(Ampersand Etcetera) Bob Marsh who has appeared a few times on the label with a solo album. And another where liner notes can be a distraction. Marsh calls these 'rantings, ravings, sermons, scenes, little operas and whatever they might be' which leads you to expect a spoken word album. Reading on you see he plays (and processes) his violin and cello, messes around with sampled loops and some electropercussion and processes his voice. The result is a series of weird radio transmissions from another dimension - the voice shifts in and out of meaningfullness, instruments call and deconstruct and repeat, percussion weaves in and out, and the mind tries to build something from the words, grasping at interpretation as actual statements fly pass. The musical looping playfulness scraping and scattering around in the background echoes into darkness. Some titles are metonymic - the Amerindian feel to Indian summer, the tumbling Ready to roll, watery Oh bouy as waves drift and whispers whistle. Others reflect their 'text' I'm a sucka or Bring out the dead. Forest for the trees voice keens wordlessly over a twittering of birds and insects. Most tracks are relatively Short, but the final Calm down is extended and provides an opportunity for some lovely extended violin loops. This is haunting as its phantasmal verbal tangets tantalise your desire to find meaning. The music fractures dissolving melodic meaning as well - creating an album of drama and fascination. - Jeremy Keens

(Jazz e Arredores) Aqui para nós, Bob Marsh tem um fraquinho pelo sinistro. Já se percebeu há uns anos que aquilo que o encanta são os ambientes soturnos e tétricos, no limiar da violência psicológica, digamos assim. Eis de novo uma oportunidade de conhecer o lado negro de Marsh, num disco a solo na Public Eyesore Records, a que o compositor chama uma colecção de 'rantings, ravings, sermons, scenes, little operas and whatever they might be'. O que quer que seja, é essa mesmo a expressão-chave, embora seja estulto tentar encontrar um rótulo para classificar toda esta insana actividade musical. Do lado da instrumentação, em VIOVOX Bob regressa à boleia das cordas do violino e do violoncelo, electrónica caseira, loops alucinogéneos (via Boss Looper Station) e uma quantidade de outras coisas inidentificáveis, por entre percussão e voz processada através de maquinaria apropriada (Boss Harmonizer), com registo final e mistura em minidisc. E aí está ele, a criar um alter ego que regressa ao mundo dos vivos proveniente das profundezas do inferno mais distante, ainda envolto em chamas, a voz embargada de emoção electrónica, emergindo de uma torrente de sons espiralados, visões alucinadas de uma mente perturbada, que encarna espíritos ancestrais (que digo eu?) e comunica por sons e palavras ou por quase-palavras, sugeridas ou parcialmente enunciadas. “Preencham o que faltar”, sugere o autor nas notas que escreveu para o disco. Bob Marsh, artista experimentalista de Richmond, Califórnia, passou-se desta vez? Não, tem sido sempre assim. Para uns, tem falta de juízo; para outros, também, mas o que produz entre refeições à base de cogumelos mágicos é musicalmente relevante. Enquadro-me nesta segunda categoria. Para perceber a ligeira nuance, basta ouvir o projecto do ano passado, DOCTOR BOB, com David Michalak, ou LUGGAGE, com Theresa Wong e Bryan Eubank, para se ter uma ideia do que pode acontecer se se apanhar o sol da Califórnia em “certas e determinadas” quantidades na moleirinha. Voltando à música, a esmagadora maioria das pessoas que conheço detestariam esta sucessão de lengalengas completamente fora deste mundo a que estamos habituados, tenho um dedo que adivinha, mas também Bob Marsh não faz música a pensar nessa gente toda. - Eduardo Chagas

(Disaster Amnesiac) Francisco Bay Area increasingly feature an element of "where in the hell are we going to move once our landlord evicts us?". This has at least been the case for Disaster Amnesiac for the past couple of years. I hear about more and more people having to pack things up and leave the places that they'd been calling home; a move to entirely different city or state has been pretty often the case in these circumstances. The complicated property rights and human rights issued that these conversations touch upon are way beyond the scope of this humble blog, but, in this instance, I write about a friend's work, this friend having had to recently pull up stakes and leave the community within which he'd been working and thriving for several years. Bob Marsh gifted Disaster Amnesiac a copy of Viovox at he and his partner, painter/percussionist Sandra Yolles', house during the first of their two moving potlatch events in late September of this year. He noticed me looking at it, and suggested that I take it and enjoy it. Enjoy it, I certainly have! The disc features Bob on spoken word, which he mixes with processed violin, cello, and sampled sounds. Viovox has a very Avant-Garde, Experimental Music sound throughout, but is always imbued with the kind of human and intimate flavor that makes it quite pleasurable to hear. It never feels like a pointless exercise. Marsh's raw, Punk Rock/Industrial feels on the stringed instruments definitely add to this property, as his playing style is indeed heavy, in the sense of it having physical impact. Bob does not coddle his instruments. Of course, this is not to say that he bashes them around either, it's just that, as one listens, one can feel their effects. It's this type of playing, rooted as much in Folk traditions as any 20th Century forms, that Bob always brings to his music. Also within the Folk music matrix is the tradition of verbal information transmission. On pieces such as Rich Rule and Bring Out the Dead, Marsh achieves almost Medieval tones of narrative, while on Fuck It All and Calm Down his concerns seem more contemporary if equally "primal", even "alien" at times. Disaster Amnesiac has been marveling at the ways in which Bob effectively externalizes the internal dialogues that we are all going through. It strikes me that there is an element of autism or even insanity within these types of dialogues, and one of the highest functions of art is its ability to release these "demons"; on Viovox, Marsh sounds as if he is, in many ways, doing so, and inviting the active listener to participate in this process. Mixed together, the twin elements of strings and voices blend richly in Viovox, providing for a fascinating, fun, and sometimes cathartic musical experience. Although challenging, it's never boring. Bob and Sandy are now on their way east, searching for a new home in a more affordable area of the U.S. Any community in which they will reside will be better for their presence. Disaster Amnesiac is glad for any Bob Marsh recordings present in my musical library, especially since it will be challenging to see him, going forward. - Mark Pino

