Some Reviews:
Difference and Repetition
Laptopper and TestToneMusic boss Yukinori also goes by the name Dexter, and
listening to the scary shit he gets up to here with Canadian expat
guitarist/electronician Tim Olive, it’s not hard to imagine him moonlighting as a
serial kiiler himself. The album title is also the name of french maitre a penser
Gilles Deleuze’s celebrated thesis, but if you’re into that post-structuralist stuff
and buy records accordingly, you should be warned that this is about as far
from Mille Plateaux (the record label) as you can get. From the opening “Wolf In
Center Page”, which disappears into silence without warning about halfway
through only to return to bite your ears off, via the menacing thuds of
“Ontology” and the low queasy growl of “Multiples” to the banshee shriek of
“Ghosts”, it’s a rough ride, nasty but nice. (Dan Warbuton, The Wire)
Duo work from Yukinori aka Dexter and leader of Japanese underground group
Billy? and Mr. Tim Olive. High computer tones go up against doomy
electro/drone stylings, paranoid late-night surveillance atmospheres, the sound
of live electricity and tense drawn-out test tones. The closing “Ghosts” is one of
the most beautifully hysterical shots of post-tongue electronics this side of
Ryoji Ikeda or Borbetomagus. Wow. (David Keenan, Volcanic Tongue)
An inscrutable record on which it’s not clear who is playing what across seven
anonymous tracks with titles like ‘Small room’, ‘Shining’ and ‘Ontology’ which
don’t give much away, but the music is fascinating and varied electronic
emissions, full of invention and great deliberation – sometimes vaguely noisy,
sometimes sternly implacable deep drones, their monotonal surfaces roughed
up with skittery details. Olive’s distinctive playing is usually characterised by a
very extreme form of disconnectedness, but many of these pieces exhibit a
more continuous full-bodied roaring, the sort of activity you would expect from
a team of gigantic beetles if they were ten times as large and refitted to
produce electronic signals through their antennae. Natch, I gladly welcome such
outsize coleoptera into my lair any day of the week. (Ed Pinsent, The Sound
Projector)
Seven tracks of fairly harsh, knifing electronics that, at its best, provides some
enjoyable lacerations. The brief opening track, for instance, ends with piercing
keens, like metal scraped with metal, but very high, extremely sharp. The
second offers respite, with (enticingly) awkward, low rumbles. Yukinori, who I
don’t believe I’ve previously heard, and Olive work together seamlessly enough;
no instrumentation is provided (I assume a combination of laptop and open
electronics) but the music comes across as of a piece in any case. My preference
is on those marginally quieter cuts, 2, 4 & 6 here, where the pair stretches
things well, allows the crackles ‘n’ hums some space and gives more of an
impression of letting things ambulate on their own rather than directly
controlling them… All in all, a good tough recording, this one. (Brian Olewnick,
Just Outside)
The Specialist
Over the course of the thirteen tracks, Olive patiently explores the sonic
possibilities of his set up. He moves from quiet vibrations to cacophonous
clangs of metal on metal. His approach reveals the details of the sound without
the emotional grandstanding that often accompanies such explorations by
some of his noisier peers. The result is an organic collection of sounds,
exploratory and revelatory in its subtle accumulation of detail. (Chris Kennedy,
Music Works)
A short but intense record of all-out sonic experimentation…His research is
serious, in depth, and produces crude yet complex sounds that are not brutal at
all. This is the strongest album I have heard from Olive yet. Impressive.
(Francois Couture, Monsieur Delire)
Tim Olive seems to be a talented musician with a musical style he has come to
over a period of time that brings in many of the expected traits of an
improvising electric guitarist but then moulds them into his own voice. Fans of
that gritty, misfiring electronic sound so popular amongst younger North
American improvisers will enjoy it quite a bit I suspect. (Richard Pinnell, The
Watchful Ear)
Supernatural Hot Rug and Not Used (Tim Olive and Bunsho Nishikawa)
Using homemade tools to coax noises from repurposed instruments, they
produce a thoughtful racket full of scrapes, clangs, blips and cartoonish boings.
That last element is key, as without the wry humour, the album’s reductionist
style could sound dry. Instead, Olive and Bunsho’s cacophony often suggests
Raymond Scott as an improviser. (Marc Masters, The Wire)
Hard to believe that this range of extremely unusual and unfamiliar sounds is
being made simply with one electric guitar and one electric bass. Truly
experimental, these musical conversations defy common sense; the duo keeps
on exploring all the time. (Ed Pinsent, The Sound Projector)
This disc rages with eight nasty improvised interventions in just under forty
minutes; it’s a terse, inventive statement brimming with energy and
imagination. There are no lines, no grooves, nothing of the sort. These fellows
play machines, sound generators pure and simple. A fascinating, unexpected
pleasure of twisted noise resounding from the slag heap. (Jason Bivins, Signal
to Noise)
Eagle Keys (Tim Olive and Francisco Meirino)
Olive’s last outing with Bunsho Nisikawa, the intriguingly-titled Supernatural
Hot Rug And Not Used, was mysterious and compelling; Eagle Keys is even
better. It’s superbly paced, carefully constructed and above all sounds terrific.
Check it out. (Dan Warburton, Paris Transatlantic)
Since I last spewed about Tim Olive, he’s put together the great Supernatural
Hot Rug And Not Used (and a great self-titled album) with Nishikawa Bunsho,
which I implore you to seek out if you haven’t. This is his new project, and it’s
the standard kind of high-level, attentive improv that Olive has trademarked…
Olive knows how to coax smart shit out of his equipment and his colleagues,
and Eagle Keys is perhaps the best example of one of his most unique talents –
the ability to mix and match sounds so that nothing ever sticks around too
long, but no contrivances or artificial shifts ever emerge. (Marc Masters,
Noiseweek)
Everything (Tim Olive) does seems to end up suggesting some real steps
forward for the improvisation genre, rich in possibilities and exploratory
notions. Regardless of who he plays with, he always offers useful platforms for
ideas to develop. (Ed Pinsent, The Sound Projector)
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