gives a nice arty and personal touch to the work. Music wise there are four tracks on offer which rather bizarre total a running time of 50.50(whether this is by accident or with meaning is unsure). First up we have relatively short To Dine is Divine Intervention which conjures up an nice strange and unsettling air with a mixture of knife cutting, fork scalping and taping, with a base of revolving gong or guitar drone craft circling in edgy and at times quite piercing maner. Then we have With Twofold Force in Twin Directions which is a mixture of weird almost tribal/ marching clunking percussion & a weird stuck breathing loop. Then another shorter 6 min track in the form of The Food of the Underworld (a pomegranate seed) which starts with a revolving strange yet comforting mic rub element, atmospheric horn work and spacey yet sinister ambient synth underbelly. And lastly we have the longest track here Language and Emblems which takes in 27 minutes of bizarre and surreal soundscaping- it starts off with a dense mix forking harmonics, weird groans, random percussive elements, before soon adding in layers of bizarre and every day discussions. All to building up a nice dense weird stew of sounds with elements of dialogue popping in and out of the dense sound unfold. Towards the end the track wonders into rather nice yet creepy music box melodics with underneath mumbled sexual groans before ending off in a nice bit of jazzy texturing. Another distinctive shot of Hoor-Paar-Kraat one off soundcaping which is compelling, weird and at times un- nerving and as with every thing on the Goat eater label it’s ltd to a hand number edition this one been of 93 –so it’s an act quick or regret it later position really. Roger Batty
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