Dial
ON THIS PAGE INFO ABOUT “DIAL”
DIAL
is a great band partly based in New York and France. One member is Jacqui Ham. She used to play in the experimental legendary 80ties New York band UT. DIAL records their cd's lo-fi, live on a cassette tape!
Dial’s official site : www.dialmusic.net
For booking or info: email
Time Out New York / Issue 629 : October 18, 2007 - October 24, 2007
Album review 168K
Critics lost a few brain cells when bands like Yeah Yeah Yeahs and !!! ascended to relative popularity: Young (or just stupid) writers began bastardizing the term No Wave—which until then had referred to a specific, late-’70s downtown coterie that shoved rock beyond punk and into cacophonous, avant-garde extremes—and applying it to fashionable publicity hounds who actually copped their moves from lightweight, early-’80s British new wave (cf. the 2004 documentary film Kill Your Idols). Thus it’s a pleasure to hear Dial, the combo fronted by Jacqui Ham, formerly of the Basquiat-era squawk trio Ut, reclaim and contemporize the genuine article. The keenest and most compact album yet from the group (whose members are split among NYC, London and Poitiers, France), 168k supersizes vintage East Village noise-scrape using giant amps, glorious swaths of electronic crud and a lo-fi (but never shoddy) recording aesthetic. Barbwire guitars prick at elemental, towering chords or yield to immense, automated drones; Rob Smith’s overloaded, static-caked drum-machine programs and Lou Ciccotelli’s bulky, human percussion bring up the rear. Ham mumbles and trills her way through suffocating jungles of audio unrest, transmitting messages from her deepest subconscious. “Psychotrance,” the title of the disc’s leadoff track, describes Dial’s approach perfectly, though comfier charms surface via the aggro-Arabian riff and cyborg beats of “Rope.” Not simply some blast from the Bowery’s past, 168k is modern, elegantly brutal stuff that’s tailor-made for a city in dire need of another jagged musical jolt.
—Jordan N. Mamone
Review: Warped Reality webzine
In a perfect world, Jacqui Ham's work would need no introduction. She'd be deservedly renowned for her unconventional, yet cathartic, style of guitar playing. And not just for her guitar, but for her singing, a profoundly post-rock glossolalia that draws as much on jazz and blues influences as on the punk notion of throwing out the rule book and starting from scratch. Jacqui, a guiding force in primal No Wavers Ut , assembled Dial in the early 90s with Rob Smith (ex-God, guitars, drum machine), Furious Pig's Dom Weeks on bass & synthesizer, and Lou Ciccotelli (Eardrum) on drums.
Dial's music is characterized by a rawness, both emotional and musical, that lends it a furious immediacy. This tendency towards assaultive guitar din can give way at the most unexpected moments to surprising delicacy, as on the transfixing PAndrea Feldman - Warped Realitysychotrance, a lustrous, cracked-mirror mantra in which Jacqui's world-weary, jolie-laide coo fights against the fractured tide, her vocals spectral and brutal in equal measure. Exploiting tape hiss and the pitted, low-end patina of electrical interference, what is initially apocalyptically skuzzy-sounding becomes, via droning repetition and haunted keening, nearly sepulchral by song's end. It's a perfect entry point into Dial's new album, 168k [Cede], a blurred-out, ghost-in-the-machine howl that never once lets up.
168k is their third album, but it has a clarity and spaciousness that mark it as a move forward. While the group's previous album, 2000's Distance Runner, was at times far too rubbed raw and abstracted, 168k is a more incisive listen. Limning the fertile territory between abrasive noise and oddly meditative controlled chaos, the album even flirts in its own fractured way with pop song-form, be it on the aforementioned Psychotrance, the surging, incantatory Soda Wars, or the hardscrabble, coiled Hey Condition. Jacqui's densely imagistic lyrics are sung with fitful, rhythmic tartness; her tempest-tossed wail rides the waves of contorted noise with assurance.
168k's songs have an immensity of scale and space; they're constructed with precision and move with monumental, glacial force. At times heavily claustrophobic , all looming intensity and livid emotion, the bruised landscape gradually gives way to something softer, less scorched-earth. But that's no admission of complacency, simply a reminder that, if you listen carefully enough, there is beauty to be found here.
