29 дек. 2012 г.

Eleh



Eleh was formed specifically to pay tribute to early minimalist composers such as La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Eliane Radigue or Pauline Oliveros.

Using a vintage modular analog synthesizer, HP tube test oscillators and occasionally a guitar and a piano, Eleh creates analog drone music with emphasis on the ultra-low end of the audio spectrum.

For the best audio experience, the listener is invited to sit, at least, seven feet away from the speakers.





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28 дек. 2012 г.

Régénération - Dégénérescence



There is, in the Limoges (France) area, a number of neglected industrial sites. If one's walking in these sites he would be able to experience their past activities - more or less recent; it would be revealed by characteristic material or by the site's layout itself. One of these places has hold our attention : an industrial complex of 10 hectares was created at the end of the 19th century on the banks of a river. Its goal was to regenerate hevea's sap in order to manufacture tires, tennis balls, soles, gloves, teats... It helped the just born latex civilization to grow... This decaying factory, disused since some years, was ruined by many fires due to the numerous flammable and polluting materials located on site. Despite the fact that the place is disused, it has got a strong sound identity, a rich sound spectrum.
It was very important for us to introduce this area to you. The interest was to combine the place's discovery with the discovery of the works of numerous artists - working with field recordings made on specific sites. The recording of sound atmospheres of a place could be considered as fixing a fragment of time, space, history (Quite like a photograph).
Representative matters (wood, stone, rubber) of the factory were taken, then sent to the artists. The parcel also contains photographs of the place and a representative sound sample of 15 mn, a kind of sound plotting. This field recording was made by TOY BIZARRE in January and February 1996 and edited by Bruno MOREIGNE. We decided to avoid human sound sources in order to let the place "express itself". With these 15 minutes of sound and the various samples of the place, each artist was able to give its own sound interpretation of the place. The one and only restraints were: to use ONLY the sounds we gave (to do a sound regeneration) and to record a track of 4 mn 30 maximum. All the sound treatment/composition methods were authorized. [You can listen to the original sounds by playing the uneven tracks.]
We can draw a parallel between the rubber regeneration (past activity of the factory) and the regeneration of the factory's actual sound (the result of the decay of the place); that's the core of this project. This parallel also allows us to apprehend the sensibilities, the place's visions of each artist - because they all worked on the same sound basis.




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27 дек. 2012 г.

Andrew Chalk side projects


ANDREW CHALK has been active since 1986 and the output under his own name has been sporadic throughout these early years. However, the last several years have witnessed a surge in activity, and most of Andrew's recent material is now released on his own Faraway Press label.


Ferial Confine (Alias):


Elodie (Andrew Chalk + Timo Van Luyk):


Ghosts On Water (Andrew Chalk + Daisuke Suzuki + Naoko Suzuki):


Isolde (Andrew Chalk + Robin Barnes):


Marsfield (Andrew Chalk + Brendan Walls + Robin Barnes + Vikki Jackman):


Mirror (Andrew Chalk + Christoph Heemann & with the participation of Andreas Martin and Jim O'Rourke on occasional releases and live events):


Ora (Andrew Chalk + Darren Tate):






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15 дек. 2012 г.

Ben Frost



Ben Frost (born 1980) is a composer and producer. Born in Melbourne, Australia, he has been based in Reykjavík, Iceland since 2005. Frost is recognised for his experimental music drawing widely on influences of minimalism, post-punk, black metal and noise.

His work includes Music for Sad Children (2001, independently produced and released), the ambient guitar exploration Steel Wound (2003, and reissued in 2007), described by Pitchfork Media as "an exemplary ambient experience", and the LP Theory of Machines on the Icelandic record label Bedroom Community.

He has worked extensively in contemporary dance and theatre, including award winning productions with Chunky Move and the British choreographer Wayne McGregor. He has created 2 works with German Playwright and Director Falk Richter and in 2013 premieres in his first directorial role for a music-theatre adaptation of the Iain Banks novel "The Wasp Factory.







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Kreng



Kreng (Pepijn Caudron) started as a strictly sample-based project, working with sounds from various sources: free-jazz, first generation electronics, improv, classical modernism, vintage ethnomusical fieldrecordings, etc… The project mutated into a cinematic, theatrical device that has been used by various film and theater directors. Kreng scored more that 20 theatre- & danceproductions, most of them produced by the Belgian theatre-company Abattoir Fermé.

