dieb13 / martin siewert / pure "just in case you are bored. so are we." doc 2002


reviews:
absorb
absurd
bbc
brainwashed.com
de-bug
echoes-online.de
mego.at
paristransatlantic
phosphor
recycleyourears.com
soitditenpassant
touchingextremes
yot



absorb review:

album: dieb13 pure siewert
just in case, you're bored, so are we (doc)

vienna - ignoring opec headquarters, the home of avant-garde electronic shenanigans. locals dieb13, pure and martin siewert have united on this 2 track entity, released on pure's own label, d0c recordings. the collaboration has clearly hatched from a mutual interest in the abstraction of sound sources. the magnitude and occasional atonal cast is pretty typical of pure's mego releases. also in full effect is the inventive misuse of familiar instruments, found in siewert's acoustic arrangements and dieb13's unorthodox meddlings with audio reproductive gear.

the epic 38 minute first track, 'just in case you are bored' could be describing the birth of a godless universe - no cataclysmic big-bang, instead unnoticeably gradual thickening of wispy gaseous matter. deep murmurs stir amongst the gathering ether and diminutive blips ring out in bleak isolation. surface detail grows; building in distinction, from smooth to a patina of tiny amplified sonic impurities. it increases in coarseness, eventually fragmenting into large aggregate parts, like magnification upon magnification with an electron microscope. grinding rips from siewert's fret board abuse tear up the stale background of looping feedback - noises pretty alien for a guitar. although, curiously, in the 3rd quarter a short riff is introduce which seems incongruous amidst the spluttering audio clips and spates of stockhausen-esq radio scanning. the timbres they have forged are rich and straddle the audible frequency, so get some good cans. i managed to fit a listening of this track neatly into one nihilistic tube journey - next stop, non-existence.

actually, the shorter second track, 'so are we' is quite gorgeous and offers spiritual redemption compared with the previous nihilism. the gently sustained guitar chords are halcyon. there is a summery air and the grainy sonic texture, in this context, is more alive, like a field dense with lace winged insects. rich harmonics layer deep, resonant lay-lines; reminiscent of the shimmering tranquillity of fennesz's 'endless summer'.

the duality of this record is interesting - the same architecture applied to different ends; hostile and heavenly. the attitude is undeniably more harmonious in the second track. in the first, like in lynch's eraserhead, the search for context amidst a barrage of bleak aesthetics leaves my feeble brain fatigued, but perhaps that's the point. the ambiguous title, Òjust in case you are bored. so are weÓ provokes you to dismiss it as 'bollocks', presumably with the intention of making the listener focus on the content.

if you're a mego regular then you'll probably be into this - if you're not, you might feel challenged but the high points are lush.

(7) - reviewed by will whitaker

http://www.absorb.org/reviews/a_dieb13.html

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absurd review:

dieb13puresiewert's "just in case you are bored. so are we" is another mego offer! including 2 live documentations one recorded at the jazzgalerie nickelsdorf in 01and at the rhiz in 00 but somehow sound as if each is the continuation of the other. and is an encounter whose atmosphere I fancied a lot while I was listening to it. pretty funny to listen for the first time in my life to pure who does the mobile computing here with dieb 13 on turntables (& whose work I really enjoy) with martin siewert on the electronics & guitar. the result of which is a great ambience the noisy crackles/hissing background of which w/ martin's guitar which sounds in the foreground sometimes in a kind of a 'post rock' allow me to say mood or at others their sound as if digital 'errors' are turned to a great ambient atmosphere makes this record a recording to make your day shiny while listening to it. really fresh so check it out. bravo mego!
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bbc review:

dieb13/pure/siewert
just in case you are bored, so are we
(dOc)

I'm not quite sure what they mean by that title; are they being ironic, defensive or what? Whatever, boredom isn't high on my list of responses to this cd. Though there's a lot of this kind of stuff around these days (ie Powerbook driven glitchy drone improv), this particular trio of Austrian gentlemen have produced an album of quite lovely abstraction.

