Novi_sad - Mort Aux Vaches (2009)

Greek musician Thanasis Kaproulias, better known as Novi_Sad, was asked to do a recording session for Dutch radio program VPRO Dwars. And as more often with these sessions this got suggested to Staalplaat for a release in the legendary “peel session” for the experimental music scene: Mort Aux Vaches. And as always you can directly recognize this as a real Mort Aux Vaches release: a tree panel sleeve made from old vinyl records.

A lot of the release in the Mort Aux Vaches series are sort of improvised or at least unpredictable and the same goes up with this one. Novi_Sad starts this release with slowly increasing sounds. The pulses grow and grow to the first climax of distorted drones. From these drones a psychedelic loop arises to take over. With very small changes you are lured into a mind trip of weird looped noises.

In the always evolving soundscape of analogue devices and probably field-recordings sometimes a voice appears, short samples from a film or speech. It is not possible to really place the words, but in the dense industrial noises it delivers a haunting feeling.

From what I know Novi_Sad is still a young musician, but the music does refer to music form the 80’s with the dark looping noises and the electro-acoustic additions. Not only is the industrial idea there, but also the dynamic changes as we known from Francisco Lopez. Even in the silent parts there is still music to be found when you crank up the volume enough.

Novi_Sad delivered us a well deserved addition to the already impressive Mort Aux Vaches series. And as an introduction to his music for me it was a good surprise. Noisy though alluring.