Kreng produced a remix for Badawi’s Unit Of Resistance Album (Badawi = Raz Mesinai who also records for John Zorn’s Tzadik label)

The debut album, titled ’ L’Autopsie Phenomenale De Dieu’ is now released on the excellent Miasmah label (artistic co-ordination by Erik Skodvin, aka Svarte Greiner / Deaf Center).




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14 дек. 2012 г.

20' To 2000



20' to 2000 is a Raster-Noton's monthly series of twelve CDs released over the course of 1999, with each month's artist contributing a 20-minute project expressing "possibly a manifest of the millennium". Each disc was packaged in a thin plastic slipcase with a hollow core. A separate kit containing twelve magnets fit into the core and allowed the individual discs to be joined into one set (pictured). This series received the "Golden Nica" award from Ars Electronica in 2000.

  1. Komet - Manhatten / January
  2. Ilpo Väisänen - Untitled / February
  3. Ryoji Ikeda - 99 :: Variations For Modulated 440Hz Sinewaves :: / March
  4. CoH - Into Memories Of S-Tone. For Gavin Bryars / April
  5. Byetone - Untitled / May
  6. Senking - Untitled / June
  7. Ester Brinkmann - |||||.|.... / July
  8. Scanner - Cystic / August
  9. Noto - Time..Dot / September
  10. Mika Vainio - Untitled / October
  11. Wolfgang Voigt - 20 Minuten Gas Im November / November
  12. ELpH - Zwölf / December




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10 дек. 2012 г.

(Microscopic Sound)



If you're not quite sure what you're getting into with the purchase of Microscopic Sound, the title of the disc actually gives some hint as to what lies within if you take it literally enough. Instead of going the route of the big-beat or even putting together one of those electro-lounge compilations that seem so popular these days, Caipirinha (known for their pioneering of interesting electronic artists) has gone with music that is stripped down to it's most basic level. Part of the time, it's like aseptic ambient music. Something that sounds like the first compositions that robots would come up with upon their takeover over the human race.

Okay, so maybe that's a bit much, but the key to this disc is that sounds have been stripped-down to their most base level. For the most part, the synth sweeps, goofy samples, and beats that you may be used to in electronic music are gone. Instead, Microscopic Sound is dominated by music composed of pure tones and noise (yes, there is such thing as pure noise).

The disc starts off with super high frequency blips on "Crystal S2" by Noto. After a few moments of these little high-end chimes, the track actually starts into some semblence of rhythm with a super low-end hum and squirts of feedback. It's almost disconcerting to listen to given the offset tones and it almost makes one feel as if they were stuck inside the belly of a huge computer that is about to blow a circuit and short out. Ryoji Ikeda's (who has appeared on other Caipirinha releases) "Zero Degrees" follows things up with an stacatto blasts of white noise and an ever-building pop that sounds like static cling playing to a metronome. Eventually, he also drops in some serious low-end and a tone that doesn't sound completely unlike a blip that accompanies nearly every tracking device in movies. He doesn't stop there, though, and eventually several other elements are added to the track, making it sound somewhat like an Autechre track if it were even more sterile.

"Rotor" by Produkt and "Studio 1 Variation Gelb" by Thomas Brinkman break out of the mold of the first several tracks by doing a bit of something different. With some squishy little noises that recall Cologne, Germany area musicians like Mouse On Mars or Mike Ink, they also have a beat (although dancing to it may cause severe disorientation), which most of the tracks on the disc slide by without. After that, the disc goes into the Pole-esque track "Comp Twee" by Goem and the two more upbeat tracks ("Rom" by Digital and "Zenith" by Sound Track). "Reihen" by Komet would sound like a fairly typical track of ambient washes, but has several different weird tones and blurps that come in over the soft sounds.

Overall, it's a very challenging disc for someone who hasn't listened to much electronic music. As mentioned above, many of the artists on the disc use sounds that are pure tones (that help to create a very machine-like listening environment). While sometimes this creates an environment that reminds one of sitting in a room full of wind chimes, other times it's just plain startling. Still, it's a very interesting idea for a compilation, and a good way to hear a lot of different artists that you probably wouldn't get the chance to hear unless you did some serious scavenging. It will probably challenge you, but sometimes that's a good thing.




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29 нояб. 2012 г.

