Elemental Music, recorded live in San Francisco in early 1981, finds bald percussionist Z’ev (Stefan Weisser) creating an amorphous and utterly atonal wall of pulsating sound on instruments that are neither identified nor aurally identifiable. Although different from what one usually thinks of in terms of ambient music — this shit gets loud! — as a soundscape for the post-industrial wasteland, it’s fine in a numbing sort of way. (Z’ev’s pioneering noise work prefigures similar experimental efforts by such metallic heavy hitters as Einstürzende Neubauten and Test Dept.)
The Weisser EPs are 7-inchers that can be played at any speed (although it only makes sense — if you can swing the technology — at 78, where it sounds like something a cheap cassette recorder might have picked up inside a factory). The Life Sentence tape is an expensive limited edition package recorded live in 1980. Z’ev/Weisser has also performed live as a featured musician in Glenn Branca’s “Symphony #2,” in which he did a lot of Neubautenish smashing together of large metal objects.
My Favorite Things — divided into an “Access” side and a “Memory” side — collects ten live performances, recorded in America and Europe between 1979 and 1983. Z’ev’s half of Berlin Atonal, an LP he shares with Psychic TV, is a typically exhausting side-long piece (“Titan Night”) recorded live in Germany, 3 December 1983. Fifty Gates is a cassette with one side of Z’ev and an international side of various artists. There’s plenty more, and I can’t help wondering how hard it would be for Z’ev to take audience requests…