Andrea Feldman
Ecstatic peace Review :
Dial “Distance Runner”
Awesome psychedelic skulldrill noise rock damage from Jacqui Ham, who had previously been a member of cult no-wave outfit Ut. Ut was a historically significant NY/London trio that recorded 4 albums for Blast First back in the mid-to-late 80s, and counted bands like Sonic Youth among their fans. Jacqui is joined by Rob Smith (guitar & drum machine) and Dom Weeks (bass & electronics) on Distance Runner, the second full length from the ensemble (following their Infraction album, which we listed in the last Crucial Blast webstore update), and this shit is some of the ugliest/most life affirming basement grunt since prime Dead C, documenting the beauty inherent in crystalline, fractured guitar tones and feedback buildup. Throughout these 14 songs, the band moves between blurry free noise rituals, Skullflower-esque drone rock, and drum-machine powered noise rock weirdness. Dial is a real basement mutant, dealing out murky post-no-wave nightmares. Some of the quieter moments drift off into an almost psychedelic folk area while being accompanied by a quietly blasting drum machine that sounds like a giant centipede skittering along cement walls. Theres also a bit of that weird overmodulated robo noise rock from their previous album that reminds us of a combination of early Big Black and Siltbreeze Records style noise. The rehearsal quality recording on Distance Runner adds loads of skuzzy atmosphere.
UT
Sprung from the downtown No Wave scene, Ut (Nina Canal, Jacqui Ham and Sally Young) originated in New York City in December 1978. The inheritors of the fertile collision between rock, free jazzz and the avant garde that first manifested itself in the Velvet Underground, Ut soon became a serious force within the New York music scene. The band were joined briefly by film-maker Karen Achenbach in 1979 before resuming as a three-piece and migrating to London in 1981. Ut toured the UK with bands such as The Fall and The Birthday Party. Originally releasing albums on their own label Out Records, the band became a favourite of John Peel's (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/johnpeel/artists/ut) and recorded several sessions for his show before joining forces with Blast First in 1987. In Gut's House was originally released in 1988 and made NME's Top 50 that year. As The Washington Post exclaimed "With In Gut's House, Ut has scraped and droned one of the finest underground rock albums of the year...The tightly woven, firmly focused sound..is rich, spooky, urgent and quite unexpectedly beautiful." In 1989 the band recorded and released the album Griller, engineered by label mate Steve Albini, who shared Ut's raw aesthetic. In March 1990, Ut played their last concert in Paris.
Jacqui Ham formed Dial with Rob Smith and Dominic Weeks. Dial have released 3 CDs on Cede Records: Infraction, Distance Runner and 168k. Ut is one of the many bands mentioned in Le Tigre's hit single, Hot Topic.
DIAL
is a great band partly based in New York and France. One member is Jacqui Ham. She used to play in the experimental legendary 80ties New York band UT. DIAL records their cd's lo-fi, live on a cassette tape!
Dial’s official site : www.dialmusic.net
For booking or info: email
Time Out New York / Issue 629 : October 18, 2007 - October 24, 2007
Album review 168K
Critics lost a few brain cells when bands like Yeah Yeah Yeahs and !!! ascended to relative popularity: Young (or just stupid) writers began bastardizing the term No Wave—which until then had referred to a specific, late-’70s downtown coterie that shoved rock beyond punk and into cacophonous, avant-garde extremes—and applying it to fashionable publicity hounds who actually copped their moves from lightweight, early-’80s British new wave (cf. the 2004 documentary film Kill Your Idols). Thus it’s a pleasure to hear Dial, the combo fronted by Jacqui Ham, formerly of the Basquiat-era squawk trio Ut, reclaim and contemporize the genuine article. The keenest and most compact album yet from the group (whose members are split among NYC, London and Poitiers, France), 168k supersizes vintage East Village noise-scrape using giant amps, glorious swaths of electronic crud and a lo-fi (but never shoddy) recording aesthetic. Barbwire guitars prick at elemental, towering chords or yield to immense, automated drones; Rob Smith’s overloaded, static-caked drum-machine programs and Lou Ciccotelli’s bulky, human percussion bring up the rear. Ham mumbles and trills her way through suffocating jungles of audio unrest, transmitting messages from her deepest subconscious. “Psychotrance,” the title of the disc’s leadoff track, describes Dial’s approach perfectly, though comfier charms surface via the aggro-Arabian riff and cyborg beats of “Rope.” Not simply some blast from the Bowery’s past, 168k is modern, elegantly brutal stuff that’s tailor-made for a city in dire need of another jagged musical jolt.
—Jordan N. Mamone
Review: Warped Reality webzine
In a perfect world, Jacqui Ham's work would need no introduction. She'd be deservedly renowned for her unconventional, yet cathartic, style of guitar playing. And not just for her guitar, but for her singing, a profoundly post-rock glossolalia that draws as much on jazz and blues influences as on the punk notion of throwing out the rule book and starting from scratch. Jacqui, a guiding force in primal No Wavers Ut , assembled Dial in the early 90s with Rob Smith (ex-God, guitars, drum machine), Furious Pig's Dom Weeks on bass & synthesizer, and Lou Ciccotelli (Eardrum) on drums.