Strafe Für Rebellion



A duo of Bernd Kastner (born in 1957 in Düsseldorf, Germany) and Siegfried Michail Syniuga, Strafe Für Rebellion ("Punishment For Rebellion" - later known as Strafe F.R.) started in 1979. Over the course of several albums, they developed a personal style of abstract instrumental music that owed a lot to their use of home-made instruments, found objects and field recordings. They dissolved quietly in the mid 90s, after releasing the "Pianoguitar" album.





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28 нояб. 2012 г.

Crossovers



“Active Crossover” is a project initiated by Simon Whetham during a residency at the Polymer Factory Culturehouse, Tallinn, Estonia in 2009. During the residency he met and worked with many artists who were all working with sound and music in different and interesting ways, prompting him to exhibit the work he composed alongside work created by those he met and worked with throughout his time in Estonia and Latvia.

Performing at events a number of times during the residency became an integral part of the project, so when Whetham came to exhibit the works in the UK, each exhibition began and ended with a live performance event, drawing on a pool of diverse local artists and musicians. The format for each performance was that artists were organised into pairs, with one artist beginning to play solo, would then be joined by the second for a short collaborative crossover section, and then the first would end their performance, leaving the second to play their own solo piece.

Gathered on this compilation are a number of the crossover sections, where artists who had not met or collaborated before are captured performing together for the first time.

The project was supported financially by the Arts Council England, I Love West Leeds Festival and PRS for Music Foundation. Thanks go to those organisations, plus all at South Hill Park, Bracknell; Wolstenholme Creative Space, Liverpool; Millspace, Armley; Soundfjord, London; Vicki Laurie and family; Nina and Camlo Edge; Hannah Kemp and all of the artists who got involved, both included here and not…
Simon Whetham, Jan 2012





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26 нояб. 2012 г.

Maryanne Amacher



Modern American electroacoustic composer Maryanne Amacher, best known for her incorporation of otoacoustic emissions - sounds that seem to be emanating from inside one's own head, almost exclusively created huge multimedia installations since the '70s. Amacher's installations combined sculpture and layers of loud sound and low, resonating tones. She developed her craft by experimenting with the acoustics of varying architectural spaces, including the ear itself. She died in October, 2009.


Amacher was born in Kane, Pennsylvania, to an American nurse and a Swiss freight train worker. As the only child, she grew up playing the piano. Amacher left Kane to attend the University of Pennsylvania on a full scholarship where she received a B.F.A in 1964. While there she studied composition with George Rochberg and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Subsequently, she did graduate work in acoustics and computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

While in residence at the University of Buffalo, in 1967, she created City Links: Buffalo, a 28-hour piece using 5 microphones in different parts of the city, broadcast live by radio station WBFO. There were 21 other pieces in the "City Links" series, and more information can be found in the brochure for an exhibition on the series by Ludlow 38 in NYC (available on their website). A common feature was the use of dedicated, FM radio quality telephone (0-15,000 Hz range) lines to connect the sound environments of different sites into the same space, a very early example of what is now called "telematic performance" and preceded much more famous examples of this by Max Neuhaus and others. Neuhaus was involved with the original '67 work in Buffalo.

Her major pieces have almost exclusively been site specific, often using many loudspeakers to create what she called "structure borne sound", which is a differentiation with "airborne sound", the paradox intentional. By using many diffuse sound sources (either not in the space or speakers facing at the walls or floors) she would create the psychoacoustic illusions of sound shapes/"precense". Amacher's early work is best represented in the three series of multimedia installations produced in the United States, Europe, and Japan: the sonic telepresence series, "CITY LINKS" 1-22 (1967- ); the architecturally staged "MUSIC FOR SOUND JOINED ROOMS" (1980- ) and the "MINI-SOUND SERIES" (1985- ) a new multimedia form which she created, that is unique in its use of architecture and serialized narrative.

She worked extensively with the physiological (not psychoacoustic) phenomenon called otoacoustic emission, in which the ears themselves act as sound generating devices. Amacher composed several "ear dances" designed to stimulate clear "third" tones coming from the listener's ears. It's not yet adequately researched and clear as to whether these works are solely from otoacoustic emissions or perhaps also combination and difference tones. The subtitle of her first Tzadik Records album Sound Characters (Making the Third Ear) references these "ear tones". Amacher describes this phenomenon:

When played at the right sound level, which is quite high and exciting, the tones in this music will cause your ears to act as neurophonic instruments that emit sounds that will seem to be issuing directly from your head ... (my audiences) discover they are producing a tonal dimension of the music which interacts melodically, rhythmically, and spatially with the tones in the room. Tones 'dance' in the immediate space of their body, around them like a sonic wrap, cascade inside ears, and out to space in front of their eyes ... Do not be alarmed! Your ears are not behaving strange or being damaged! ... these virtual tones are a natural and very real physical aspect of auditory perception, similar to the fusing of two images resulting in a third three dimensional image in binocular perception ... I want to release this music which is produced by the listener...

