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





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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