Audio portraits of: Larnie Fox, Mark C. Jackman and Maria Jenerik. The Compact Disk is encased in a folded strip of canvas with sewn prints of painting reproductions of the three people. Paintings by Larnie fox. Signed first edition of 1000. Distributed internationally. (Carvaka Records)

"3000 Words" opens with the most gut wrenching scream ever recorded, propeling you into a sonic sculptural landscape of noise, rhythms and silence.

The three audio portraits are stylistically different, just as the three people represented in the portraits are unique.

The first portrait "Maria Jenerik", is a cacophony of rhythms and noise displaying an unyielding drive and passion. Tracks 4 and 5 feature Timothy North on drums (best known for his HOVERDRUM performances). Track 5 features Pablo on guitar (Mental Liberation Front), besides drums, this is the only track which utilizes a traditional instrument.

"Mark C. Jackman" is pure noise, cut and composed into 23 tracks encompassing the audio frequency spectrum within a sonic to silence dynamic range. One moment the sound will be piercing your brain, the next you are floating in a sea with the viscosity of a warm latte'.

"Larnie Fox" is a long drone of PVC horns, string percussion and moments of discord. The piece flows with a meditative quality similar to Tibetan bell ceremonies, but with a dark tension that resembles low lying fog.

As with all of Scot Jenerik's releases, the packaging is quite elaborate. "3000 Words" has a CD enclosed in a canvas strip which also contains three painting reproductions and two panels of text which are sewn onto the canvas. When folded it resembles the size of a CD jewel case and is latched with a small wooden locking mechanism. The first 1000 CD's are numbered.

REVIEWS:

Patrick Barber, Rocket

Scot Jenerik’s live performances often involve fire, lashings, and high danger. For his 3000 Words CD, Jenerik takes a different tact, using raw recordings, gargantuan rhythms, and electronic detritus to paint three audio portraits. His works offer an inviting narrative environment in which to experience these 32 tracks of extreme-noise music. The portrait of Maria Jenerik moves from a guttural opening scream to a dirty rock band to rumbling, far off percussion. Mark C. Jackman’s portrait is an assaultive mix of reprocessed electronic junk-sounds, dished out in short bits. The portrait of Larnie Fox, who’s paintings line the cloth jacket of this disk, is one slowly plucked zither solo, except the zither appears to be 30 feet long, accompanied by men blowing on PVC pipes in an underground tunnel.

P-Form #42

Radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi had a theory that sounds never die, they just grow fainter and fainter. He spent the last years of his life trying to design a device sensitive enough to hear the final words of Christ. San Francisco sound artist Scot Jenerik isn’t usually concerned with such faint tones. Best known for his very loud performances in which he drums on large pieces of amplified metal (usually while they are on fire) Jenerik knows the expressive value of noise.

In this new recording, Jenerik paints what he refers to as three “portraits” in sound. From the title, you would expect these works to somehow involve the voices of the three “sitters”. but it is often impossible to find their words buried beneath the dense din of racket, rhythms, and distortion. While Jenerik may not have captured an impressive likeness (I doubt if anyone could recognize the subjects on the street even though a painting of each is included in the package), he does succeed greatly at creating three pieces that each have a very clear and distinctive character.

The first piece (a portrait of the artists wife) begins with the sound of a baby’s first cry in the delivery room and blasts its way into some heavy drumming returning to cacophonous sound from time to time. The second piece is built around various squealing sine waves and what sound like short-wave radio broadcasts from 1942 that just now are being heard. It seems to resonate with the ghosts of Marconi’s theory but also the limitation of verbal communication even in the present. The final piece, however, is the most impressive. Over a hauntingly breathy drone, Jenerik clangs and bangs to a beat so slow it is almost undetectable. As the piece crescendos, one imagines two vastly different time periods colliding and that the turn of the millennium may not bring on the future, but a return to the stone age.

Dissonance v2.2 1996

In a worls where four color shrinkwrapped compact disks in glitzy jewel cases are as commonplace as lies from government officials, it is a refreshing and inspiring change to see a handcrafted work of art cradling a piece of music. A rough-cut piece of canvas with sewn cardboard inserts houses Scot’s newest release, lending a very personal touch that’s been otherwise lost in this digital world. Thirty-two tracks of experimental soundsmithery arranged into three “portraits”, each an audible description of someone with which he works closely. Noisy and very random, 3000 Words is a fine compliment to Scot’s live shows, known for their ferocity and use of potentially dangerous elements.