Over the years she received several major commissions in the United States and Europe with occasional work in Asia and Central and South America. In 1998 she was awarded a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award. In 2005, she was awarded the Prix Ars Electronica (the Golden Nica) in the "Digital Musics" category for her project "TEO! A sonic sculpture". At the time of her death she had been working three years on a 40 channel piece commissioned by the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy, New York.

She never held a full-time job after being a typist in the early 1960s. For the last decade of her life she taught at the Bard College MFA program.




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Maurice Lemaître ‎- Œuvres Poétiques Et Musicales Lettristes



Maurice Lemaître is a lettrist painter, producer of Lettrist works since the 1940s. Lemaître (April 23, 1926), Isidore Isou’s right hand man for nearly half a century, began to distance himself from Lettrism in the 2000s. He still continues to pursue traditional Letterist techniques, but now in relative isolation from the main group.




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25 нояб. 2012 г.

The Golden Apples Of The Sun



About 10 years ago, I put a copy of Morton Subotnick's Silver Apples of the Moon on hold at a used record store in New Jersey. I've avoided picking it up mostly because I like the idea of it still being nestled away somewhere, forgotten by everyone. Devendra Banhart's title Golden Apples of the Sun neatly references the final line from W.B. Yeats' "The Song of Wandering Angus", where it's paired with those silver moon apples. ("And pluck till time and times are done/ The silver apples of the moon/ The golden apples of the sun.") It's also an album by Judy Collins, a collection of stories by Ray Bradbury, and a low-budget 1971 film about violence and hippies. But perhaps Banhart chose the title to contrast directly with Subotnick's famously chilly modulations, because even while this compilation functions as a kind of now-sound capsule of the contemporary neo-folk scene, its best artists share an anachronistic, misfiled air with Subotnick's dusty gem, patiently awaiting discovery.

Whatever the title's derivation, as head curator, Banhart assumes the tricky role of scene definer. I can't imagine the man behind "This Beard Is for Siobhan" subscribing to locked-door scenesterism, but Golden Apples of the Sun draws a clean line in the sand. Unlike Brian Eno, who kept his No New York sampler to just four acts, the bearded bard here musters a generous spread of 20 diverse freakfolk acts to serve as representatives of the various facets of the underground's most recent (and most promising) pigeonhole. Not intended to flood the market, Golden Apples of the Sun is limited to 1,000 copies and can only be had through Arthur magazine, which released the disc on its newly founded Bastet imprint.

For this disc, Banhart wisely pairs spankin' new tracks with a number of previously released ones. In an interesting change of pace from most compilations, however, the non-exclusive cuts are the real draw here, and they greatly benefit from both Banhart's careful sequencing and separation from their original full-lengths. Saddled between two downcast instrumentals, Little Wings' "Look at What the Light Did Now" absolutely sparkles. Kyle Field owns a preternaturally heartbreaking (and charmingly off-key) voice even at his happiest, and here, outside the context of his spotty K Records albums, his syllables are remarkably affecting. Viking Moses also kicks it Little Wings-style; his "Crosses" (from the album of the same name) displays a pawnshop sweetness: "Without love, life is gone/ Without life, love goes on and on."

Golden Apples' shifts in gradation keeps the narrative from stalling-out: Espers' "Byss & Abyss" balances boy/girl contrast with just the right amount of Philly opiate haziness; six-stringer Jack Rose ups the finger-picking ante with the careening notes of "White Mule" from his Red Horse, White Mule; Iron & Wine beautifully represent for soft strums with "Fever Dream" from their hugely popular Our Endless Numbered Days; and Banhart himself shows up dueting with folk legend Vashti Bunyan on the title track of his recent masterstroke, Rejoicing in the Hands.

