dave phillips - ideal world

7", 2012, iDeal Recordings, Gothenburg.   Available

Dp ideal world front

Dp ideal world back

Dp ideal world orig

edition of 100, photo by Maya



REVIEWS

Hand-stamped and numbered edition of 100 Transparent Vinyl - please note these vinyl copies are slightly warped, this does not seem to affect playback. iDEAL Recordings never fail to grab our attention and this 7“ from Swiss extremist Dave Phillips has us rapt. A regular collaborator with Schimpfluch Gruppe, Dave has consistently explored the outer limits since his work as Fear Of God in the late 80s. Here he instigates two provocative pieces of cut-up, animalistic exhortations and visceral psycho-acoustics, wrenching all manner of burping, squawking, wretching, masticated sonics from his body and secreting them in a hocked-up glob of electro-acoustic process. The 2nd side is particularly unhinged: a rapid-fire battery of scatted hollers arranged in a razing hail of deviant behaviour. He explains thus ”it’s when humans believe they have left their animal nature behind, that they show the qualities that are their’s alone: obsession, self-deception and perpetual unrest. they think they are free, conscious beings, when in truth they are deluded animals. at the same time they never cease trying to escape from what they imagine themselves to be. their religions are attempts to be rid of a freedom they have never possessed. their utopias of right and left or their incessant blabber of national identity serve the same function. like religion, the modern cults of certain sciences live on the hope of miracles and salvation - they have built empires of scientific capability to manipulate the phenomena of nature into enormous manifestations of their own dreams of power and wealth. and politics is unconvincing even as entertainment. luckily, humans have a gift of self-deception, and thrive in ignorance of their natures… …just as there is no central representation there is no central system. each activity connects perception to action directly. it is only the observer of a creature who imputes a central representation or central control; the creature itself has none - aren’t we at our most skillful when we are least self-aware? out of the local chaos of these interactions there emerges, in the eye of the observer, a coherent pattern of behaviour. selfhood in humans is not the expression of any essential unity, but a pattern of organisation, not unlike that found in insect colonies… …we become more resistant to undesirable social influence by maintaining a sense of personal responsibility and by being willing to be held accountable for our actions…“

(Boomkat)

First of ten planned singles by this Swiss oddball with long ties to the Schimpfluch Group. Voice clatter that sounds lke a rugby team throwing up in a trench and enjoying the heck out of it.

(Byron Coley, The Wire, December 2012)