(Ragazzi) BOB MARSH, ein Cellist & Violinist aus der Bay Area, jagt bei Viovox (ps109) seinen Instrumentalklang, Wortfetzen und Samples durch Prozessoren, die Verzerrungen und Halleffekte hervorrufen. Loops mit kaskadierenden Flirrsounds mischen sich mit meist unverständlichen Vokalisationen, Wörter, halbe Sätze, die offenbar mehr Klang- als Sinnträger sein wollen. Marsh nennt es Rantings, Ravings, Sermons, sogar little operas, was aber als kleine Werke gelesen werden sollte. Ein Schauer von Stringmolekülen jagt den nächsten. Manchmal verdichten sie sich zu Klangnebel- oder -wolkenfetzen. Die einmannorchestralen Effekte sind reichlich effekthascherisch und es gibt da einen prätentiösen Beiklang von Reeling and Writhing for the umpteenth time through Finnegans Fake. - RBD

(Music Extreme) Pure experimentation, creating soundscapes of pure atmospheres. The instruments here construct passages that go from pure noise to atmospheres, creating a dark environment in the music. It is amazing to see how each violin or cello sound is twisted beyond recognition and how Marsh succeeds in creating new sounds from those instruments. As he says, each composition are "sonic pictures" that reflects a lot of his experimentation and musical personality. And the voices sound almost like taken from a movie, fitting well the overall feeling in Bob Marsh´s music. They are also processed and transformed in order to fit the experimentation. I can assure that you will be surprised by the multiplicity of sounds, noises, textures and atmospheres that this recording has. - Federico Marongiu

(Aiding & Abetting) This from the liners: "Not all the words are words. Most are almost words..." The idea is that the listener should complete the thoughts. I like that. Marsh leaves plenty for the listener to do, but he does provide a fine blueprint. Give this one a chance to work on your brain and you might never come back. It's tempting, let me tell you. - Jon Worley

(Dead Angel) Call it truth in advertising; the enigmatic title of this disc is a reference to the main instruments present, the voice and the violin. It's a bit more complicated than that, though -- Marsh's strategy on these recordings is to use voice, violin, and cello along with samples created on a Boss Looper Station, and the vocals are treated using either a Boss Harmonizer or a Korg Kaoss III Pad, while the cello and violin are processed through a Yamaha Stomp Box and a Line 6 DL-4. The results sound about as far removed from the traditional use of these instruments as you can possibly imagine; swirling loops of ghostly, droning sound are met by unusual-sounding vocalizations and fragments of melody. It's an eerie and sometimes unsettling sound in which squelched bits of playing ebb and flow, swell and fade, and swirl around in a circular motion as Marsh vocalizes in such a fashion as to resemble an abstract notion of speaking, one in which the words are often unrecognizable and the voice is almost inhuman. Everything sounds like it's trapped inside an echo box and trying without success to fight its way out, an uneasy aesthetic made even more disturbing by the subject matter on tracks like "Bring Out the Dead." The processing tactics give Marsh the opportunity to come up with some truly mutant sounds, and he makes the most of it here, offering up looped blocks of cryptic noise and unusual vocal effects to create a series of compositions that are unnerving despite the lack of any overtly threatening content. Even for a Public Eyesore release, this is a deeply strange piece of work. - RKF

(Kathodik) In “VioVox” coabitano quindici scorci elettro-acustici concretizzati da Bob Marsh (Che Guevara Memorial Marching, l’ensemble Stationary Accordion Band dove orbitano dalle 6 alle 15 fisamorniche, il duo stabile con Enesto Diaz-Infante, l’amicizia stretta con Brian Day della Public Eyesore con cui ha licenziato buona parte di questi progetti) attraverso l’appoggio equanime della coppia d’archi, violino & violoncello, della voce e di molti samples e loops, messi al mondo direttamente dalla ‘scambievolezza’ del suono acustico con un set di invenzioni brevettate personalmente: Boss Harmonizer, Kork Kaos III Pad e il Silver Park, la più giovane tra le ideazioni strumentali. Solitamente, Marsh nei suoi lavori imbraccia anche altri strumenti acustici (il piano, l’accordion...); la scelta di combinare questi due archi e l’elettronica, studiata in principio, è risultata la più adatta per una resa armonica finale, densa e omogenea, su cui immettere parentesi vocali che, viceversa, non mostrano nessun rispetto per la precisione dei tempi e per la pulizia. Over Time You’ll See, A Walk In The Park e Forest For The Trees si assomigliano per il livello di gracilità a cui sottopongono le corde vocali. Il mood è oscuro: una specie di dark-impro che, specialmente nel terzo caso, si espande su versanti noise and minimal; il gioco di loop originato dalle corde esplode come un frenetico formicolio di anime irrequiete. Bring Out The Dead è un’onirica allucinazione mistica; in Keep It Sample e Rain In Spain la voce, robotizzatasi del tutto, accresce il grado di asperità della materia elettro-acustica. Un disco davvero difficile da ascoltare in un solo boccone: l’eccellenza strutturale si scontra con trame troppo complesse e ostiche, anche per gli orecchi più allenati. Uno dei pezzi migliori è sicuramente Indian Summer, dove la voce gutturale si cimenta in un mantra esotico di discreta fattura e scioltezza. - Sergio Eletto