Anti-folk singer/songwriter and nutritionist Diane Cluck's "Heat from Every Corner" (from Macy's Day Bird) comes complete with ambient footsteps and a click of the off switch, and sounds as though it was placed on tape by Chan Marshall 40 years ago. Current 93 collaborator and one of NYC's most compelling voices, Antony, closes out the disc in style with a musical interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Lake", featuring his signature heart-rending, androgynous operatics and mesmerizing piano. (If you're unfamiliar with his work, check out the I Fell in Love with a Dead Boy EP and be blown away by the brilliant camp heartache.)

Displacement breathes life into Currituck Co.'s "The Tropics of Cancer", a smiling but subdued acoustic instrumental from the often enjoyable Ghost Man on First, while Vetiver turn in "Angel's Share", a collaboration with Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval that marked the standout on their self-titled debut. White Magic's "Don't Need" isn't the most riveting track from the Brooklyn trio's Drag City debut, but this meandering twanger makes more sense in the compilation's context than any of Through the Sun Door's witchier tracks.

Meanwhile, inherently strong numbers continue to shine: Joanna Newsom's "Bridges and Balloons" feels just as triumphant torn from The Milk-Eyed Mender. It functions as a lead-in for Six Organs of Admittance's "Hazy SF", a wee ditty that swims in the suave-dude realm of Compathia rather than the gorgeous spaciousness of the recently reissued gem For Octavio Paz.

The real treats, however, come courtesy of two lesser-known acts. Chicago's Josephine Foster (of Born Heller and The Children's Hour) rustles backwoods memories amid banjo, flute, and the indescribable air of English romanticism on the unreleased home recording "Little Life". It's a stunning fragment: Shirley Collins collides with and bows gently within the cleansing mud of a rocky stream. Likewise, ex-Matty & Mossy vocalist Jana Hunter blows the roof off the barn with "Farm, CA", a section of hauntingly whispered lo-fi dreaminess.

Not everything here achieves the understated power of these aforementioned tracks, but Golden Apples of the Sun's sprawling landscape presents a persuasive case for the depth of a scene that seemingly sprung up (like mushrooms) overnight. It's impossible to pick apart intentions, but this music feels far more sincere than other recent buzzes, and even if these artists are pulling the wool over our eyes (which seems unlikely), it would appear that perhaps a few of these players will outlast the current critical harvesting. To see if I'm right, hide this disc in your bedroom after one listen and wait a decade before that second date. ©



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24 нояб. 2012 г.

Josephine Foster



Over the course of just a few years, Colorado native Josephine Foster has captivated audiences and critics alike through a magnetic patchwork of recordings ranging from broken spirited balladry as one half of Born Heller, fiery psych rock gestalt with her rock outfit The Supposed (All the Leaves Are Gone) to the voice of an outsider folk siren (Hazel Eyes, I will Lead You) and her latest collection, A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing. The one constant is the utterly overwhelming strength and seductive unease of her voice and the bravery of an iconoclastic spirit.






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2 нояб. 2012 г.

Airport Symphony



"Anyone who has traveled by air understands the strangeness of it — the way airports make you feel lost, the way everywhere starts to look the same. The pieces of music that make up the two-disc Airport Symphony, each the work of an experimental musician using an airport field recording by Lawrence English as source material, all capture those feelings perfectly, in intuitive and visceral ways, through quiet more often than noise. Though the source recordings seem more often of exterior airplane noises than what a passenger hears, not counting one using flight attendant’s safety instructions, the music also tends to explore the interior state of mind that comes with traveling. The static waves of Christopher Charles’ “Airport Symphony: A Brief Life” or the mysterious hums of Dale Lloyd’s “Airs for Beacons / Signals for Ports” bring to mind not just the sound of transportation machines, but also the way traveling puts you inside your own brain, the way you experience the actions and crowds around you from an interior mindstate. That most of the first disc has passed before a place name is clearly uttered aloud is suggestive both of the placelessness we experience in airports and of the way this evocative, expansive collection of music emulates the same feeling."

As Alain De Botton suggests in his book ‘The Art Of Travel’, the act of transit between social, cultural and geographic circumstance is far more than mere bodily movement. Language, architecture, food, gesture, landscape and sound all play a part in travel and ultimately contribute to the sensations of excitement, exoticism, disorientation and even fear that occupy the daily life of the traveller.