Dial's music is characterized by a rawness, both emotional and musical, that lends it a furious immediacy. This tendency towards assaultive guitar din can give way at the most unexpected moments to surprising delicacy, as on the transfixing PAndrea Feldman - Warped Realitysychotrance, a lustrous, cracked-mirror mantra in which Jacqui's world-weary, jolie-laide coo fights against the fractured tide, her vocals spectral and brutal in equal measure. Exploiting tape hiss and the pitted, low-end patina of electrical interference, what is initially apocalyptically skuzzy-sounding becomes, via droning repetition and haunted keening, nearly sepulchral by song's end. It's a perfect entry point into Dial's new album, 168k [Cede], a blurred-out, ghost-in-the-machine howl that never once lets up.
168k is their third album, but it has a clarity and spaciousness that mark it as a move forward. While the group's previous album, 2000's Distance Runner, was at times far too rubbed raw and abstracted, 168k is a more incisive listen. Limning the fertile territory between abrasive noise and oddly meditative controlled chaos, the album even flirts in its own fractured way with pop song-form, be it on the aforementioned Psychotrance, the surging, incantatory Soda Wars, or the hardscrabble, coiled Hey Condition. Jacqui's densely imagistic lyrics are sung with fitful, rhythmic tartness; her tempest-tossed wail rides the waves of contorted noise with assurance.
168k's songs have an immensity of scale and space; they're constructed with precision and move with monumental, glacial force. At times heavily claustrophobic , all looming intensity and livid emotion, the bruised landscape gradually gives way to something softer, less scorched-earth. But that's no admission of complacency, simply a reminder that, if you listen carefully enough, there is beauty to be found here.
Andrea Feldman
Ecstatic peace Review :
Dial “Distance Runner”
Awesome psychedelic skulldrill noise rock damage from Jacqui Ham, who had previously been a member of cult no-wave outfit Ut. Ut was a historically significant NY/London trio that recorded 4 albums for Blast First back in the mid-to-late 80s, and counted bands like Sonic Youth among their fans. Jacqui is joined by Rob Smith (guitar & drum machine) and Dom Weeks (bass & electronics) on Distance Runner, the second full length from the ensemble (following their Infraction album, which we listed in the last Crucial Blast webstore update), and this shit is some of the ugliest/most life affirming basement grunt since prime Dead C, documenting the beauty inherent in crystalline, fractured guitar tones and feedback buildup. Throughout these 14 songs, the band moves between blurry free noise rituals, Skullflower-esque drone rock, and drum-machine powered noise rock weirdness. Dial is a real basement mutant, dealing out murky post-no-wave nightmares. Some of the quieter moments drift off into an almost psychedelic folk area while being accompanied by a quietly blasting drum machine that sounds like a giant centipede skittering along cement walls. Theres also a bit of that weird overmodulated robo noise rock from their previous album that reminds us of a combination of early Big Black and Siltbreeze Records style noise. The rehearsal quality recording on Distance Runner adds loads of skuzzy atmosphere.
UT
Sprung from the downtown No Wave scene, Ut (Nina Canal, Jacqui Ham and Sally Young) originated in New York City in December 1978. The inheritors of the fertile collision between rock, free jazzz and the avant garde that first manifested itself in the Velvet Underground, Ut soon became a serious force within the New York music scene. The band were joined briefly by film-maker Karen Achenbach in 1979 before resuming as a three-piece and migrating to London in 1981. Ut toured the UK with bands such as The Fall and The Birthday Party. Originally releasing albums on their own label Out Records, the band became a favourite of John Peel's (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/johnpeel/artists/ut) and recorded several sessions for his show before joining forces with Blast First in 1987. In Gut's House was originally released in 1988 and made NME's Top 50 that year. As The Washington Post exclaimed "With In Gut's House, Ut has scraped and droned one of the finest underground rock albums of the year...The tightly woven, firmly focused sound..is rich, spooky, urgent and quite unexpectedly beautiful." In 1989 the band recorded and released the album Griller, engineered by label mate Steve Albini, who shared Ut's raw aesthetic. In March 1990, Ut played their last concert in Paris.
Jacqui Ham formed Dial with Rob Smith and Dominic Weeks. Dial have released 3 CDs on Cede Records: Infraction, Distance Runner and 168k. Ut is one of the many bands mentioned in Le Tigre's hit single, Hot Topic.