Opening with low, wobbly electronic swoops that resemble the soft blurtings of an asthmatic amateur trombonist, our heroes set out on gentle waves of drones and pulses flecked with atmospheric, dirty globs of noise or crackle. Occasional bleeps and spiralling sinetones give the impression of being stuck between stations on a shortwave radio (try it sometime, it's more fun than Stockhausen). The icing on this rather abstract cake is the shimmering delicacy of Martin Siewert's minimalist guitar, which sometimes emerges to hover over the ooze of electronics, pealing off slow motion arpeggiated chords or harmonic chimes.

While the first improvisation is at times a pretty dense affair, the second, shorter piece explores slightly different territory. A quiet, desolate guitar figure arrives slowly over twittering electronics, joined eventually by a hesitant low frequency pulse, giving way to long, descending bass tones. All the while static bursts, distressed bleeps and washes of indeterminate noise chatter away to themselves, but the music never ends up as a mere parade of interesting noises.

Maybe there's as much chance as there is design at work here (after all, any random series of events can seem meaningful, if listened to often enough), but repeated listenings seem to reveal a deep feel for structure in the threesome's music. Certainly once you're snug in their hermetic soundworld, boredom isn't really an option.
Reviewer: Peter Marsh
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/experimental/reviews/dieb13_bored.shtml

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brainwashed.com review:

Dieb13/Pure/Siewert, "Just In Case You Are Bored. So Are We."
dOc
It was a shock to me to find out that this was recorded live. The architecture of the whole album is so well constructed that I was sure it was a studio album when I first listened to it. After paying attention to the liner notes, I realized that this was all done as a performance without the help of editing. The music itself is a series of background drones recalling the feeling of winds blowing across a vast desert, ominous hums that, for some reason, remind me of stormtroopers and weaponry approaching over the horizon, and various found sounds tossed about as if in a blender. Here and there a guitar plucks some melodic but repetitive notes and builds a tension already present to a nice crescendo. The various sounds that cut into the wavering background range from the aquatic and metallic to the sci-fi and terrestrial. What's interesting is that after repeated listens they begin to sound like melodies of noise. Either this is the result of lucky improvisation or it was a well-planned effect. In either case, there's something fairly impressive about the way these sounds are manipulated and used. Backwards flutes and brief bursts of female voices either singing or talking cut into metallic chunks being ground together. The tension between these two samples resolves itself into the sound of car horns pitched and extended creating a harmony between the crunchy sounds of natural resources and the resonance of musical elements. The two tracks here are quite long and can have some uneventful stretches but these are usually brief and do little to distract from the captivating moments. Did I mention that much of what is featured here is done on turntables? I'm not quite sure how the sounds on this record were achieved by turntables and I doubt that they weren't filtered and disturbed live by Pure and Martin Siewert but there's really no indication that anything on this record was made with the help of vinyl. The mystery, the music, the noise, and the overall atmosphere on Just In Case... are excellent and worth coming back to again and again because each listen brings out something new.
-- Lucas Schleicher

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de-bug review:

Dieb13 Pure Siewert - Just in Case you are bored. So are we (dOc 004)

Dass im österreichischen Nickelsdorf spannende elektronische Konzerte im Jazzkontext stattfinden, wurde auch schon anderswo dokumentiert. Hier lässt sich ein 40minütiges Set von Laptopmusiker Pure, Gitarrist Martin Siewert und Turntablist Dieb13 nachvollziehen, das sich ganz gemächlich anschleicht und einen mit seinen apathisch kreisenden Loops schnell für sich einzunehmen vermag. Vordergründig betrachtet mag man dem Klangbild erst einmal Düsternis konstatieren, aber eigentlich wird da vielmehr eine Leere generiert, welche zunehmends mit Spuren angereichert wird, die man gerne weiter dabei betrachtet, wie sie sich im Laufe ihres Dahindriftens immer mehr Raum verschaffen und gleichermaßen an Vertrautheit gewinnen. Die für das Cover gewählte bildliche Analogie des gleichfalls unwirklich wirkenden Death Valley-Panoramas spiegelt diese Stimmung und lädt gleichermaßen dazu ein, sich aus den bleiernen Faltenwürfen auftauchenden Details zu widmen und darüber zu einem verfeinerten Gesamteindruck zu kommen. Angesichts der Länge dieses Stückes erscheinen die im folgenden dokumentierten 10 Minuten eines weiteren Zusammentreffens der drei im Wiener Rhiz schon wie ein Bonustrack, der sich nach dem doch recht rockigen Verlauf des ersten durch die ihm innewohnende Ruhe ganz gut dazu eignet wieder zu landen.