At points of departure and arrival on these journeys increasingly lies an airport. Like business hotels across the globe, the airport acts as a uniform presence – rotating gates, the clunk of baggage, the vague chatter of tourist and traveller alike and the occasional interruption of muffled announcements. Vast halls echoing with the shifting of bodies intent on exodus and return.

As Socrates wrote, ‘Man must rise above the Earth - to the top of the atmosphere and beyond - for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives [sic]’. Indeed, as the choreography of pre-flight checks is conducted following the gentle rock of the plane leaving the air bridge to a soundtrack of gentle pressurised drone and air conditioned hiss, a meditation commences. This moment of consideration is heightened, as the reflected sound of the engines scorching the tarmac surface is vacuumed into the void of open air and as the plane leaves the earth there is (in every traveller no matter how experienced) still a sense of silent awe at the marvels of the physics of flight.

Airport Symphony, commissioned by the Queensland Music Festival and Brisbane Airport Corporation, documents and synthesises the experiences of travel. Each piece represents a personal meditation on aspects of travel in the modern age and suggests ways in which we control, augment and ultimately exists in a time where almost no part of the face of the planet is inaccessible. Each of the pieces features a source recording made in and around Brisbane Airport between March and June 2007 –in a raw form or transformed by processing.

Audio diary entries cataloguing the epic possibilities of flight, aero-passage and human bodies in motion and even at rest.



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Nekton Falls



This 3 x CD concept album contains exclusively produced soundscapes from 26 artists/projects from 10 countries, all inspired by the relationships and interactions between mankind, environment and sound over the seas and continents. "Nekton Falls" is the scientific term used to describe the process of dead sea organisms dropping to the bottom of the ocean, rotting and eventually turning into food for a new generation.

Well-known ambient artists like Mick Harris aka Lull, Mathias Grassow, members of Kapotte Muziek, and young talents transformed into music their experiences of how eating habits influence an artist. Special interludes were conceived for each track, combining them all into an uninterrupted stream of music. A 3-course menue of sushi for your ears is prepared, 210 minutes total.

Are you hungry?

This is weird! That's the word I'd use to describe this.
This 3CD project is a very sparse, bleak, weird, experimental, abstract and very very long ambient journey. It's definitely not easily accessible, there is very little in the way of melody, rhythm or structure in this. In fact there is very little in the way of our usual music defining elements. All there is, is deep, dark, bleak minimal soundscapes.

Very hard to describe each track so I'll just run through a few of the highlights.

CD1
Gianfranco Grilli - Organic Transformation which is one of the very few that even hints at melody, it is a sad deep melody. Hypersleep - Dandelion Dreams which is a very interesting glitch ambient track that is nicely followed by Seetcya's Outro a nice oceany atmosphere to end on. Seetcya does an intro & outro to each CD as well as a short interlude between each track (on all CDs)

CD2
Nethus - The Inharmonic Heater is 13.5 minutes of bleak atmospheric ambience. Shortly after Niki Neecke - Funfoodfactory gives us some nice tribal beats. Herpes ö Deluxe offers us another glitchy ambient gem with Tran. The real gem on CD2 though is I:Wound - Waiting for the new flesh which manages to have a nice eastern vibe

CD3
This is the most minimal of the CDs, in the sparse sense of the word. Best track here is Franziska Baumann's Birsay. It's weird it's wet and ends with really of the peg vocals. Lull - Just Below Wixford is either incredibly boring or really good, not sure which. NID - Tower Of Babel is really cool with a hard pounding & a dark vocal sample. Mathias Grassow /w Carsten Agthe & Siegmar Fricke - The Earth Rocks is also worth mentioning as it has a much more earthy musical feel than the rest of the project.

So a concept album about the relationships & interaction between Mankind and the Oceans. I don't think this project is going to reach many people though. It's good & I like it for sure but even I, with my vary varied abstract taste, have to be in the right mood for this album & that mood doesn't come along too often. I definitely wont be putting this on when my friends come round.

If you like, minimal, weird, experimental, abstract ambient then give this a try. If you don't like any one of those adjectives then steer clear of this one!



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Send + Receive: 10 Years Of Sound



The tracks on this disc are recordings from performances occurring over the past 10 years of send + receive. The performances are complete, with the exception of a few cases where the pieces have been edited down at the discretion of the artist.

This collection presented us with an interesting problem: How do we fit over 10 hours of audio onto a relatively convenient format that everyone can access? We decided that a dual-layer DVD was the solution.

