Iatrogenesis Records

I am working at my desk most of today with a couple of server issues I need to take care of, mostly clean up and maintenence. The last few weeks I have been working on this project both at home and at work where I have been re-ripping all of my cassettes to a higher bitrate. Several years ago I was paying less attention to quality and more attention to quantity I shrunk a lot of my ripped records and tapes down to as low as 128kbps, and in the process ruining a lot of them due to mp3 noise and clipping. I am buying a lot less these days and have decided now is a good time to go back and check out a lot of stuff that has been sitting around neglected for a while and I am glad I have been doing this.

As of right now I think these blog entries may be written over a few hours as I go through records and tapes and listen to them as I re-rip them and enjoy them once again in their original form. People often ask why I do not just listen to everything as it was released? I personally don’t mind listening to cassettes or vinyl but it is so much easier to load something you want on an iPod or media computer and listen to it pretty much anywhere. I have my home, car, office any other place I spend time in set up to accomidate this type of media much quicker and easier than all of the formats I have available.

This morning I have been working on a few tapes from Iatrogenesis Records which is run by Gordon Ashworth of Oscillating Innards. I have gone through the three short solo cassettes that Gordon as released in very limited quantities under the moniker Gordon Wilson Ashworth. I have been a huge fan of Gordon over the last several years as Oscillating Innards, the new disc Nadir Emergence is very impressive with all of its amazing textures which mix very well with the beautiful quiet moments. In this project though Gordon focuses more on an ambient mood with nice guitar passages which are really quite relaxing. The three tapes are Atlantic Dreams which is the least mature of the three although still very impressive, Home Songs, and Let. Home Songs and Let are very similar in sound and are hopefully just the beginning of a new project that will become something much bigger than three 10 minute cassettes.

I also listened to another short cassette by Concern which is another side project of Gordon which has recently seen a professional self titled CD release on the Students of Decay label. This cassette is titled Early and I assume it has something to do with this being material recorded early on in this projects life. This cassette does invoke a lot of the same ambient drones as the full length CD and should be sought out by anyone who liked the disc.

Oscillating Innards as a project has changed directions several times. This is the trilogy called Droneseas, as you can tell by the name, this is more focused on noise drones than harsh, or cut up noise. Sometime when I think or hear drone I think of more relaxed calming drones. In the Droneseas project these are more of a loud drone like a running machine somewhere in a factory or a boiler room. While I like these cassettes they are not my favorite thing Gordon has done, the length may be too long as there is not much variation in each track although some might like the fact that the sound stays focused on the same tones for a 10 minute period of time for each track. I understand that is usually the definition of drone music but something just feels missing here when compared to the rest of the Oscillating Innards catalog.

The last Gordon project for today is Riverbed Mausoleum, this is an excellent power electronics project which sounds similar to some of the harsh instrumental Oscillating Innards with some added vocals. The vocals are pretty much undecipherable but entertaining to say the least. Projects like this are good for letting out aggression and get the listener all worked up at the same time. The cassettes I have here are the self titled C10 from the early days of this project and the newer split with Kakerlak. I don’t have much to say about them other than they are a good batch of short PE tracks which work well with the sound of Kakerlak on the second cassette.

The last project on the list for today is the mysterious Caen, which if I remember correctly this guy is not very easy to get a hold of and more or less sends masters to people while remaining somewhat unknown. The first tape by Caen on Iatrogenesis is Slothn No Overdubs, this tape has some of sort of gritty, slow almost piano sound mixed with some music box like melodies, which work well on cassette. The tracks are short but sweet, as there are about 9 total tracks on a 20 minute release. Sometimes with harsh noise the little bursts of a C10 or C20 are nice but with cassettes from artists like this they can be a bit of a tease that leaves you wanting more. The second Caen cassette titled Clear As Day is a cleaner more focused work which contains a lot of the same aspects of the previous cassette with a little cleaner sound. I also own the cassette by Caen on Monorail Trespassing and have heard the one on Ekhein, both of which are newer and from what I remember are also very good. The two older cassettes are excellent works and I hope we see more by this artist in the future.

That will be it for today, thanks for reading.

Links:
Iatrogenesis / Oscillating Innards / Concern / Riverbed Mausoleum: http://iatrogenesis.net/
Students of Decay: http://www.studentsofdecay.com/