Sandoz Lab Technicians
The Western Lands
"James Kirk (Black Boned Angel, The Stumps, Gate), Tim Cornelius (Three Forks, Ray Off), Nathan Thompson (Eye, Gate, Expansion Bay)
Continuing with their exhaustive, snails-pace release schedule, New Zealand elder-statesmen improvising trio Sandoz Lab Technicians have finally given birth to their 6th album in 13 years. The Lab Techs are particularly excited about this one, as it features as it's centerpiece (and title track) the band’s first truly hi-fi DDD recording, having been laid down in a fully-armed digital recording studio in Sydney, Australia during 2005's micro-NZ Noise Festival (featuring fellow NZers Birchville Cat Motel, The Stumps, 1/3 Octave Band, seht, and Oz wizards Castings and 6majik9). 'The Western Lands' is an aural journey through a constantly shifting miasmic landscape of sinister beauty and the band hereby challenges even the most recalcitrant reviewer to toss the 'lo-fi' tag at this one (okay, 2 of their last 5 albums WERE recorded entirely on Sony Walkman...).
'The Western Lands' is book-ended by two shorter tracks recorded earlier at the groups long-time practice space at 8 Canongate, Dunedin – the beautifully befuddled 'Nebulous' and the soothing faux-Japanois lullaby 'Crocus Blossom'. All in all, it's a bona fide full-scale 3D mind-movie of an album, featuring the usual wide range of instrumentation (guitars, piano, violin, drums, effects, computer, autoharp, fender rhodes electric piano, bush sax, reed flute, bamboo flutes, melodica, walkie-talkies, hand drum & cymbal, bells, glass and water... lots and lots of water).
These recordings are fully improvised with no overdubs as has always been SLT's modus operandi, but this time the attention to high-end recording, mixing and mastering means that the minutiae of sound remains crystal clear, promising an unforgettable nocturnal headphone odyssey for even the most jaded audionaut. Their best yet? Hell yeah! "
"Sandoz Lab Technicians may be the most
fucked-up and most freeform out of all of the mind-expanding, free noise New
Zealanders that we have championed in the past (i.e. Birchville Cat Motel, Dead
C, Omit, Anthony Milton, etc.). That said, Sandoz Lab Technicians haven't been
terribly prolific (unlike pretty much everybody else we just mentioned), but
they have been consistently way out there when they have managed to record their
ramshackle improvisations. The Western Lands is as loose and freeform as you can
get, with absolutely nothing resembling a song, a structure, or even the hint of
a melody getting in the way of their sonic escapades. Random scrapes and
scratches across both guitar and violin aimlessly drift behind a plinky-plonk
keyboard smeared with the delay emitting semi-tonal clusters of notes that
resemble jazz vibes at their most cosmic or most terminally stoned. Then,
inexplicably one of the Technicians sloshes a glass of water around just below
the microphone. Weird. SLT work better, however, when eschewing such Fluxus
strategies and gravitating towards long-form, heavy amplifier drones dappled
with gong crashes. Still, way more obtuse than anything you'll hear from any of
those other NZ folks..."
--Aquarius Records