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echoes-online.de review:

Mit einem klassischen DJ hat der in Wien lebende Plattenmisshandler Dieter Kovacic aka Dieb 13 eigentlich nur das verwendete Ausgangsmaterial gemeinsam. Plattenspieler und einen Haufen Vinyl. Denn als Endprodukt generiert er, teilweise durch den Einsatz von Piezo-Elektronik und einem Haufen anderer (elektronischer) Gerätschaften, abstrakte, minimale Soundscapes. Auch das (Tisch)-Gitarrenspiel von Martin Siewert kann nicht gerade als "klassisch" bezeichnet werden, obwohl er zwar eine entsprechende Ausbildung absolviert hat, sich seit etwa fünf Jahren aber eher der Abstraktion/Dekonstruktion der elektrischen Gitarre widmet. Auf "Just in Case You Are Bored. So Are We" treffen nun diese beiden Künstler, gemeinsam unter anderem beim freien Improvisations-Vierer EFZEG tätig, auf den Laptop-Musiker Pure. Die in den Jahren 2000 und 2001 live im Wiener Rhiz bzw. der Jazzgalerie Nickelsdorf aufgenommenen Improvisationen wurden im Frühjahr/Sommer 2002 abgemischt und erscheinen nun als erste nicht-Solo-Release auf Pures eigenem d0c-Label. Grundsätzlich ist es ja immer schwer, die Atmosphäre solch einer improvisierten Live-Darbietung auf Platte einzufangen, in diesem Fall ist dies aber in jeder Hinsicht gelungen. Beide Nummern bestechen durch eine wunderbare Zurückhaltung, durch das leise, genaue Erforschen der entstehenden Klanglandschaften. Kovacics entrückte, reduzierte Turntable-Loops mäandern wie ein Sandsturm in Superzeitlupe unter den glasklaren Elektroniksprengseln, Feedbackschleifen hallen wie ein fernes Echo, während Siewerts einfache, repetitive Gitarrenmuster zusammen mit den Laptop-Glitches und analogem Knistern die weiten, flächigen Soundscapes gezielt perforieren. Beim, mit fast vierzig Minuten Spieldauer, weit längeren, ersten Track funktioniert der Spannungsaufbau dann doch etwas besser, als dies beim zweiten der Fall ist, der mit knapp zehn Minuten sein Auslangen finden muss. Schade, denn gerade der sich gegen Ende aus dem elektronischen Zirpen und den statischen Drones herausschälende, wunderschöne Melodiebogen hätte es sich verdient, mit mehr Aufmerksamkeit bedacht zu werden. Trotz dieses kleinen Schönheitsfehlers ist vorliegendes Album neben dem kürzlich auf Erstwhile Records erschienenen "Wrapped Islands" von Polwechsel Fennesz eine der wunderbarsten Veröffentlichungen im Bereich reduzierter, elektro-akustischer Improvisation.
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mego.at review:

Artist: DIEB13/PURE/SIEWERT
Title: Just In Case You Are Bored. So Are We.
Label: DOC (AUSTRIA)
Format: CD
Catalog #: DOC 004
"Dieb13 plays (in the truest sense of the word) turntables like no other: his music is reduced, exceptionally musical, and can be described as anything but merely moving records around. He produces ambient soundscapes, often plunderphonic, but never just a patchwork. For many years now, Martin Siewert has been exploring the electronic guitar's possibilities for sonic abstraction, from jazz to distant electronic-electroacoustic soundscapes and more often recently, concrete sound (cf. the hatHut CD, Trapist.) Pure comes from the world of techno, where his beats became more and more abstract and in the meantime even elusive. A wonderful example of his bleak sound fantasies (fed from his work in techno, industrial, musique concrete and ambient) is his last CD, Noonbugs (Mego). For several years, dieb13 and Martin Siewert have regularly collaborated (including in EFZEG (whose most recent CD is Boogie on Grob). Here, their primarily analogue sound experiments are added to and complemented by Pure. After collaborations between Siewert and Pure in the area of production, in late 2000 the three found themselves more or less coincidentally working together on two completely improvised concerts, and have now collected the results of their first joint musical project on this recording. Each detail of the sonic landscape is precisely modulated, analogue amplitudes with digital peaks and abysses. The warm, gently pulsating sound of Siewert's guitar forms the primary basis for the abstract grooves and sounds of Pure's laptop (with its own software) and dieb's turntable experiments (such as adding piezoelectricity to the sound pickup). Many levels overlap, shift, and almost imperceptibly reform. Since repetitive structures dominate, there are no breaks, but plenty of sonic surprises."

