Sacher-Pelz - Venus & Velours

His other two tapes under the name Sacher-Pelz...Here's info on each individual cassette:

On the "Venus"-tape (1979) MB is offering a very successful example of a "détournant"-like abuse of original sound material not recorded by his own - transforming it into a piece of atavistic "concrete music"...: In this very case MB had taken a track from KRAFTWERKS "Autobahn"-LP (1974) and stripped it bare of all its original meaning by the use of tape manipulation, slow recording and endless reiteration of single fragments. The final product of this "reworking" leaves the original piece in a state of destruction - being smashed beyond recognition! The adopted piece - called "Mitternacht" (midnight) - originally lasts four minutes only and appears to be a tiny, somehow spooky composition on the KRAFTWERK-LP...: By electronic sound dots and distorted violin screeches it is setting to music the morbid charm of an impending "ghost hour". Well..., after the "treatment" by Maurizio Bianchi that peculiar atmosphere has totally vanished from the piece! Instead of that MB fragmentarily "mutilated" this sound model into a subdued roaring context of "INDUSTRY" - here the stream of noise is dragging itself along in a relentlessly throbbing manner, lasting circa twenty minutes, and therefore rendering the tiny spooky "Mitternacht " much more technocratic (hence more "kraftwerkic") than even Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider themselves were able to achieve in their rather elegiac original version...!!! [2] --- The last minutes of the A-Side on the "Venus"-tape are devoted to a second adaptation of KRAFTWERK-material...: This time MB chose the track "Radiosterne" (radio stars) from the "Radio-Activity"-LP (1975). He exposed it to a similar rough montage, using primitive loops of recurring seconds and stop-and-go-treatments at the tape machine, unless the piece seems to constantly start and collapse at the very same time. The final result of this "operation" causes the cold cosmic remoteness of the original "Radiosterne" to drown into a staccato of mechanistic stuttering...!!! --- The B-Side of "Venus", however, is presenting no more reworking of "foreign" material, but some dim anti-noises of a repetitive nature that seemed to have been created and recorded by MB himself ... - these peculiar sounds already showed some obvious hints into the direction of a VORTEX-LIKE SOUND SMELTING that was to become the characteristic "trademark" of the later vinyl products by Maurizio Bianchi.

In contrast to that, the "Cease To Exist"-cassette (1979 / 80) featured subdued but nevertheless forceful tape loops consisting of concrete, mostly distorted voice- and sound-material... - a concept that, by the very first listen, reminds one of the unapproachable, enigmatic-complicated harmonies and dissonances on the first long player of BOYD RICE [3]. Here again MB stepped into a psychic nightfall - something that cannot be considered "sane" on a long-term basis but rather leads to the effect of "steeling yourself" within sickness...!!!

The forth tape - "Velours" (1980) - continued the experiments of "Cease To Exist" by directing them into the realms of an again stringent "Musique Concrète"...: This was achieved by the use of sound loops of simple piano-accords, percussion-sequences or the throbbing of a rhythm machine garnished with an overlay of noise-streaks --- Altogether this tape is no exception in the sequels of "derangements " that were always present in MBs output as "SACHER-PELZ" - obviously these early "sound carvings" were nothing else but a successful blueprint of the forthcoming "NOISE EMISSIONS" that Maurizio Bianchi produced and released between 1981 and 1984 using just his own name (or his initials MB). In this he set no compromises... - MB mostly achieved the most gutwrenching effects on his highly obscure records.

Velours
Venus