featuring dp, slawek kwi, yannick dauby, sylvain van iniitu

In the old days labels started with a compilation, Ini.itu decides to end with one. Four artists act as ‘four amphibian headed horsemen, channelling frogoroth through their sonic veins’ and I believe in some way these people work together, as I saw a concert listed by them. However here they have their own musical piece. Dave Phillips kicks off proceedings with a particularly dense and noisy piece of rainforest recordings from Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Ecuador, Switzerland, and the latter is where he recorded the guitar and distortion, which he also managed to cramp into this. Frogs, tree frogs and toads recorded in Taiwan, follow it and also some electronic instruments, all as recorded by Yannick Dauby. On the other side we have an ‘Anouran Protest Song’ by Slavek Kwi (also known as Artificial Memory Trace), which is about ‘voicing concern in the face of the threat of amphibiab chytrid fungus decimating the frog population worldwide, and those frogs, assuming that’s what I hear, sound quite rhythmical but perhaps pitched down (probably not) and forming a deep rumble, perhaps not unlike a marching, protest song. Quite a powerful music piece this one. The last words go out to Sylvain van Iniitu, who, as Blindhead, had the first release on Ini.itu (see Vital Weekly 649) and now has a ‘maceration at Cannibal Caniche’, also a slightly more dangerous piece of field recordings and I was thinking that indeed we had no take on the harshness of field recordings on this label, so perhaps it is only fitting to end on a more furious note. Sad to see this label wind down, but it has been a very good run and quite an achievement. And let’s hope they will all turn into collector’s items and some day, somehow there will be a follow up to all of this.

(Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly, Issue 1082, May 2017)