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paristransatlantic review:

dieb 13 / Pure / Siewert
JUST IN CASE YOU'RE BORED. SO ARE WE
dOc 004

by Dan Warburton

Is it too early to nominate this as Album Title Of The Year? Further proof that Vienna is still where it's happening, this collaboration between turntablist dieb13, guitarist Martin Siewert (both members of Boris Hauf's Efzeg project) and Mego's Pure, here billed as "mobile computing", is a superbly crafted example of what that great city seems to be very good at these days: predominantly slow-moving, rich (as opposed to merely dense) and rewarding electro-acoustical improvisation. Though the cover art montages images of Death Valley (Zabriskie Point, if I'm not mistaken), the Kansas of John Cage's "Lecture on Nothing" comes to mind.. This is a listening experience analogous to that feeling you get looking out of the window during a long train journey - fence posts and wires close to the track fairly whiz by, while buildings and trees in the mid-distance seem to drift along at a leisurely pace and those mountains on the horizon hardly seem to be moving at all; it's all a question of which plane you choose to focus on. Like Death Valley, it seems to be arid and forbidding until you suddenly realise that there are literally millions of things to experience. But you can, if you prefer, gaze at the distant mountains. Unlike some of the more claustrophobic recent offerings from Grob and Erstwhile, this music admits the idea of relaxed (I hesitate to use the word "ambient" though it did come to mind) listening as easily as repays any attention you care to lavish on it. Just in case you're interested, so am I.

http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/monthly2003/02feb_text.html#2

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phosphor review:

Dieb13 Pure Siewert: Just in case you are bored. So are we CD
The fourth release on Pure's label dOc Recordings is a cooperation by three artists that have been working together during two completely improvised concerts that took place late 2000.
Dieb13 (turntables, computer) and Martin Siewert (guitar, Lapsteel, electronics) both play in the five-piece EFZEG, who released an album on Dorian and one on Grob. Martin Siewert and Pure collaborated in the area of production in the past and both were involved in several releases. Pure for instance released an album called Low on Staalplaat. Whereas Siewert worked together with Dafeldecker, Fennesz and Stagl on soundtrack excerpt from the Gustav Deutsch movie Film.Ist 7-12 (Durian records, 2002)
Just in case you are bored. So are we is based on Siewert's guitar sound with on top of it the abstract grooves and sounds of Pure's laptop and Dieb's turntable experiments. The result is a 49 minutes recording, devided in two parts, in which a symbiosis of repetitive abstract electronic patterns with pulsating guitar sounds, free-flowing improvised scraping sounds and static noises appears. Some moments feature a cacophony of unrecognizable sounds, but in general the overlapping and shifting structures are quite atmospheric and every sounds falls right in place. This Austrian three-piece delivers a very good, sort of warm ambient improvisation album with plenty of sonic surprises.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~phosphor/newreleases.html

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recycleyourears.com review:

CD
Doc Recordings
2002

Pure has really gone a long way since the time he was writing down hard beats with the likes of Praxis's Christoph Fringelli. Gone more and more ambient and experimental, this austrian artist pairs up here with two of his compatriots for one long (38 minutes) and one slightly less long (10 minutes) live tracks recorded in 2000 and 2001. Besides Mr. Pure behind his laptop are to be found here input by Dieb13's turntable and Martin Siewert's guitar.

Are you bored? The wrong question to ask for a title that sounds like a bad omen. And yes, if this CD is something relatively calm and atmospheric, it is not something to approach when you are bored and asking for some actions. For if Martin Siewert's very long and stretched guitar tunes (think Stars of the Lid) have an important place (most of all on the first track), this CD is first and foremost made of long drones and repetitive clicky blips, the kind of thing you want to listen to with attention and care, not wanting to miss anything but really not the sort of CD you put in your player if you, well, are bored.

