Originally released on cassette via rundownsun (rundownsun no.24)
Wapstan is Martin Sasseville
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This is CDROT041
Good idea to resurrect Of Zero and the Void...
It is a very interesting recording in many ways...
Of Zero and the Void is one of the most known Wapstan releases I guess, mostly due to the label who released it more than the audience it possibly had back then... You can still find copies on Discogs for a couple of bucks… It was released in 2006 on the then very explosive label Rundownsun from Vancouver. That label based in the West Coast boomed with a very good dose of very good (sounding and looking) releases, mostly of the emerging BC scene that took the noise world by storm back then, you know, Taskmaster, Flatgrey, The Rita/BT.HN, as well as other names that were around in the mid-00's... There was also, among all the releases of this label, a great Pulse Emitter tape (in my memory), that double Stegm tape wrapped in a vacuum cleaner bag and, mostly, that fucking insane Tunnel Canary LP. Few records are harsher than this one... This label possibly lasted for a couple of years and then vanished…
At first, when Marc asked me for this reissue, I had only a vague souvenir of the sound of this recording, only on the process of it... It was a long trip to 3-4 life ago to return to the period where this recording was done... I’ll explain a little bit why later, but I’m glad I had the chance to recollect with this recording made 13 years ago… It is a very good document of a period where Wapstan “emerged”…
Yeah, back then, I started to play more live, working with new gear, which kinda influenced more the sound, mostly regarding the way I recorded stuff, although the live sets were years from being good (if they are now)... Of Zero and the Void is a recording documenting very well the transition from the earlier more dark ambient/droney sound to the more oscillators-driven sound of the late 00's. I mostly did such transition due to the fact that the ambient/droney sound was not very interesting live... I think back then I was still learning how to use many of my equipment, some of them that I still use today to play live as Wapstan or with other projects such as my rock band En Fer, so this recording features very naïve use of oscillators, which give a very primitive sound…
But back then, I still wanted to do that drone sound, but doing it live was boring and difficult for an ADD dude… Also, as for the Wapstan name, back then, I tried to stick with that “hypothermic drone” etiquette, you know, to do very cold winter-inspired sounds. I think I did this mostly to differentiate with the then still active Foutredieu!!! noise project/band, hence the quest to always sound cold and ambient. Nowadays, I kinda take a stand on this “hypothermic drone” tag as the Wapstan sound, whatever it sounds like… Wapstan’s sound is the hypothermic drone, you don’t agree, fuck you… (In fact, nobody cares…) Also, back then, I kinda wanted to prove something and take part of that kind of trend of drone or whatever that was happening, so I had some frame in sounds in my head to follow to please to people… (Never do that!!!) So the sound I developed back then as the hypothermic drone was a mix with computer generated ambient sounds and oscillators… That said, it is I still the way I record stuff or play live… Some of my latest recordings and live sets still do have that kind of dynamic, like of an ambient cold background (made with tapes or synthesizers now AKA the soul) with some sort of a hellish harsh sound to hide the dynamics (AKA the storm)…
That’s the hypothermic drone, the soul and the storm… And it’s very present on Of Zero and the Void…
In retrospect, it is such a strange release. I think I was still is some sort of a learning curve… Just at the beginning of the first track (second track on the reissue), there is a very amateur volume knobbing, sounds pretty weird, but I like it... I just don’t know why back then I didn’t rework that or cut them… Back then I used very weird (read amateur) ways to record and mix music that I can't very much reproduce now... I also was not diagnosed ADD back then (it came only some years ago), so these recordings are often randomly recorded sounds thrown in the mix… I think I did record with very few aftertastes listening to make sure they are well balanced and stuff, just to make sure it sounds constant in terms of assemblage, and, bang, a new Wapstan release... (Mastering?? LOL) That's why I said that I didn't quite remember this release. In fact, I possibly only heard these tracks when I recorded them, possibly a couple of times and sent them to Josh... That's why I took a couple of listens before writing this… (And I asked Marc to invert the track order…) But, that said, there are still a lot of randomness sound assemblage in the recent Wapstan recordings, just that it takes me like 6 month to record a new thing and I listen to them tons of time to make sure everything is KVLT… But back then, the KVLT was an amateur mess…
Something I particularly remember from the recording of this record is that trying the most to stay in the minimal sounds mindset of the earlier recordings, I recorded a lot of steady oscillators and one of these recordings on this record were done while I was talking with Blake from Dreamcatcher on the phone, hence the mention of his name in the insert... The other mentions are labels that had released Wapstan stuff around that time. There was Knife In The Toaster from Newfoundland that did that CDR with a Wapstan t-shirt thing... I still can’t believe someone I never met paid to produce Wapstan t-shirts, I owe a lot to Gab… Pink Tri-Force, my friend Brian’s then label, which did a very lo-fi weird looking tape where I tried to do some more beat oriented thing if I remember well, possibly not a success… Lastly, Pasalymany, my friend Carlo’s insane label… The first of 2 Wapstan releases on this label, named Thunder On The Tundra (of course, inspired by the mighty Canadian metal legend Thor!!!) is another very great document I guess of the “pure” early hypothermic drone sound of this period and features one hell of a crazy artwork by Crank Sturgeon… (In fact you need every release Pasalymany did… They are the best documents of the mid-2000’s Montreal underground scene…)
Back to Of Zero and The Void… Yeah… Last name on the thank list is Arthur Koestler… Here’s the explanation… Of Zero and The Void is a kind of loose translation of the French title of Koestler’s famous novel Darkness at Noon, Le zéro et l’infini (The Zero and the Infinite)… I think back then I was very found in nihilism and stuff like that, I decided to use “void” instead of “infinite”… Nowadays, I hate references to literature in music and stuff, but back then I possibly wanted to expose all my literature knowledge and shit… I do think it is wanker shit now, never do that kid, let your music speak, dead authors have nothing to do with your random noise… (Same with samplings, let your music speak…) That said, I like the title…
As I said, this release was done on tape, edition of 100, possibly the biggest production ever for a Wapstan release. (I think Saturnales on Hainey’s label had 100 copies too, it’s a lot for a noise release…) Josh did this very cool artwork, very minimal, fits the title and the cavern-ish sound…. I don't know if it was a success for the label, I doubt. I know there was still copies available in the early 2010's as Ian from Vast Glory had a big chunk of the Rundownsun's remains in his possession. Anyhow, releasing noise was never a venture of financial success…
Not sure either if a lot of people jammed this record a lot back then and if some are still jamming it… There was a very big explosion of noise in North America back then, labels were exploding, new projects were booming from every place, in part due to the popularity of the Wolf dudes and other acts that flirted with “normal” music… Personally, I was trading a lot back then and I got tons of recordings in a month and there are possibly tons of them in my basement waiting to be rediscovered… Most people were possibly like that… No beef… Within the years, though, there were always people who came at me about this recording or this show, which is a kind of reward for still being around… I particularly like when people tell me that I do noise old school, like very few still do… Basically, I do what I like and I still like it and it’s fun to hear that people still care... Marc’s project of dusting off is a good example of this and it shows that people do give a flying fuck about old stuff I almost forgot in my nearly 20 years noise venture… Personally, I have my favorite recordings, but it is always fun to hear people that have a different perspective on your back catalogue than yours… In this sense, this digital reissue is a good way to give a second life to a very interesting animal in the Wapstan catalogue I almost forgot. A cavernous recording that sounds very dark and tragic done by a young man still trying to develop his sound...
STAT KVLT
M. – August 2019
released August 15, 2019
