Beta-Lactam Ring Rec. Martyn Bates : Migraine Inducers / Antagonostic Music 
(complete versions) -2cd- (UK,1979,1981,1994,pub.2007)***°'
Only during a limited period of years (from late 70s until the 80s) tape was the new medium to publish private limited editions, through tape trade mostly and home experiments. Many such tapes contained dark or uncompromising avant-garde experiments. Martyn Bates was also part of this early movement. He himself was inspired partly by the German group Faust who in the seventies had already experimented with avant-garde sounds and improvisation and mixed this especially on their private recordings with acoustic folk. “There was a dynamic control to the entropy.. an ugly beauty” the liner notes describe well. Early descriptions of Martyn Bates tapes described them as “ambivalent scale, cacophony pop, non-pop, din music, minus-beat, new noise, antagonistic music, co-incidental music, freeform anti-beat pop, sewer ambience”.
It is not all the time clear which instruments are used because everywhere can be heard some kind of distortion, which, in a ground-breaking way, became very much part of Martyn’s creative composing process which sounds as much like an abstract sound composition meditation as a direct fight with its possibilities. Most early experimental music is dark and rather industrial, and uses overdrives of distortion in voice, recordings, and saturating echoes; often they manipulate distortion devices until they almost break apart, frustrated with its limits. It is much more an art to make such experiments sound light, logic, and natural no matter how weird or strange, and to stop soon enough with uneasy strangeness. Like Faust, Martyn Bates does this on large parts of first the tape, and adds acoustic or sometimes amplified guitar improvisations to the free-form inspirations. I have the feeling the compositions are multi-tracked. At first the music sounds like rudimentary improvisation dealing with certain spontaneous, natural rhythmic pulses and drives. The music becomes almost mechanical like, with still certain randomness in the real-time recording, so with a danger to fall apart in chaos, while no real errors are made that spoil any moment. The guitar or keyboard pulses give enough drive in a way that the composer’s vision remains noticeable, steady and controlled in manipulating all that happens. To a degree the music sounds like a mechanical story in sound, where something is really happening, almost like a movie, like an industrial “ghost”, in a rather inventive and groundbreaking way of organized sound, organic with distorted effects, and always somewhat noisy. It is vivid abstract music, which sounds well and most remarkable that it is so well developed on the longest tracks, while keeping the listener curious for more. One could question that if Martyn Bates had the best studio conditions would he have created some different experience, but like I said before the distortion and noise became part of the result, so I shouldn’t put that question.
The other CD has even larger parts of improvisation, more than using collage. You can clearly hear the use of amplified, distorted guitar, and deformed voices by organized noise. And I think I even hear sax a few times. Also here on this album are interesting results, with a certain improvised nature, and with mostly long tracks. I also hear certain machines taking part in the sonic experience. And there might have been a bit of experimenting with speed or other tape deformations, but I am not sure if there was too much manipulation with this. Compared to electro-acoustic music, this result is more something like electric or industrialized distorted and mechanically driven free music.
The result on both albums reaches often vivid worlds with contrasting sonic challenges with certain intensity. At the same time, through its sometimes rhythmical and always natural drive control, and through combinations that are built up well, the controlled more or less instantaneous composing, with completely awareness of it all, makes init to something very special and intelligent. There is kept inward a sense of inner peace, as to no matter what happens, one quality that proves this recording to be something of a unique nature.
PS. Martyn Bates nowadays is most known for his later work with Eyeless In Gaza, but also has gained reputation as a solo artist.
Edition of 1000 copies in a deluxe 5 color gatefold sleeve.