The guitars has the lead role on most of "Just in case you are bored", but the turntable, played in a way that makes you hear more dusty hissing than any record actually spun, gets a better spot on "So are we", before the electric strings impose themselves again, this time less stretched and more melodic. And during all this, Pure's lays his echoed drones and rusty gritty clicks, throwing in a lot of panoramic echoes, some feedbacks, and some low frequencies.

Obviously a live recording, and probably a captivating concert, this CD still ends up being an excellent piece of enriched droning. The modest turntable and the melancholic guitar really add something to the electronics, preventing them from getting boring (again), and creating a mesmerizing ethereal shroud. Maybe not as good as it might have been during the performances themselves, but still a very solid recording.

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soitditenpassant review:

Dieb 13 Pure Siewert, "Just in case you are bored. So are we. "(DOc / Ici d'Ailleurs)

Trois artistes se rejoignent (Dieb 13, Pure et Martin Siewert) pour contempler le silence et la Vallée de la Mort. Mais, en prêtant un peu l'oreille, bien vite naissent des sons, des bruits, des images. Tout est ici question de structure, de contexte musical, d'ultra minimalisme électronique. Une guitare sporadique erre au milieu du vide et nous emmène dans sa chute. A mesure que l'on vole, on sent son c¦ur battre, le vent siffler dans nos oreilles, on sent que l'on va retomber sur nos pieds.

C'est à l'unisson et en parfaite cohésion que les trois groupes créent un silence bruitiste ou un long bruit silencieux, à vous de choisir. Des sons tordus, des craquements, des notes improbables, un tremblement de terre. Un disque expérimental à expérimenter pour sentir le confort de l'abstraction.

http://www.soitditenpassant.com/?go=selection/index.html

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touchingextremes review:

DIEB 13/PURE/SIEWERT - Just in case you are bored. So are we. (D0C)

Some of the analogue material (subject to electronic/computer treatments) contained at the beginning of the second track left me wondering aloud, for just a few seconds, if I had broken my monitors. Luckily, that was not the case, but the fact remains that this is such a beautifully unpredictable mass of electroacoustic marvels, you just have to lull yourself into hypnotic dancing with a nonentity. While we all know by now that Pure is a genius of looping drones and sound carving through laptop and devices, here the perfect mixture of Martin Siewert's guitar with all the rest can't be missed even in the places where it gets unrecognizable; some beautiful moments have a strangely similar aura to the best Robert Hampson (Main) pieces, but to me this is a plus. The voyage into the dark skies keeps going.

www.touchingextremes.org

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yot review:

layback Device Confusion Volume One feat. Aleph Empire - s/t Shape-CD (Mego/Hausmusik)
Dieb13 Pure Siewert - Just In Case You Are Bored. So Are We CD (dOc/A-Musik)

Zweimal Turntable-Experimente von Wiener Labels, wie sie aber unterschiedlicher nicht sein könnten. Mego mag's in letzter Zeit sehr noisy - und ich längst nicht alles davon (das neue Massimo-Album ist z. B. öd). Die durchgeknallte Turntable-Mix-CD im Shape-Format gehört aber auf jeden Fall empfohlen. Der Toneth Aleph-Chef schart seine Schergen um sich und quetscht härtesten Breakcore, Noise, Raggamuffin und am Ende ein Klezmer-Lied (schließlich wird hier last but not least dekonstruktivistisch mit jüdischen Identitäten gearbeitet) durch den Mixer. 20 Minuten für HörerInnen mit kurzer Aufmerksamkeitsspanne - oder wie das Info meint: file under Arse Electronica. Dem Mego-Umfeld zugehörig ist auch Pure, der sein eigenes dOc-Label betreibt. Das dort erscheinende, zusammen mit dem Turntable-Musiker Dieb 13 und Improv-Tausendsassa Martin Siewert aufgenommene Album widmet sich eher leiseren Tönen. Ein sehr differenzierter Klang entsteht im Zusammenspiel von knisternden Vinyl-Loops, Siewert's Gitarrenspiel und den für seine Verhältnisse diesmal sehr zurückhaltenden elektronischen Sounds des Labelchefs. Vielleicht die beste (mir aber auf jeden Fall liebste) Veröffentlichung von Pure bisher. tbl

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