Music For Hard Times - City Of Cardboard CD

Music For Hard Times - City Of Cardboard CD

(Babysue) Ahhhhhh...sound as music. There are very few things that cause as many debates as artists who create peculiar audio explorations that few can comprehend and/or understand because the usual elements in music have been discarded. Music For Hard Times is the duo of Tom Nunn and Paul Winstanley. Using various instruments and effects, these guys use sound like paint...creating abstractions that are curious, sometimes spooky, and ultimately difficult experiences for the casual listener. The folks at Public Eyesore have very quickly made quite a name for themselves by being brave and adventurous enough to release these kinds of albums, knowing very well that they will only reach a very limited audience. City of Cardboard features seven improvisational tracks. These pieces are bound to confuse and confound even the most ardent music fans. If you're looking for something cute, catchy, and comfortable...this is not the place to find it. Nunn and Winstanley are creating pure art here. And although some would question whether or not it really is music...in our minds this form of sound is just as valid as any other. Mind bending cuts include "Obstacle Coarse," "Augury Spirit," and "Map of the Alleys." Strange and unpredictable. Top pick. - Don Seven

(Vital Weekly) The name Paul Winstanley vaguely rang a bell somewhere (maybe I was confused by Kiss' Paul Stanley), but this bass player is/was part of Plains, a large group of improvisers from New Zealand of whom we reviewed some releases before. Here he's one half of Music For Hard Times and gets the credit for 'bass guitar with extensions' on all seven pieces, whereas Tom Nunn plays Skatchboxes, Lukie Tubes, Resonance Plates, Crustacean, Ghost Plate, Harmonic Rods, Music Boxes and Friction Twister - not all the same time, but in various combinations on either of these seven pieces. His instruments are not of the kind you can buy in a music store, but of his own making. Boxes with objects (combs, toothpicks, washers, dowels etc.) that he can pluck scratch or rub along and which sound is amplified. These seven pieces are in the world of improvisation of the variety that I really like. The use of non-musical objects for musical purposes is something I always like and often see misused. That hideous group Stomp with their dust bins banging them like drums: I don't see a point in that. It's still a drum and says nothing about the sound quality of a dustbin. Luckily Nunn and Winstanley understand this much better and explore the surfaces of their objects - in which the bass is also another object really and besides: what extensions are there? We don't know - and create dense patterns of sounds/musical pattern. Sometimes drone like such as in the final two long pieces, 'Bad Volts' and 'Map Of The Alleys' and more scratching and hitting in the five shorter pieces. Nervous, hectic at times and mildly introspective at other times, such as in 'Shantytown Council'. They offer quite a diverse plate of possibilities on their home-made instruments without having it sound like a demonstration record of possibilities. Great work! - Frans de Waard