Williwaw - Sixty Minutes of -0.50dB Normalized Noise

Artist: Williwaw Title: Sixty Minutes of -0.50dB Normalized Noise Catalog#: Mud-CD-036 OUT OF PRINT!	Listen:
	Track 3
	Track 12

A little Williwaw press is always in order. This first review from CMJ is about the cassette prior to our CD reissue. Read all about it the man, the myth, the world wide phenomenon that is Williwaw!

Details are sketchy on this lovingly packaged cassette release of avant-garde ukulele music; all we've been able to determine is that it's by a Champaign-Urbana local type, and that the cassette was midwifed by Rick of the Poster Children. Whoever Williwaw is, he's got a lot of effects pedals, and a taste for both '20s pop conventions and extreme noise. When he's not strumming the uke Bugs Bunny-style, he's forcing sound out of it note-by-note and smothering it in effects. The tape returns over and over to a few melodic motifs, re-presented in new contexts, each suggesting the
next : with echo, with distortion, backwards, with an effect that suggests an electric piano, and so on. One particularly neat bit in the second half backs the note patterns with laughing noises - a reference to the "laughing records" that also flourished in the '20s. [CMJ New Music Report, Robin Edgerton & Douglas Wolk]

and also...

You know, there just isn't enough ukulele music out there. With Tiny Tim's passing, the instrument's most notable poster boy no longer draws our attention to the wee guitar. I recall a dude named Carmaig deForest who played solo punk shows with nothing but the little four-stringer. And there's some outfit in LA called Uke Fink that writes clever rock ditties with the help of it. But what about experimental uke music? Fuhgeddaboutit.

Or at least that's what I thought until an unassuming firecracker of a CD out of Champaign, Illinois found its way to me. Hell, if John Cage could make music by plucking the pricks of a cactus, who's to say the ukulele can't steal the spotlight from guitars and keyboards now and then --
especially when it comes to batshit-crazy tunes like those dished out by Williwaw? The tracks on A Portrait of Shelves are tough to identify by name, so please forgive me for sticking to the numbers. Track two, clocking in at fourteen minutes, runs the gamut from simple, unadulterated uke plucking to a chugging, indecipherably thick aural assault. When Williwaw gears up the effects and latches on to a catchy hook, look out, because this noise will not only piss off the neighbors -- it'll stir your soul a bit too.

While the first few balls-to-the-wall tracks strive to overwhelm you with strident uke gusto, some later cuts mellow, casting the instrument as a hypnotic rhythm maker. Track 6, for instance, with its hypnotically repetitive patterns that evolve so slowly you're almost lulled into sleep, could well be a Steve Reich composition. Yet, lest the listener grow too comfortable, Williwaw follows up that cut with a distorted rocker. As the fuzzy uke lead builds over a droning sea of distant howls, one wonders if Sonic Youth or Flipper might have contributed to this odd album.

The CD concludes with two long tracks, one of which could very well be a recording of werewolf whales, if there were such a thing. Its sonorous moans straddle ecstasy and agony so effectively that you don't know whether to be comforted or deeply troubled. Williwaw's entire CD is like that. I'm so stunned by the versatility, beauty and ugliness unleashed by this little chunk of aluminum that I took for granted that I don't know whether to love it or fear it. Perhaps that's just the way Williwaw -- and maybe even Tiny Tim -- would have it. [Splendid E-Zine, Rodney Gibbs]

There's a period from about 6-18 months into seriously and creatively applying yourself to your first instrument when you feel you're really getting to grips with it and you've discovered a few things that you must share with the world. It is one of the most exciting and angst-free periods of a musician's development. Then it dawns on you how long a road stretches before you. Shimmering Coaster Of Light belongs to that period. I hope that American Williwaw's personal community is for him on this one, though I suspect his mum may have her doubts. But I'm never sure about the relationship between projects like this and the broader public other than perhaps to remind us how truly special music is at all stages. It moves from amplified ukulele to a kind of mock kora to noise guitar with little in between. Minimalist in the extreme. [Rubberneck Magazine, Gus Garside]

While it's difficult to discern, Williwaw is ultimately one man with one ukulele on a particular mission. This isn't another round of twangy bluegrass, however, as each track on Shimmering Coaster of Light layers thickly distorted uke chords on top of one another, generating the absolute antithesis of what you'd normally picture a ukulele doing. While the first two tracks lack a distinct direction, the majority remind me of the bastard child of Skullflower, with an awe-inspiring wall of sound. Williwaw's
textured noise ranges from a dense cloud of glistening notes to a cacophonous explosion of distorted treble that wiggles uncontrollably, like a bowing metal saw. So don't assume that the cute li'l uke is here for petty entertainment, as the disc's grinding improvisational numbers breaks down the traditional boundaries of this four stringed instrument. [Splendid E-Zine, Andrew Magilow]

Bill Whitmer, a recent transplant from Champaign, has built his second record, Shimmering Coaster of Light, almost entirely from sounds "translated from rectified nylon vibrations into electromagnetic
oscillations with an antiquated German transducer." It may or may not eventually become clear to the listener that for the most part this means "amplified ukulele," and that sometimes it means "amplified ukulele recorded in a toilet." But over the course of its eight pieces, it runs the gamut from clear and delicate chimes to shuddering shimmering Sonny Sharrock-like frequencies with a paradoxical natural grace. [Chicago Reader, Monica Kendrick]

[...] Whitmer, a young, wild-eyed, local musician, has been playing his signature brand of screaming electric ukulele in Champaign-Urbana for the past six years. His music epitomizes a section of the local music scene -- innovative, heavily amplified, individualistic, boldly teetering on the brink of oddity. Audience members at a typical Williwaw show also tend to embody these characteristics, drawing together a mix of local musicians, downtown scenesters, music students and eccentrics. [The Octopus, Aimee Rickman]

When Williwaw takes the stage and hunches over his cute lil' ukulele, you might think you're in for some mellow bluegrass tunes or hokey Hawaiian ditties. But the distortion pedals at his feet should tip you off that he's got something else in store.

Williwaw's thang is to pump out his tiny uke's plinkaplinkaplinka noise as loud as the PA guy will let him. "Most people who've ever run a PA are partially deaf, so they let me go wild." His music is grinding, non-linear and unapologetically loud. "I think the volume may be an ego thing. Or maybe it's my deeply subliminated evil interior seeping out. Whatever-I just hope that when I get really loud it sounds like Slayer in their heyday."

Bill Whitmer, Champaign resident and UI grad student in ethnomusicology, became Williwaw in 1994 when he opened for local band Lonely Trailer. "Yeah, I was a big hit right away - the three people there loved it." He has continued to play around town, often including other local musicians as special guests. On stage he sticks to the uke, though he's been known to play a mean (and did I mention "loud"?) electric Barney jack-in-the-box.

Bill's self-entitled cassette, recorded at Poster Kid Rick Valentin's house studio, earned him recognition by the national press as a "forerunner of avant garde ukulele music." Like the stage show, the sounds on his tape are hard to describe. "It's basically a long thing, broken up by several shorter things. And then some medium things follow," Bill clarifies.

Young Bill played trumpet in his school band, but later switched to the ukulele when he found a plastic one in the band room garage can. He took to it right off. "With the trumpet, the sky's the limit. But I actually like the fact that the ukulele is kind of constraining. There are only four strings, 12 frets. You either have to work within those limits or explode them. I usually end up imploding all over the place." [the Daily Illini, Mary P. Cory]