Reposted review from the latest Vital Weekly:
CHOP SHOP - PRIMER (2LP by C.I.P.)
Scott Konzelmann's project Chop Shop is one of the most underrated music projects I know. The
reasons for it I am not entirely sure of; partly it is that there never have been a lot of releases and
also never a lot of concerts, but also misfortune in which Konzelmann lost his sound tools in a
flood. His tools include rusty speakers, ancient reel-to-reel tapes and it is some truly great noise
music. There is very little out there on a similar level. Active since the late 80s, there are not a lot
of releases; six albums (of which only 'Oxide' ever made it to these pages, Vital Weekly 625), plus
a bunch of singles including a double 10" with heavy steel plates and a 3" CD on the sadly no
longer existing label V2_Archief. The latter with a soft lead cover; another release came with
broken security glass. All of these releases are not easy to get hold off and all of these show
what Chop Shop is about and that's the physical sounds through visible sources. The covers look
like the music sounds; rusty and loud. Konzelmann created speaker installations of old speakers,
through which he sends his sounds; loops of tape or records and in general these sounds are
picked up from space, so there is an additional 'harsh' feeling about this. This is music that needs
to play at a loud volume, as you would miss out some of finer frequencies. Maybe therein lies also
one of the reasons that Chop Shop isn't that well known. It was never easy to travel with these
heavy speaker objects and besides getting lost in a flood a record is perhaps not the same as
seeing and hearing one in the rusty flesh.
This double LP consists of Chop Shop's earliest recordings. The first LP is culled from his first
cassette, 'Primitive Power/Positive Force' from 1987. Originally this was a ninety minute cassette,
but part of it is apparently (it is one of those Chop Shop releases I never heard) has "sampling that
would have raised serious copyright infringement/clearance issues", while another part is still
available as a CDR, so the remainder is now on the first LP. Here we have Chop Shop in its
earliest incarnation and the presence of a drum machine in the opening piece is rather surprising.
On the other side, there is a piece, which is culled from looping pop music (I think) and along with
some of the heavy electronics used, it is not difficult to see Chop Shop's first release to be part of
then-burgeoning power electronic scene. Having not found his own voice yet, this is, however,
something of historical value, Chop Shop's first steps to what became his trademark sound, traces
of which can already be found in this record.
The second LP contains the C45 cassette 'Scraps', as released by Chop Shop in an edition of
200 and which was available at Generator, Gen Ken Montgomery's store/gallery in New York,
where Chop Shop presented his pieces as installations. Montgomery is responsible for some of
the liner notes here. It's on this cassette that Chop Shop's sound fully matures into this rich junk/
scrap metal sound; the heavy amplification of what seems to be the sound of a rusty plate on a
turntable or the stretch loop of a reel-to-reel recorder. At times it seems like there is something
attached to the speaker, which adds an additional layer of rattling, which, again, adds to the literal
vibrancy of the music. The instability of machines used are not covered up, or edited out, but used
as sounds by themselves. Sometimes a quick change, a rough cut, changes the material from one
abrasive field of sound to the next. Now, there was at the time very little that was alike. There is, of
course, the lack of visuals here, the rusty constructions in metal and perhaps also the sonic
overload (depending on what you are willing to do with your volume setting at home) is something
that needs no controlling, but you get the drift.
The release of this great record marks the end of the C.I.P., this being one of those much-wanted
re-issues and a dream now realized, which is perhaps a sad thing. However, the next imprint is
already in place, Ballast NVP, for some time now. Of course with Chop Shop's analogue approach
there is no download code, but I guess you expected that already. (FdW)
––– Address:
http://ballastnvp.blogspot.com/