Celebrating the first 10 years of the festival, this set contains over 11 hours of audio, a beautiful booklet and a feature length documentary!

20 incredible performances were painstakingly selected by committee from the rich festival history to be shared on one DVD as .wav files* (the best way to fit so much high quality audio). The artists featured on this disc are:

David Grubbs, Lee Ranaldo + Dean Roberts, Martin Tetreault, Oval, CiNdy (Sam Shalabi + Alexandre St-Onge), Tomas Jirku, Michael Dumontier, Tim Hecker, My Kingdom for a Lullaby (M. Grill, C. Kurzmann, B. Roisz + M. Siewert), Taylor Deupree, Jason Kahn, i8u, Aki Onda, 3x3is9 + Bernhard Gunter, Scant Intone, crys cole, Steve Bates, Sawako, Fletcher Pratt and Oren Ambarchi.

This set serves as an incredible archive of audio art, a document of an important Canadian sound festival and simply put an amazing catalog of work!





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1 нояб. 2012 г.

FourPlay String Quartet - Digital Manipulation



In June 2001, Sydney electric string quartet FourPlay released their long-awaited remix project, a double CD entitled Digital Manipulation. FourPlay are known for their covers of rock and pop music (not to mention all sorts of other eclectic genres). On this album they open up the original tracks from their albums Catgut Ya' Tongue? and The Joy Of... to be remixed by some of Australia's best underground and experimental electronic artists. The project was conceived and convened by Peter Hollo, FourPlay's cellist, as a result of his obsession with electronic music, and his involvement with the Australian underground electronica scene.

The result is breathtaking in its scope, taking in styles from drum'n'bass to electro, ambient techno to ambient glitch. See Fourplay's Official Website

There are two bonus tracks available at Fourplay's Remix Download page




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31 окт. 2012 г.

Xing-Wu



Featuring live bands, avant electronica, field recordists, improvisers and minimalist composers, there are numerous reasons to be excited about this 2-disc compilation of some of the most innovative and original sound artists from across the world. Perhaps the most important reason is that this is the first release from the new Malaysian based Xing-Wu records, a label established to document local experimental works, five of which appear here alongside the worlds foremost experimental performers. Another reason is that all of the tracks are exclusive to this release, including the likes of persistently weird Argentinean rockers rockers Reynols, no input mixing board sine manipulator Toshimaru Nakamura, renowned improviser and What Is Music cofounder Oren Ambarchi, recent visitor and collaborator with Tony Buck, German trumpeter and sound manipulator Axel Dorner and Japanese dobro player Tetuzi Akiyama, who coaxes difficult skull piercing pitches from his innocent looking instrument. Highlights include American Jeph Jerman's field recordings of birds gathering near his house, local improvisers Anthony Pateras and David Brown's (Bucketrider) sparse and tentative untitled cut which echoes some of their work with Sean Baxter on the recently released Ataxic disc, and the incredibly difficult pitches of Malaysian ensemble Zai De's Ni-Be. The reality is that the multitudes of sounds and approaches presented here ensure Xing-Wu a bright future in providing an important regional role in documenting the local scene and assisting it to remain connected to the all of the directions and developments from the other side of world.




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Walter Marchetti ‎- Utopia Andata E Ritorno



Music: the foundation of that presence in which we find ourselves shows itself as pure negative. Everything is founded on a demonstration of its own negativity: as awareness of its being negative, and does not look for an escape into a future presence, that is an objective future. But, accepting its negativity, makes of this self-negation the real act, the true reality -- the true foundation, the real and actual continuity: this is music's sense. Utopia Andata e Ritorno is the title of the new composition by Walter Marchetti, recorded in Milano in 2005. It has two parts, each one CD long. The first part, 'L'Andata,' puts together two former recordings of Marchetti. The recording of a real storm and a recital for solo piano. This is not the first time that Marchetti mixes a piano solo recital with the recording of a natural live event, thus creating a 'piano concert'. The second CD, 'Il Ritorno', reverses the direction of the first record and literally destroys itself. In the first part of this work, Marchetti puts music successfully in the place it has to have today: on the road to renewal in contact with reality, a reality that is a synonym for vacuity, that is the interdependence of phenomena, music, reality, technology. There is nothing mimetic or anecdotal in this work. The storm is a real storm and the solo piano recital is a modern work of pure music, without the excesses that the society expects of a piano recital from composer and virtuoso player. Pure music, in the best sense of the word. 'L'Andata' is one of the great works of music of our time, or, as José Luis Castillejo remarked, 'it may be the best modern piano concert since Brahms.' In the second part, 'Il Ritorno,' sound waves are deformed when one tries a reverse hearing and the turn around trip becomes an aural nightmare. Of course, avant-gardism has made us accustomed to noises and silences and to the arbitrary idea that anything is music. 'Il Ritorno' announces the end of musical avant-gardism and its technocratic aspirations. It points to the end of music avant-gardism because it exposes the technological manipulation not only of technology beyond its powers, but also the manipulation of both music and sound. 'Il Ritorno' is such a problematic work also because its subject is failure and impossibility. Three-folded digipack 2CD edition. It includes a 32-page booklet with essays by Water Marchetti, Gabriele Bonomo and José Luis Castillejo. First edition limited to 500 copies.





