Something of a Grand Circus Leader of Dadaism, KOMMISSAR HJULER takes the avant garde to bed, quite literally. Herr Kommissar sews compositions from edits of household noises, piano, gutteral sounds, personal readings and songs, music on the phonograph, conversations, more readings, etc. The result being a more intimate and minimal 'Sylvie & Babs' with environmental quality like Anne Gillis or early Etant Donnes. Frequently humorous in a Jaap Blonk/ Han bennink style often involving screams or yelling. Brilliant, really. Don't turn around - The KOMMISSAR's in town!
- Else Teicher

After 80 odd CDR releases on his own label, Der-Schone-Hjuler-Memorial-Fond, Der Kommissar is back with a thinly disguised critique of police procedures surrounding the genoa G8 meeting called "DISSOBEDIENTI" (This vinyl is in fact, a re-release of one of those CDR's...). The context here is revealed by readings from a police manual and other hilarious 'dialogue'. Hjuler also manages to incorporate many disparate elements including one of the most famous riffs in all of rock music as well as a wonderful 'duet' with an unidentified 'frau'. Hjuler's style is reminiscent of the jump-edit approach of the classic 80's combos P.16.D4 and S.b.O.T.H.I. as well as the gutteral excess of Swiss Aktionist noise bandits Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock or French genius COSTES, but here these aspects are downright listenable and just great fun. - Markus Wolff

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ROMULUS + REMUS "Gharbzadegi" 2005 (ALMUT001) Full-length 12" vinyl record Lp. Available in three choices of vinyl colour - Red, White OR Blue - each in a numbered edition of fifty copies. Records come in hand-painted gatefold sleeves, featuring collaged artwork and insert.

Like many works motivated by actual world events, this record is about ghosts - the ghosts of countless victims, ghosts of the guilty and innocent as well the spectre of evil invoked by the ignorant to explain events beyond their control and understanding. 'Gharbzadegi' uses sound symbols to convey the spiritual ardour and rage of an elusive enemy. The approach is organic and the result is quite beautiful, even fragile; belying the grim inspiration.
- Markus Wolff

Beginning with a brief opening credo, side one consists of three mid-tempo, atmospheric percussion pieces; The stuttered echo of galloping hands on skins, counterpointed by low, droning tones. "Gharbzadegi" charges forward in moving and mobile arrangements of traditional music subverted by odd sound technologies. side two elicits a more dutiful yet spacious, liquid and abstract sound environment ending in decay - a place to find focus in the state of mind known as 'Westoxication'.
- Else Teicher

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This, the third in R&R's Troth series, earthen and free of computer abstraction, is absolutely a musica humana. A primordial piano cracks open and leaks out an aqueous radiation of drones, crystalline and ritualistic, in the spirit of SPK's Zamia Lehmanni minus keyboards. The atmosphere is eventually broken in thin voices, percussives and rhythms, which themselves shift from quietly psychedelic into outright primitive, as if some strange code were being tapped out in a cave somewhere in Kurdistan 60 years ago. And then, once again, back into the void, which ends as it began. This strange marriage of varying fidelities, of the sacred and the profane, represent R & R's most mature series of compositions to date. A revival of the lost art of making non-music tuneful by suggestion only. The mundane becomes rite and the inane be smite. As always, released in a beautifully appointed limited edition.
- Else Teicher

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