HAFLER TRIO LP+BOOK SIGNED EXPERIMENTAL-NWW-COIL-P16.D4

$

35

HAFLER TRIO

 IF TAKE, THEN TAKE: TRICKS, HALF-TRICKS & REAL PHENOMENA LP

Crippled Intellect Production

Limited Edition: 235/400 copies

w/book, signed 

Rare limited edition of 400 copies deluxe package with trapezoidal book from Hafler Trio, a great sonic document released back in 2005, signed by the artist.

Some info on the release:  Rare original issue, released in Usa sometime back in the 00's on the Crippled Intellect Productions label (Crawl Unit, Z'ev, Joe Colley, Francisco Lopez, Wolf Eyes, Nautical Almanac, etc.). Features the electronic drone music experiments of Hafler Trio, the on-going project of english artist Andrew McKenzie. The first proper Hafler Trio album for a decade, after a long silence by the artist for a number of years. "Recorded under very interesting circumstances, some of which are apparent and some that are not, at the G*D Facility, Reykjavík, 2005. Nothing added, nothing taken away.". Deluxe packaging, limited edition of 400 copies (this one being #235), signed by the artist and coming with a trapezoid-sized book!!  Highest recommendation!!

Unanswered questions, unasked-for responses, stimulus and response exercises conducted and presented for the benefit of a select few. Hafler Trio has always asked more of the listener than many sound artists do, with questions and ideas that provoke and, like an open invitation, await response from those who are willing to tackle, often at length, the ideas presented. Furthering the pleasures / complications, a trapezoidal-shaped booklet with additional points of query is part of the packaging so that those who wish additional illuminations, provocations, questions, and--when the light is right--answers, may add greater tricks to their own personal repetoire of knowledge. Please note: in this instance, knowledge may be considered fact, fiction, or entirely up for debate. This record is limited to 400 copies and each is hand signed by the artist.

Revelation on one hand, obfuscation on the other--this is the art of The Hafler Trio, whose solo technician Andrew McKenzie presents metaphysical research as sound constructions and interrelated written texts. Aesthetically speaking, McKenzie has long demonstrated a masterful control over his enigmatic sounds that flutter and drone as if divined from electricity singing to itself. Through the self-professed tricks, half-tricks and real phenomenon of If Take, Then Take, he engineers grandiose gestures of minimalism with a sensibility closer to his earlier work (eg An Utterance Of The Supreme Ventriloquist), and marked by sudden stops and hammered claps that change the musical direction. In addition to the diffuse mirage of McKenzie's compositions, his texts beseech the audience to seek knowledge of the self by deconstructing the biological, spiritual and technological institutions that have infected mankind. Within this oblique exegesis, McKenzie conveys a frustration that his ideals may not be getting through, even though his tech-gnostic sleights of hand are intended as conundrums. Not all of us may be wise enough to sit in the court of the magician, but at least he lets us hear how magnificent his chorus is.--The Wire

With a lot of our reviews we don't mention the cover of the product. Usually because we think it's the music that we should care about, but here is an exception: this new LP by The Hafler Trio is by far the best dressed item of the week. A mirrored image in full color with extra black over black printing and a trapezoidal booklet, with more images and text. Text in the usual Hafler Trio fashion, texts that elude me most of the time, to be honest. You read a few lines, put the booklet aside and think about what you read. In the meantime you can play the music. What is noteworthy here is that each side apparently has more musical pieces, but that's just (another) illusion - like so many things with The Hafler Trio. Each side runs like one track, even when the eye notes more pieces per side. Nothing is what is seems to be. The Hafler Trio raises questions and never gives answers, and even if it would do, you still wouldn't understand it. The music is a continuation of the drone music that The Hafler Trio have been exploring ever since their return to the music, late 2002. The b-side is a bit similar to the work executed with Autechre on their second collaboration: soft drones that end abruptly a few times in the beginning, and then there is a click sound. After that things start again. Overall it seems to be fading out at a very slow speed. As before and as to come, The Hafler Trio raises questions as-well as eyebrows, but they do this with the great sense of esthetic. As a true devotee no objections here. My favorite of this week.--Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly

This LP--the first full-length h3o LP for ten years, if we're to believe the Crippled Intellect website­-is subtitled "Tricks, Half-Tricks and Real Phenomena",which is a rather apt description of the world of Andrew Mckenzie. To paraphrase Frans de Waard, The Hafler Trio asks questions and never answers them, and even if it did, you wouldn't understand. If there's one word to describe McKenzie's oeuvre (which shows no sign of abating--quite the contrary--despite his recently publicized health problems), it's inscrutable. Both the music, an austere, even chilly, assemblage of drones whose origins are as difficult to fathom as the architectural bigger picture they fit into, and the texts that invariably accompany it, with their strange, slightly surreal juxtaposition of grammatical abstruseness and tired cliché. To a certain extent, as David Cotner noted in these pages recently, there's something almost pointless about reviewing a Hafler Trio album in the first place. It's tempting merely to string together some quotes fromMcKenzie's liners that may (or may not) shed some light on a music that's as hard to describe as it is difficult not to admire. There's something heroically stubborn about devoting one's life to the production of beautifully packaged works of art (like this one, which comes in a signed edition of 400 with a 16-page trapezoidal booklet) that will probably have sold out and disappeared into lovingly cared-for private collections by the time you readthis. As I've managed to miss out on a number of highly acclaimed Hafler Trio releases since the last one that came my way (2003's The Moment When We Blow The Flour From Our Tongues on Crouton), I'm not in a position to say with certainty exactly where If Take, Then Take fits into the h3o canon. Nor am I able to tell just from listening how the continuous spans of music on each side of the LP divide into, respectively, six and four tracks. What's in no doubt though is that it's another rare and elusive dispatch from a singularly original figure in today's new music. Hope you can find a copy.-­Dan Warburton, paristransatlantic.com   

The Hafler Trio is a conceptual and sound art collaborative between Andrew M. McKenzie, the only permanent member, and guest musicians. The project has seen the release of numerous albums and CDs in experimental musical styles ranging from electronica, cut-up, ambient, environmental soundscape, musique concrète, electro-acoustic, and audio-montage as cinema for the years from 1982 to present, each of which utilise graphic design and text for contextual juxtaposition with the recordings, as well as having a diverse but concrete philosophical and sometimes quasi-religious framework to place them in.

There have been numerous members and collaborators alongside Andrew M. McKenzie, including Cabaret Voltaire co-founder Chris Watson, the (semi) fictitious Dr. Edward Moolenbeek, Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound, Adi Newton of Clock DVA, Z'EV, Fluxus artist Willem de Ridder, David Tibet (of Current 93), Genesis P-Orridge, Annie Sprinkle, Jónsi Birgisson (of Sigur Rós), Michael Gira (of Swans and Angels of Light), Chloe Vevrier, Erla Þórarinsdóttir, Blixa Bargeld, Netochka Nezvanova, Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, and John Lacey of COUM Transmissions, among many others. McKenzie was also part of Whitehouse along with Steven Stapleton and William Bennett for their first live performance.

Condition: Vinyl lies in excellent condition, looks super clean with no spindle marks or other signs of having ever been played and plays nicely all along with some occasional noise, while cover lies in very good+ condition with a crashed corner on the top right, split on top and spine and very light corner wear. The booklet lies in excellent condition.

Tracklist

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