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David Dunn - Music, Language and Environment



Dunn's work is a call for the re-enchantment of art and a beacon for a whole generation of composers and ecologists.

This adventuresome CD is a retrospective of David Dunn's music from 1973 to 1985. For Dunn, sound is an instrument for research in deep ecology, with radical implications for our relationship to everything around us., In its thoughtful yet playful encounter with nature, Dunn's work is a call for the re-enchantment of art and a beacon for a whole generation of composers and ecologists.

Brushing through back issues of THE WIRE as I listened to this (seeking out comparative reviews to give you, my reader, a more complete, less biassed view of music of today and yesterday) I happened upon their review and, rather than reading it to see what they had put (very bad thing to do) I did happen to see that they referred to the ambience of the album, and the rough quality such a 'live' recording has. While I didn't read on to see if they found this a favourable quality, I can tell you that this reviewer was mightily impressed. There I was, in pain with a bad back, on one of the few hot days we have had in the UK, unable to write the stream of thoughts I was having into my PSION as the heat always screws it up. But being outside, listening with headphones on leant the album an even better dimension. The opening piece, a stark STOCKHAUSEN-esque minimal thing, just trumpets and environment, is simplistic but very tasty. Fanfares and fragments, occasionally reminding me of THROBBING GRISTLE around the time of "Heathen Earth". And due to the ambient sounds - which are often more intrusive than the actual instruments - the long gaps between notes are less pauses than solos from the 'other musician'. The second track moves in a very different direction, placing you in the heart of some great electronic machine. What sounds like birdsong mixes with the sound of a journey through raw computing devices and robotic factory ambience. But these aren't the clean, sterile electronics of pcbs and microchips - this is the dusty hot and sparky world of big glass valves, the primordial soup of modern technology. The third piece takes you further down avenues of primitive technology - you are now travelling through the wires of pre-PC telephone systems, where ghost voices travel down hot wires, imparting abstract vox populi conversation to massage the voyeuristic nature a little like SCANNER might, if he were to push the limits a little more.
The second disc opens with the same 'Open University' star cluster of notes as track one on the sister disc, only this time the sound if a lot more complete, notes coming in and out to complete an overall body of sustain. It's like VARESE frozen in time, with the single event cloud stretching out into an almighty drone. And at over half an hour in duration, it has a long way to stretch! Track two returns to the outside world, zapping the wildlife which chatter and chirrup with 70's arcade game laser guns. I guess it attempts through harsh electronics to immitate the birds which join in with their song. I cannot help but feel that the natural and artificial sounds were brought together in some other environment, although there are definitely moments when the two protagonists kinda harmonise. If this had been recorded on location, the piercing sounds, instead of startling the birdlife, actually polarise them, causing them to try, as it were, overshouting the alien (in the truest sense) invader. The third and final track here again visits the kind of sustains explored on the first track of this disc. This time the non-harmonized instruments which bond together like the individual strands on a length of rope, all similar in dimension, but adding to the overall ductile strength of the whole.

Overall a minimal, and as WIRE pointed out, hardly a top quality recording. But then it may have lost something in the more sterile, pure environment of a recording studio - it has a fascinating, intriguing sound - less a work of music than the mind which decided to create it. When the plane goes overhead in the first track, it creates a subsonic hum which in itself is music. Don't expect to dance to this, but there's some interesting things at work, which are often harsh and discordant. A prerunner of Harsh Noise maybe, or a far less honed Avant Garde Classical work.




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